355 VALVE GUIDANCE

Well i need a little help folks. I have a 97 355 spider with 14000 miles. It runs great (loud, have migli pipes) and has been running great. No smoke or anything wierd just all of the sudden it is burning alot more oil. Kind of a stickler for checking the oil so it has just started and, I would have noticed it. I just took it around 200 miles and it burnt close to 2 quarts of oil. Then needed to add another when i came back. I'm hoping it isn't valve problems but, have been told maybe that could be it. If anybody has any imput I would appreciate it alot. Maybe what symptoms I would be having with valve problems or something like that. Thanks in advance.

 

If the engine is turned off (and not hot) when you check your oil, you'll get a false low oil reading.

If you've warmed up the engine, you can check the oil level with the motor running, or you can then turn the motor off and immediately check your oil level to see a correct oil reading.

...but check it cold and it will register very low or even empty.

 

Brannan,
Please describe your method of checking the oil, and compare that with what is written in the owner's manual, and report back.

Thanks.

 

Start the motor and let it warm up to tempurature. Then check it.

 

If this is actually how you checked the oil, and you saw 2 quarts lost in 200 miles of driving, then you have a major leak.

Since you report no smoke, then the loss of this much oil isn't going through your exhaust.

I'd look in your coolant reservoir for an oil sheen, and I'd suggest draining, examining, and changing your tranny fluid.

Also check for overt oil leakage under your car.

 

Well the leak factor definately worried me alot but I'm not seeing any oil on the ground at all between drives and, figured I would if there were a leak. Is it possible to only leak during driving? What is the best way to check the coolant overflow? Is it hard to find and check?

 

Just open up your radiator cap and shine a flashlight beam into the reservoir. If you see a rainbow sheen, then you've found a fuel or oil leak. Oil is lighter than water, after all, so the sheen will be on the very top if it is present.


Likewise, when changing your tranny fluid, store a sample of the old fluid in a glass jar and let it sit overnight. Examine the jar the next day for presence of motor oil in the tranny fluid (letting it sit overnight will give it a chance to form layers).


2+ quarts in 200 miles is a pretty extreme leak. I'd check oil hose connections, oil lines, and oil fill/drain plugs.

In order of severity to your wallet and car, from least to most, would be:
1. checking "low" oil level wrong and you really weren't low
2. checking low oil level correctly and finding a leak
3. checking low oil level correctly and seeing a sheen in your coolant reservoir
4. checking low oil level correctly and finding engine oil in your transmission oil/fluid


If you added oil that wasn't necessary (e.g. because you checked the engine oil incorrectly), then you would want to look at your air filter to see if oil overfill has stained/soaked it, but you say that you checked your oil correctly so I mention this more to lurkers who may have similar problems in the future and find this thread via a search.

 

FWIW, it is really hard to see if your car is smoking from the driver's seat while driving . Best you could do is to rev it up to 7 k in second gear and then let off the gas letting the car slow on its own. Look out the back as that will make it more obvious. Or just have someone follow you.

Or pull your plugs to see if they are wet. Then you can also throw a compression gauge in there. It will take you less than an hour.

1 quart per 100 miles is really way too much consumption.

 

Not a chance. 2+ quarts of oil in 200 miles would smoke like a car tire dump that caught on fire.

 

Smoke????????????? Bad valve guides?????????? Not a chance???????????
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8.3 ml per minute divided by 2500 per minute, carry the zero and....um....um.....ah man, you lost me on the math!!!

 

I'm in the same boat, let me know what you find, and I'll do the same. I recently had a header fail on me (currently getting fixed), and at the same time I got really weird oil readings. While running, the oil level was fine. But immediately after shutting off (by immediately I mean I was in the drivers seat with my mech. in the engine bay, I turn off the key, he checks the oil a split second later) we would get very low readings. We were perplexed, until an oil change cured the strange readings. My car is a 95 GTB. Let's keep this thread alive!

 

So Ferrari technicians are wrong? You have seen and repaired 355's with oil burning problems?

I am not saying this is specifically his problem...it could be many things, to include a failed main seal...but I don't believe oil burning has been ruled out yet.

(In fact it could very well be simply an oil measuring problem, as has been seen on a weekly basis on this site.)

 

I would think that the answer would be more along the lines of: Ferrari techs were mischaracterized.

2+ quarts in 200 miles through your exhaust would be difficult to hide. That's a vast amount of HC that would be pouring from the cats.

 

I know you think this but I'm not that smart and I think "if it ain't drippin its burnin." Smoke is a byproduct of incomplete combustion. Maybe its burning really good? I'm with jet fixer..." valve guides...not a chance"!

 

I hope it's not this for you, but when I had my 355 I started to get a whiff of burning oil when braking sometimes, i.e the engine is still in gear but not under load whilst braking for say a roundabout or corner. This got slightly worse over the next couple of hundred miles but the oil consumption went from virtually nothing over the previous 2-3 yrs with about 3-6k pa, to about 0.5-1litre every 150-300miles. You could get a very very very slight smoke when reving hard stationary, no major issues when starting, slight misfire at idle. Still went like stink though and a ferrari dealer check of the car just reported a recommendation to merely further check the slight misfire at idle.

Alas the car needed a full engine rebuild, and this as said went for perfect running to stripdown required in 400miles. Two of the oil rings, one on each bank, no longer had groves and hence it was burning oil. I am wondering with mine and other reports if this is related to header failures that cause cylinders to run lean. One header was replaced within the previous 12 months, one was starting to go at this time. On mine if you pulled the spark plugs and looked inside the cylinders the affected one's were fairly shiny...not a good sign apparently and indicative in part of this issue. On cyl head removal the valve guides had more wear than they should and got re-done but the seals were holding fine on those so the oil was not burning there. The liners on two of the cylinders were worn, you could just feel it with your finger, the wear lip that is, and you could see the wear as the coating was worn, the oil rings as said were 30-50% gone on two pots. When I posted here I was told this was not an unheard of issue, and that the very fast downhill rate i.e. from no issues to drinking oil at an alarming rate was also not unusual with this issue. The manual says something like 0.5-1litre for 600miles (to me I would worry if mine did this normally), mine did less than that for 6000miles as said so this became very apparent very quickly.

Alas compression tests would not show this up either as the compression rings were good. A good mechanic should be able to ascertain pretty quickly whether a head will need to come off to check further. I hope it's a simple resolve for you - Jon

PS IMHO I would NOT drive the car any further and would get this checked as the wear, if above, could screw up the piston skirts and there will be metal going around in your engine that could damage the crank etc. I was 'lucky', I got away with one new piston and a polish of the crank along with all new bearings. I adore the 355 but these issues scare the hell out of me as the car was completely pampered.

 

Been through that one to the T..............

My engine had the exact same symptoms. I'm gonna step way out hear with an opinion from an aircraft mechanics perspective.

I Understand that the Nikasil coating is around 3 microns thick on an OEM liner. Once you get through that coating BAM...Oil consumption goes through the roof.....


Helms/Enginefxr can confirm this I am sure......



FYI

Aftermarket liners available from Ricambi are double the Nikasil thickness......Engine fixr dropped a set in my buddies 355....I might add that he can now blow my doors off as Enginefixr warmed up a few things during access

 

How many miles were on your car when this happened? (or kilometers or furlongs or rods or however you measure distance over there?)


Jay

 

circa 20,000 miles from memory, 96 2.7 spider, ran superbly, never had issues etc and only one track day where again the car was run sensibly. Helix lube changes every 2-3k.

I think the liner wear on mine was more to do with petrol wash rather than liner wear that caused the oil ring to wear, hence if you have this issue one of the symptoms as I understand it is that the piston crown will often look nice and clean, which mine did in comparison to the others. Hence my suspicion around manifold issues possibly causing the fuelling to go all over the place and maybe one reason why the petrol wash may occur in the first place? There was no obvious part on mine that lead to the failure. All leads, plugs, idlers etc were replaced to play safe and the injectors were stripped and tested but all the old parts were working ok according to the diags.

Rebuilt and 4,000miles later and the car is running fine, my brother has it, why it required £10k+ spent on it all of a sudden is beyond me. As far as folks have told me though I was far from the first to have this issue and doubt I will be the last. In the US everyone seems almost a tad paranoid re the valve guides to me, some have said the fuel in the US is poorer quality and this may contribute I guess? Most ferrari dealers and indies I have spoken to in the UK though have only done less than a handful of the valve guides and most folks really don't concern themselves on that front when purchasing here. As my cyl heads were off we had the guides done and there was indeed more play than there should be, but i suspect they could have gone 10,20,30K... more miles no problem unless a stem seal went. Cylinder and general wear overall was very good, taking into account these cars don't live that easy a life, not for them the cruising effortlessly on the motorway to clock miles, but at 20k miles mine had circa 10-15% ring wear etc., 2 knackered oil rings excepting. Given the service costs on these cars a valve job every 30-60k really wouldn't worry me too much, on it's own mine would have been circa £2k (they were re-sleeved with high quality sleeves rather than paying a lot more and stressing the heads to put the sintered guides in). Going from clean health to ruined cylinders in 400miles concerns me far more.

 

Don't understand fuel washing?? If injectors are spraying properly and the ignition is up to par, how can that HUGE amount of fuel(enough to wash the liner) get into the cylinder?? Wouldn't the ECU prevent this if all sensors were working poprerly??

Is pump gas dirty enough to cause the liner coating to deteroriate??

 

I don't think it would take that much petrol to cause issues/wash, I suspect it more to be partial burn or more likely the odd miss when cold etc to cause issues. If you have a hole in the header on a pot it will I suspect affect the running of that pot but the ecu only has one sensor for air in and out on each bank so it just averages it all out. Also it's not unusual for these cars to run a tad rough when cold and miss a bit. Equally I have heard the odd one that runs beautifully, but pre rebuild mine was similar to most I had heard when cold or hot in that it didn't stand out from the crowd and ran nicely but not perfection. Even when consuming scary amounts of oil it ran quite smoothly when working but did as said miss occassionally at idle. Post rebuild it was as good as I suspect they can ever be, i.e. pretty damn perfect but it should be as everything was new and cleaned and tuned etc. Fuel used for me is normally Shell Optimax which is a unique base fuel with good additive pack and from what I understand higher spec than average UK fuel and from others comments much better than most US fuels. It also has a 98 octane rating so the car/ecu can run optimally rather than have to adjust like mad for knock.

So it could be a number of issues coming together possibly that are quite 'common' unless the car is brand new, i.e. the injectors were good but not great, likewise the plugs and leads, slight play in valve guides, slight deposits on valves etc. Nothing was middle of the road or needed replacing but together along with possibly the manifold issues it may have been enough. If it wasn't petrol wash then quite why the oil rings decide to eat themselves suddenly is a complete mystery. From all I was told though the concensus was that petrol wash would likely cause the ring wear and the oil ring suffers the most by design whereby instead of having two distinct crests it ended up looking like a compression ring very quickly and then starts letting oil past. That then means the cylinder doesn't run optimally and so on and so on. Hence I think the dramatic change of events over a very small amount of mileage comparitively. Whether the clean piston crown is a symptom more of the petrol wash or the oil being burnt, or both, I'm not 100% but apparently if you saw that down the plug hole it wasn't good and normally meant the oil ring was shot.

Going back to the post though, based on the events/symptoms that I went thru which look at face value alas similar to current, it's potentially something that could deteriorate quickly. I really hope it isn't the same issue but to play safe, all I was suggesting is that I would humbly recommend going to a good experienced shop and getting this checked and issue found. Worst case if left and it is the same thing it could risk possible bottom end damage that would likely write the engine off economically.

 

Thanks for your reply Jon......makes sense..

Cheers

 

anyway.......my engine went from zero oil consumption between services to huge oil consumption. no smoke (apparently combustion is so hot with a 355 to burn it without smoke, i was told...i have no other explanation)

worn guides. everything else looked like new still, but i got rings, bearings etc changed anyway.

dry sump engine. the instructions for checking oil are VERY clear!

warm up oil. turn off engine and check oil immediately.

leave it too long and you'll get a low reading....as the oil drains from the tank. definitely not to be done with the engine running.