355 Valve guides

Guys I am a vintage owner ('67, '70, and '71) but one of my pals is seriously looking at a low milage 355. He is not on F Chat and asked me at inquire of you if there is a consensus at what serial number of 355s the bad valve guides ceased being a problem? M

 

Supposedly, the switch was made in mid 98. I am sure that someone here has the magic serial number of when it took place.

The reality is that no 355 is immune to the issue, as there is proof that bronze guides were continually used throughout production to the last 355 Fiorano.

 

Unfortunately Michael I believe your question cannot be answered as there are guide failures noted all over the year range.

However it is important to understand that to some extent this problem is blown way out of proportion by chat sites like this. The same magic rule applies when buying a 355 as it does to all Ferrari's, get it inspected, check the documents and car condition and make an offer based on your findings. Valve guides can be fixed.


My advice, buy a car that has been driven, the bugs will have been worked out...

 

.My 98 355 was manufactured in August 1997. At 59000 miles, I had the valve guides replaced. Hope this helps.

 

And mine was manufactured in oct 1995. And at 94,000 miles has never had to have them done. Hope this help does not confuse anyone

 

Cool!

 

+1 .................

+2 ...................

 

There was some discussion years ago on this forum that lead to the idea that a lot of the problem was not so much the materiel used as possibly improper/sloppy installation on some cars at the factory. The above post on the "95 355 with 94,000 miles might lead to that conclusion.
Also there was some discussion that the proper alloy from the supplier may not have been consistant

 

MANY THANKS GUYS, HE LOVES THE 355 AND THIS WILL HELP, I WILL PASS YOUR INSIGHTS ALONG, M

 

If you do a search, there is an old poll that showed just under 25% of 355 owners that responded to the poll has done the guides. Samples size was about 100. That also doesn't factor in folks who did it as a preventive measure.
Maybe its time to re-do the poll.

% of owners needing headers?
cats?
Valve guides?

B

 

We are still doing valve guides on a regular basis. We did 2 cars last month and that was out of about 5 or 6 355's through the shop. It is very simple, if it has the early guides it either needs them or will. The 2nd of the 2 most recent had 35k miles and leakage in excess of more than 65% on more than one cylinder. About 50% of the cars needing guides need headers and the other 50% already had them done.

 

That is awesome, congrats on such an accomplishment (knock on wood as I don't want to jinx you)

 

Have you ever seen a late '98 or a '99 that had bronze guides that failed?

 

I've heard that the guide issue is not limited to only 355's; there are occurences in 456's too.

As a new entry to the Fcar and 355 world, and having some big knowledge gaps: why didn't Ferrari warranty this problem? Clearly a manufacturing defect that they should repair at no charge, IMHO.

 

ROTFLMAO !!! That would be like Mahmoud Ahmadinejad saying "whoops, my bad..."

The only 'defect' Ferrari ever admitted to making was the creation of the 348. (Thanks LdM)


(Just playin' with ya Bob...)

 

Ferrari did redo the valves on a number of F355s that showed up with this kind of problem while still under warantee.

 

I have never seen a late 98 or any 99 355 with bronze guides.

 

We did lots of them under warranty and that is part of the problem. We are now seeing many cars that were repaired by some of the dealers needing another valve job. To begin with Ferrari was not always anxious to do full and complete jobs and the shops performing the work were just not aware of the nature and magnitude of the problem so did not perform complete repairs either. The end result is many of those just have not lasted. The other problem was we were doing many guide replacements before the new iron guides were introduced. We were replacing junk guides with junk guides.

 

What do you define as a manufacturing defect? Mercededs Benz makes near constant product improvements but they do not update every car they built previously. Ferrari makes mistakes, there is no question about that and I am not an apologist for Ferrari but they were the same guides that worked well and are infact still in use in tens of thousands of 308's, Testarossa's, 348's, etc, sometimes for multiple hundreds of thousands of miles. It was not known until well into production that those guides would not stand up to the conditions that existed in the 355 motor. It is not Ferraris fault that the fleet of 355's had so few miles on it that the real magnitude of the problem was not known until the cars were out of warranty. That is one of the chances we as buyers of low production exotics take when we purchase. I tell people every week if they want perfection in an automible buy the biggest selling Toyota they make. They make enough of them they have time to get it right.

 

Quote of the century. My daily is a corolla that requires no maintenence and also does not depreciate. Now I am having to do my guides I am feeling smug because I saved so much on the corolla!

Who cares about the guides. If it breaks, fix it. The car has given me so much on the good days when you need to fix it its just part of the journey.

 

Does your car need guides??

I was looking at a couple of photos of your car from Puke a few yeas ago, looks great!!

 

How much does it cost to have the guides replaced?

 

M.B. - from what I can tell a small percentage of cars are affected across the entire run, more than likely if a car has the problem and it's been maintained it would have been uncovered by now as the newest car is 10yrs. old... the best you can hope for is a compression/leakdown test which will give you an accurate snapshot in time.

What seems to be a when - not if - is each car will need headers and cats at some point, hope this helps.

 

I also wonder why its always the R/H side manifold that goes first. Touch wood only my R/H side needed replacing a few years back. Anyone know why that side always seems to go first?

 

Maybe because it's due to higher ambient temp being generated by dry sump oil tank