When did your early 355 need valve guides and headers

Question: When did your early 355 need valve guides and headers?
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Answer: On the day of manufacture. They were created defective.
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There was a poll here that, IIRC, indicated about 30% failure rates in both headers and guides. That might not be scientific - we are a rather biased sample - but indicates a lot of potential for problems. It looks like 70% don't have problems, but 30% do.

There is no science but considerable suspicion that header and/or guide failures can wipe out a cylinder and necessitate a bottom-end job, raising the repair cost to something like $25k... I'm not an owner, but my plan was to buy a car with great PPI that needed a major and was priced accordingly, and fixing the headers with QV and getting the guides done almost instantly so I'd know that they were done right.

For $4k you can fix both at your next major, or - do you feel lucky?

 

At 25K, needed valves, guides, liners, main and rod bearings, headers. None of those were options, they were all toast.

 

What year is your car?

 

My 1995 had all the regular problems between 20,000 and 25,000 miles. Cats, headers, and valve guides. The problem was they happened at 3 different times and that drove up the cost with engine out's.

 

Not unusual.

Contrary to what many 95 355 owners want to believe they have valve guide problems too. They are the ones we discovered the problem on. The dealers did a huge percentage of them under warranty so they are already done.

 

Well since you had to bring it up, I had to look. I think I will be getting new headers.
Anyone want to comment? Hard to take a picture of it. A few little puffs of cottony stuff, and scattered thin fibers of unknown origin, mostly on the right. I am guessing I have a leak in the right header.
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J,

That header is done.

Don't send it to QV for repairs, replace it with an aftermarket set.

 

So I need headers. It's all arranged. They will be replaced when it goes in next month, and the world keeps turning. By March I will be annoying the neighbors as usual. See? no big deal, it's all part of the Ferrari ownership package.

I will miss the car for the next few weeks though. It's such an addiction.

 

So which headers are you going with???

 

I am a die-hard Ricambi customer. QV.

 

I have sent you a PM.

Best regards,

Ralph

 

'96

 

We just did valve guides and headers on a 95 last month with 28,000 on it. W have another 95 here now that got headers at 35K or so and needs guides now at 38k. We also did guides on a 97 last month with 30.4K.

 

Do you have any repeat offenders since replacements?

 

I have seen many. Many of the cars that were done at a dealer under warranty have gone belly up. Many shops did not understand the importance of replacing the valves and many shops just sent them down to the local machine shop to be done. Those shops did not understand the need for the job to be done with a higher degree of precision than an SUV in order for the job to last. Far too many people in the buying process just look for documentation of a valve job having been done with no information on how well it was done.

 

Holy crap what a pain. Is it safe to say that when it is done correctly with proper new guides and valves that it will go for quite some time? Or is the inevitable just waiting around the corner for another go.

 

It is the opinion of some people at Ferrari that it is a problem that cannot be fixed, only made better.

I have yet to redo a valve job that was done well but the problem is so few are being done well.

 

I have a '95 F355GTS. The headers went at around 32K miles, and the valve guides are now ready for work at 40K miles.

 

I've got a 98 355 F1 with 33K miles. It's in for it's 30K belt service now when I got this picture showing it's time for headers. Looking at going with the QV since I'd prefer to keep the heat shields in place and the Tubi's are over twice the price. ($2700 - QV vs. $5900 for Tubi). BTW, the valves and leakdown are fine and this is the second belt service on the car. Photo credit to Fernando at Competizione.
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I have had to replace bad QV headers but never one single problem with Tubi. In fact I have a bad QV header sitting here on the floor right now. And I won't even go into the story of how long it took to get a replacement.

Buy quality and pay once.

Just say no to QV.

 

My QV headers had to be replaced. Went with Fabspeed.

 

I've only seen Tubi's with the heat shields on. Do you know if they are tri-y like the originals or 4 into 1 collector?

 

As per originals. Great fit as well.

 

Is this $4K number just a wild guess? The 40 guides are $2,200, some valves will be replaced at $100 each, buch of head gaskets, and a $3000 header would make this an easy $8K in parts alone ... no ?