Broken Gasket -> Oil Leak

I had a significant oil leak, and brought it to mechanic. Turns out the gasket is broken. It's a $66 part, but a large portion of the engine has to be taken apart to replace it yielding a massive estimate of $6500. Mechanic is a Ferrari specialist, but said he had never seen this in an F430. I have a 2006. Just curious if this happened to anyone else. Thanks.

 

Where was it? Crank seal? Cramshaft seal? Oil pump?

 

Valve covers ?

 

I'm not sure which seal it was. He explained that a good chunk of the engine had to be removed to get to the broken gasket. I believe he said the valve covers had to be removed to make the repair. A significant amount of oil was coming out.

 

I have the car, there is a section of the front timing cover gasket that has been "blown out" not seen anything like this on any other 430 we have serviced before, but it causing a significant leak. The car was down 2 quarts when it came in. Anyone else experienced this ?

 

That's a lot of oil loss. I'm interested to learn more about this.

 

Interesting. Defective gasket perhaps? Following with interest as well..

 

Got any pics that we can see?

 

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Yes, will post shortly

 

Here are the 2 pictures. One when it came in and the other after it was cleaned
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Oh that IS a pain to get at isn't it...

How many miles? Almost looks like a manufacuturing error. Pinched/ill placed gasket. Gasket 21? PCV issue? Interesting.
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They were superseded several times since introduction. I'm not surprised it broke, if that is original to the car.

 

Yes gasket 21,

 

17,000 miles. Thanks for the pictures Craig.

 

Upsetting how the smallest of things can cause such heartache. A fair bit of tear-down required to get to that I imagine ........ and then of course there's the "while we're in there" scenario.

I feel for ya MAQ!

 

Actually fairly common. Proper repair requires head gasket and front cover gasket replacement. Any shops will just pull the front cover and fill the void with high quality silicone sealant. Your current estimate is inline for the repair.

 

Yes, seen a couple, also one Maserati front cover gasket too. Also had one fail after an engine redo, it needs careful assembly plus some sealant at the ends of the gasket. Since the fail point is on a horizontal plane the oil tends to pool there anyhow.........It's a large cover to install, plus being very careful with the front crank seal at the same time.

 

Every time I get close to talking myself into one of these cars I read something like this. Like a cold shower.