probably not the last cam belt thread

That may be the consensus here but it is not true. If you were to instead ask people who have spent their life working on these, you know, people with real experience you would get very different answers.

 

the belts break. they fray, etc.... the teeth come off etc...

 

OK, so how often should the belts and bearings be changed?






















MUHA HA HA HA HA HA HA ....

 

I'm sticking with my 14 year 2K miles rule.

 

Just curious where did you come up with the rule.

 

Is that 2k per yr or 2k over 14yrs? Either way I guess that is definitive proof that belts age very well in Montana!

 

The time sort of got away from me..............2K over 14 years. This was a while before F-chat and I had no idea of the importance. I'm at six years currently with a few hundred miles. They will be changed this winter.

 

You seem to love the word"Random". There is nothing random about it, only ignorance.
First the bearing issue. Good bearings last a long time, bad ones do not. That leaves us with two problems. First is to tell the good ones from the bad ones, relatively simple actually. The other is to be able to make a proper judgement call to determine which can be reused and which cannot.

Bearing suppliers come and go. We know Ferrari is, and has been for some time, price shopping bearings globally. They are buying a great deal of garbage. Unmittigated ****. If you are having your car serviced by a dealer and he is complying with his contractural obligations under his dealer contract, that is what you are going to get. On the 308 the old style SKF that all the do it yourselfers here used to swear about was an outstanding prouduct and lasted a long time. Those have not been available for several years now. That leave us with 2 options, The Hill Engineering and the Capristo. Now we have maintence issues. There are a lot out there that do not get it. A sealed bearing is not sealed, washing the motor insures water and solvents or detergent gets into the bearing and destroys the lubricant. This is one of the areas where ignorance comes in. Leave your vanity at the door and do not wash the motor. As for the life span. Ferrari never envisioned it taking 15 years to go 30,000 miles. Grease, even in a sealed bearing under ideal conditions only lasts so long cronologically or miles. That is a reason to consider changing bearings every service, no matter the mileage.
Next at sevice time,evaluating the condition of the bearings. Sorry, most here need to ask where to jack up the car or how to bleed the brakes. People here are constantly being convinced to perform service or repair jobs over their head. Evaluating bearing condition is way beyond that. I recently performed a huge dollar rebuild of my 328 motor including stroking and boring it to 3.5 liters, big compression etc,etc, and I reused my old tensioner bearings. Do not do this at home. If you need to ask it is just not one of those judgement calls you should be making.


Belts. I have said this here a hundred times and will never say it again so book mark it. That horse **** about the search function not working is just horse ****, I know better. It is just intellectual laziness. This information has a huge number of sources but every FNG trying to prove a point demands it to be explained to HIM because the lazy SOB cannot be bothered to improve himself by trying to further his own knowledge base without having it spoon fed.

Timing belts are like tires, most tire manufacturers suggest replacement at 5 years or so. Everyone knows a tire or a timing belt can function well past 5 years. I have seen vintage cars with tires 40 or more years old drive up on the reviewing stand but everyone knows putting a car into regular service with those tires would be lunacy. If anyone has driven a car hard with tires 10 years old they can tell you you better drive it very cautiously. Tires get old and hard.They lose their plyability and elasticity and they get hard. All of the attributes that allow them to do their job. These are the same attributes needed in a timing belt. Like a tire they are exposed to all manner of potential dangers. The ability of shrugging that off is dependant on those properties. With age those properties are lost and they become more and more subject to failure as a result. The safety factor gets narrower and narrower as time goes by. 3 years on some models and 5 on others has been determined by almost 40 years of, in the field, real world experience, to be an acceptable life. I laugh out loud at every post or every thread I see where the poster said the belts he removed looked perfect. The fact is of the many hundreds of timing belts I have removed fell into two catagories. Catagory one was perfect. Catagory two was broken on a motor with bent valves, damaged valve guides, sometimes damaged pistons and fortunately only a few destroyed cylindr heads. A number of catagory two cost the owner a car because he could not afford the repair and not a single person who told him not to worry about the timing belts was standing there offering to help with the bill.

 

and /Thread

 

Bravo Brian, and thank you for posting that again!

A moderator really should make that one post a sticky thread (locked)

 

I recently visited a well known and respected Ferrari shop. At the time, they were working on a 308 and 328. The shop housed various rare vintage racecars including a 250 GTO.

During a discussion with the shop owner he said that he doesn't do "belt changes" and, in addition, follows the original service guidelines (unless there are issues, etc.). In other words, the cam belts get changed during the "full service" which includes pulling the camshafts as well (with attention to shims, bearings, measurements, degreeing/timing, etc.).

From what he's seen, cam belt failures were due to improper tension settings.

"You don't do the belts unless the cams are coming out."


Disclaimer (if you will and via my interpretation/observation): His clients can afford to have repairs/service performed correctly and there's no compromise otherwise.

My take; doing a quick "belt change" during the 3 to 5 year interval can be very risky for most and is a concept that was never intended in the first place.

 

Awesome comment and a reality check as well.

 

I totally concur with Rifle - though I admit to being one of those people who pulled the bearings/belts at 6 years and said "they look/felt like new."

Re bearings/lube...one of my side "businesses" is restoring antique clocks/pocket watches and vintage tube audio gear. I recently needed a new capstan motor bearing for an Ampex 351 studio tape recorder. I found several suppliers but only of NOS bearings. I bought 5, assorted brands of the bearing. They are sealed bearings and all 5 were unusable because the grease had turned to hardened glue. And since they were sealed, there was no way to get in and get the old lube out in/new lube in. So, as noted, grease doesn't last forever...add water/solvents and it lasts considerably less!

 

I agree .... Next question.

How many owners will continue to post up pictures in the rain and say the car doesn't melt

 

Not only that, the SKF bearings we have traditionally used have been de-engineered downward toward their original purpose, low RPM engines and are NOT the German Over-engineered (French made) product as they were before.

If the SKF bearings you have on a shelf are 5 years old from date of manufacture or more, SKF says "launch um." Past their use-by date.

If the SKF bearings you have on a shelf are about 5-years old or less, they are NOT the bearings we grew to trust.

This I know as I have a SKF Headquarters in my old hometown (Schweinfurt, Germany) and did a considerable amount of snooping on my and several other people's behalf. The days of the "bullet-proof" bearings are over as they relate to SKF.


Whatever Brian says, "I take to the bank." Period.

 

Original bearing on my 85 QV were changed for the first time at 25 years, 27k miles. Still running smoothly. Seals intact. Marked Italy, SKF, 617548A. Guess they were a pair of the good ones. Not saying anything. Just a data point.

 

It's a brave assumption to believe that the original service guidelines were perfect and that there's no new information or service history that might warrant correcting the service guidelines based on actual operational data over the 39 years since the original service guidelines were written...

Really, why bother to read TSBs? They're changing things from the original guidelines, so they're not what was intended in the first place. There's no chance that Ferrari might not have got everything 100% correct the very first time they wrote the manual before they'd ever produced and run a production line belted engine, is there?

 

Maybe you didn't see "(unless there are issues, etc.)"


Obviously there are variables and the discussion is/was not "to the letter".

The takeaway, for me, is that the risk for a "belt service" is exceedingly high for the inexperienced.

 

100% wrong. It absolutely was intended to be done that way. There are mountains of documentation from Ferrari to the contrary.

 

Which is why there's so much confusion i.e. different and/or opposing info from various sources.

 

There is no confusion among those that choose to properly educate themselves.

If on the other hand you choose to ignore the tremendous volume of information Ferrari has provided and instead go with second or third hand rumor and internet wives tales disinformation is assured.

 

I don't believe that you've read my posts, otherwise you wouldn't be shooting the messenger.

However, Ferrari's guidance letter regarding "All V-8s" (3 year / 36,000 mile cambelt changes):

1) Costs me money for my Mondial 3.2 (per the owner's manual: original replacement intervals are at 52,000 miles)

2) Saves me money for my '90 348 (per the owner's manual: original replacement intervals are at every 24 months)