Sodium Valves

What is the rest of the story?

 

He better not go to a dentist to get a filling.

 

They put belt on wrong, valve impacted piston, hole in piston. My guess.

 

That's not a sodium valve failure. Lets see the shop get out of this one. Big money coming.

 

My guess too.

 

Yeah. I want to hear this thing through to the end.

 

Pretty sure a sodium valve failure would happen under high heat/stress, not immediately after a belt change?

This seems more likely.

 

Your car broke in their shop. They are going to have a very hard time passing this back to you. Hopefully a real Ferrari shop. I used to take one of my cars to a local guy. One time he remarked that he would rather I didn't leave the car overnight. I found out he doesn't have any liability insurance!!!!!

 

I'm in Florida. I sure would like the name of the shop.

 

Could have been from the 8K rpm r/test after the belt change. Any rods visible?

 

Well I'm sure this is going to get ugly..
BUT! Look on the bright side. Ahhh damn, I got nothing.

 

I am in Florida too.

"hole in my piston while at shop"

That pretty much sums up the when and where.

Please do tell us who put hole in your piston and blamed it on a failed valve.
Alden

 

Sodium or not. Doesn't matter when the belts are a few teeth off. Smash!

 

These photos are from a similar 308 engine I rebuilt last year. In addition to the valve that failed, two others broke during disassembly.

Early Ferraris with sodium-filled exhaust valves are ticking time bombs. The damage is done over hundreds of heat/cool cycles and there's no way to predict when a failure might occur. By examining the break point it is apparent that the crack happened long ago and it was just a matter of time until it went BOOM. The only solution is to replace all the exhaust valves with stainless steel, preferably before this happens to you. Not an inexpensive job but with the appreciating value of these cars, worth doing.

Timing belts have nothing to do with it. Barring evidence to the contrary, the shop is NOT responsible.
Image Unavailable, Please Login
Image Unavailable, Please Login
Image Unavailable, Please Login
Image Unavailable, Please Login
Image Unavailable, Please Login
Image Unavailable, Please Login

 

Cars break in the shop. Does not mean automatically it is their fault.

You guys should put the ropes and torches away until you have some kind of evidence.
Not a good personality trait.

I saw a sodium valve break while a guy was adjusting them. They are ****. If you have them in your car it is just a grenade with an unknown fuse length.

 

Tim Keseluk is right, a sodium valve can break in every moment. But if it fails exactly a minute after a belt change, could be a bad placement too. And I would say "much more likely".
I don't know what's happened, but your one wouldn't be the first engine that breaks after a wrong timing belt change. And won't be the last.

Ciao

 

I'd certainly expect the shop to fix it IF they were responsible - by incorrectly installing a timing belt. Otherwise, it's not their fault in any way. Ironically, I remember when sodium valves were the "hot ticket" performance-wise and everything advertised about them was positive. Everybody wanted them but for most of us, they were too expensive.

The difficulty, of course, is to determine exactly what happened which could be difficult/impossible. If the belts are still on the engine and did not rip out any teeth when it occurred, it's easy to determine if they were installed correctly. OTOH, a dishonest shop could have done it wrong, had the motor fail, realized what had happened and reinstalled the belts correctly on the blown engine. OTOH, dishonest shops aren't around long so if the shop is one with some history/good reputation, it's not likely that they got that way by being bad at their work.

As noted earlier, it should be apparent by the valve appearance at the break whether they had already been cracked/waiting to separate. If they were, IMO, the shop has no responsibility at all.

I would say that there is going to have to be a fair amount of reasonable discussion between the parties. I certainly agree that if the shop caused the damage, they should completely cover the repair cost of the specific damage. IOW, assuming the belts were incorrectly timed, they are responsible to repair/replace the parts that were damaged. However, they would NOT be responsible, for example, to replace all the pistons/valves, just the ones that were damaged. So, in this case, even if the shop broke it, they would not be replacing all the valves with new valves. So if you wanted all new valves/pistons, strictly speaking, the owner would be responsible for the coast of replacing the undamaged ones. It would make no sense to leave some sodium valves in place so it seems to me that regardless what happened, the owner will have to pony up substantial money.

Obviously, as noted, some reasonable discussion needs to take place first. From my previous experience in auto work, the shop may agree to some level of repair even if they were not responsible, in the interest of good customer relations. Much of this will depend on the discussion as well as what the "evidence" indicates was the cause.

 

I was only holding a pitchfork, I forgot and left my torch at home.
Alden

 

Are you sure your engine still had the original sodium valves?

 

Just so folks have an idea , how much would it cost to replace the valves in a good running 308 engine.

 

When we rebuilt my engine a sodium valve broke while doing the valve adjustment. These things happen. Switched to stainless and never worried about it again. Wasn't that expensive since the motor was already out and accessible.

 

I too switched out to stainless when we had the engine apart.

I have heard that there are sodium valves made with new technology which are very good but very expensive. The idea of a sodium valve is a good one the technology 40 years ago wasn't up to the task.

 

I was thinking about this just the other day that while I have my 82 GTS stripped-down, new interior/ paint and the Plenum /fuel injection removed, gas tanks out if I should just do this also..Car has 53xxx miles runs well. Idea on pricing would be helpful.
Man Tim, that's some brutal photos you posted. Don't really need to experience that too bad.

 

The cost of the work is (here) more or less 4-5 k Euro, if you already have the engine out. add 1,5 k Euro with the engine on the car. Prices are just to give an idea of the cost, with full head service in a 2 or 3 liter 2 valves V8 Ferrari engine.

I saw some failures at 70-80 K km 208 turbo and 70-100 k km 308. Of course the thermal stress depends from the use you do of the car, the A/F ratio and so on, so it will vary a lot the mileage where you can have a disaster.

My silver 208 GTB turbo has 62 k KM (40 k miles) and still has them: I'm doing an engine out service and I will remove the sodium valves (and the guides with the seats too) as I think it's time to get rid of that big threat.

ciao