Shop hours for an engine rebuild

I know the true answer will depend on the circumstances, but how many shop hours are typically needed to rebuild a Ferrari engine? I’ve seen some posts that say 120 hours is typical. That sounds pretty low to me.

My Testarossa’s engine is fine, this is mostly out of curiosity.

 

There is not a typical rebuild. It's all case by case.

 

The usual rebuild effort is 10hours per cylinder... So that's 80hrs for a V8, 120hours for a V12. This estimate however does not acccount for the complexity of removal of the engine, nor does it take into account the horror stories you may uncover inside.

On my own car (400i) which we rebuilt three times, in the end we were quite used to the procedure, so these were our average hours:
1) doping a cylinder heads "in situ", and puting everything back including adjusting all the timing was roughly 50hours
2) dropping the engine entirely, disassembly, reassembly re-installation, timing adjustment & fixing whatever we messed with in the process was roughly 150hours, plus the work of the machinist which was making our life much easier (all the parts in the washing machine, check of all tolerance, triming, welding, new parts adjustment, etc...)

In my case the machinist work in the second rebuild was massive, and that's probably what yelcab is refering to: depending on how the engine internals are out of spec you could just spend twice as much hours on the engine rebuild.

 

Good day Threeofnine,

As others have posted... it varies on what needs to be done on the engine... it varies based upon the number of cylinders... and, "rebuild" is not an absolute term and so it means different things (work) to different people/shops.

If you are looking for some approximate time guidelines, Ferrari did publish manuals (specific to the model) that presented the average amount of hours to do various services. I cannot say if they were accurate or not, but at least there is something in writing and from Ferrari themselves.

Cheers,

Sam

 

What engine????? A Lampredi or a 308? I know of a Lampredi engine in a very recent restoration done by one of the countries most respected restorers and it took a few hundred hours. The list of issues from age, use and poor quality prior repairs, not to mention the corrosion repairs due to the high mag alloy of the major castings make it a real challenge. I have a 308 here right now that cleaning up this mess will probably be near 150 just for fixing issues.
Top quality Colombos are being quoted at 6 figures. A 330 I am in the middle of will be all of that.

Sorry but silly question.

 

Those are a fantasy in the real world. The numbers come from taking a new motor apart and replacing all the wearing parts from a pile of Ferrari boxes stacked next to your bench with all the factory tools at your disposal. It was meant as a best case basis to fix an engine under warranty. A 40 year old broken, worn out engine with mostly NLA parts is a very different matter.

 

I honestly wouldn't even know how to estimate such a job. It would basicly be commit to the repair or don't. You have no idea what you are going to face, until it presents itself on the bench. The car can't lie..

 

Good day Rifledriver,

I agree... you misinterpreted my comment and/or I did not qualify as much as I should have. My intent was to say if someone wants an actual printed number of hours on something, then that is all the exists as far as I know. Now... as you said, they are far from accurate and are "potentially" based upon factors or criteria that were never defined. They are at best an indicator perhaps when the cars were newer-ish and so would not be representative of cars that are old and in varied conditions... as you mentioned.

Cheers,

Sam

 

They were actually quite well defined to us in the dealers by Ferrari. The problem is they have made it to the public domain where they are constantly misinterpreted. They in fact were a work of fantasy even under Ferraris interpretation. Those only really even existed because in the USA (and possibly Canada) the factory was required by law to compensate a dealer for all costs associated for warranty repairs. Most of the rest of the world is not like that. The law allows the manufacturer to dictate who long the repair should take. Hence the books. I have never used them for anything other than as an example how Ferrari screws their own dealers.

 

Thanks for the detailed response. If you don’t mind me asking, why did your 400i require 3 rebuilds? I assume it was frequently tracked?

 

I assume they are in actual hours and minutes?

It could be worse - Alfa Romeo published these in Hexedecimal minutes. That added a lot of unnecessary confusion.

 

Sodium valve not changed on the first rebuild, then fix the mess. These heads are very thin and hard to weld.