Another broken timing belt thread

I am not going to enter into a debate about changing timing belts. I have given my position on that out before but in the last couple of months I have had 2 cars here with broken belts and this one the history is somewhat known so I will tell it just for the sake of adding to everyones data base.

It is an 87 TR with a total of just over 30k miles.
We have an invoice from a respected dealer showing replacement in 99 at 9100 miles. We also have a very questionable document from FNA that says the car was returned to Italy to do the passive restraint recall and a 30k service was done at the same time. The official date for that repair is 1-21-01 (A Sunday) at approx 17k miles. Those documents were provided at the time the car was purchased by the current owner and are so full of holes I think it is a fabrication.

So that leaves us with a TR that has either 7 years or 5 years and either 20k miles or 13kmiles on a set of belts.

I have not removed the motor yet but what I can see is that the belt is in one piece and the tensioner bearing has not failed. I suspect a std failure mode of the teeth being stripped off at the crank pulley.

The car was driving very slow when the belt broke and now the motor has a deep clunk clunk when it runs. I suspect that one or more valves have broken and piston(s) are pounding them into the chamber roof.


As a point of contrast I just finished a major service on another TR that had its last major at a respected independant shop 11 years and 33k miles ago. The belts that came out looked old but OK.

Both cars are driven weekly by their current owners.

Like I said I am not going to debate the topic and in a week or two when I get time to take the car apart I will share my observations. For now just remember, 11 years....7 years...... do you feel lucky?

 

good post

good to see this kind of technical info

the fact is, they break more often then people (in general) think

and, there is no scientific formula for when they do break (mileage or years)

all i know is after 4 - 5 years i myself begin to get nervous (forget about the mileage....i don't think alot of people ever get to the mileage milestone.....they get to the year(s) point first)

i've told this story before :
years ago,, i bought a mondial t, PO said "oh yeah, major's been done" (yeah right)
then
bang !
broke the timing belt in the early stages of ownership

i swore i'll never let that happen again

now, i just get um' done
who cares about the cost

 

I just want to reinforce what Brian (Rifledriver) wrote in the first post -- I should know, it's my car.

 

I'm sorry to learn of your misfortune, but I do appreciate adding this technical information into the overall Fcar knowledge-base.

 

Bad luck brother

 

"returned to Italy"??????


Wow, current transport to europe, per a recent post ere is about $30K USD.....what kind of sense does that make?

Sorry to hear, at least it's in the best of hands now! It'll be 100% in no time......

 

Hey Brian would it be possible for some pics of the belt/damage for reference if the owner doesn't mind. Will there be anyway to tell if the belts were installed incorrectly ie; to tight(I would assume if that were the case they would have failed sooner than this but just curious). Regards, Vern

 

I used to drive a Porsche 944. I was young, carefree and on a very busy schedule. The car wouldn't start one day. I tried everything. I couldn't find anything wrong, so I had the car towed to the Porsche dealer. An older gentleman in a white lab coat greeted me in the garage, looked at my car attached to the tow truck, placed his hands to his mouth and said in a German accent, "zis eez not good." He opened the hood, looked at me, shook his head, pulled a screwdriver from his shirt pocket and disappeared under the hood for about 10 seconds. An intake hose had come loose, so it couldn't get enough air. He told me to start it up and it immediately did. Then he frowned and said, "Listen....Vas is Das? Do you hear zee slap, slap, slap sound?" Now that he mentioned it, I did. I normally started the car, cranked up the stereo and was off. I never listened to the car idle. It was the timing belt. The car was about 4 years old and had about 60K miles and was on its second belt. As I recall, Porsche recommended changing the belt every 30K. I was lucky that hose had come loose, or I would have been picking valve stems out of the pistons. I was also lucky to run into a good mechanic that really cared about the cars in his trust.

 

Owning a Ferrari is a risk no matter what, anything can happen even over maintaining them.

A few years back a rental TR here in Vegas had a cooling fan fail, well the customer just kept driving it and didn't care till it died, result warped heads and $20k damage from a fan.

 

That's a great story... The VW dealership in Phoenix where we used to take my wife's Jetta had a boatload of German techs - I loved listening to those guys. Somehow, it just adds to the experience of owning a foreing car when the techs are from the car's country of origin (all due respect to Mr. Crall).

 

Thats what i was getting at in the other thread with the 348 clutch failure. As brian said,they are rentals,they have a hard life. People thrash them,because they are not their own cars. Thats the fun of rentals isnt it?

Also totally agree with the risk part of owning ferrari's. Anything could happen

 

Thats OK. I am working on my Italian. Maybe people will like that better.

 

I remember the day my dad brought home another new Chrysler, a 1973 New Yorker. First new car he bought that I had a lil bit of input in. It had like 7 miles on it when we drove it off the lot, and three days later driving down to Minneapolis, the whole front pulley on the crank sheared off all the bolts and left us sitting by the roadside. But that never stopped us from maintaining the car. Maintainence is what makes machines safe and relatively troublefree. We always went over the car before trips, always had the alignment checked once a year and looked for wear, checked the brakes, greased the wheel bearings, changed the plugs, etc., etc., and it was always reliable and ready to roll. From that perspective, the Ferrari isnt that much more of a maintainence hog, its just we have had two generations that have grown up with cars that require less and less maintainenece, while Ferrari kept on building them like they should always be built. Anything can always happen, but we still maintain airplanes just to make them as safe as we can. We are humans, we are not perfect, things will always find a way to fail. Eleviate the problems beforehand as best as you are able, and your chances of anything happening will always be greatly reduced. Change your belts on a shorter schedule and the chance of stripping one could become almost zero.

 

Very well said.

 

Paul knows the deal, we have a PILE of maintenance hogs, betwen the two of us! LOL!

Rifledriver, I have a white lab coat, if ya need it, stethoscope too! LOL!

Got it from the medical school Lab.........

 

for my 2 cents, having had a belt shed its teeth not to long ago... I now think this.... Luck... pure and simple. I saw the thread about Mike Charness not having changed belts for tons of miles & years... LUCK... pure and simple... I think you increase your chances of NOT breaking a belt if you change them per the factory specs.... Ferrari was just being cautious... who can blame them.... So I think if you change the belts as you are supposed to then you should not have a problem, changing them is not super difficult, but making sure you are in time, and cams are adjusted is a bit more technical...so I would not reccomend doing it yourself with out experienced guidance .... I was reading an article in Classic Cars about Affordable Ferrari's "You to can afford"... they all start out with the warning of belts and service cost being almost prohibitive...so if you are gonna be in the Ferrari ownership club for long.... plan on spending $$$.... or not driving... thats about the only real advice that makes sense to me!

 

I think the problem with this belt changing thing is peoples uneasiness with having a $75 consumable part buried in the most unaccessable reaches of the car.
If your tires were out of sight and the labor to change them cost 1/2 as much as a new Korean car I think we would have A lot of "how long can I go before changing my tires" threads Replies would range from "I got 50000 miles and 6 years" to "change them now Mine blow out at 10k and it cost me 25k to have my body work repaired"
The point is we know tires wear out we can see it and all understand how easy and quick it is to have new ones put on.
You can't see the belt but you know it wears out, most people have no idea how to change it but understand that look of glee ($$$) in the Ferrari dealers eyes when you ask them to replace it.

Russell

 

well put

 

Well If I was to bet, I would bet the docs were fake.

 

I have seen many mechanics screw their customers by billing for work never done. I have seen bogus receipts for major services, timing belts, plugs and wires, etc. This applies to both authorized dealers and independants. One example is a Testarossa that came in for its "second" major service. The owner was proud to hand over the receipts for the last "engine out" service at a well known authorized Ferrari dealer. The bill was over $10K. When we put the car on the lift it was very clear that the engine had never been out of the car. When I said "how can they do that", the response was "I see it all the time". Mechanics who do this play the odds. They figure the chances of a belt breaking are slim, so if they get bit 1 out of 100 times they are still way ahead of the game.


Ken

 

hmmmm well my guess is that the belts were never changed by anybody. fwiw, i just had my belts changed on my 92 512 tr. first time ever, so 14 years and 22k miles. i bot this car from the dealer in rome with 6k miles on it. i have put an addtl 16 of light and heavy miles....i take it easy driving it around town a few times a month, but then i will go on a long road trip, or i will track it, or take it for a vmax day out.

the old belts came out looking exactly like the new belts going in.....i was astonished. i think it must have something to do with the manufacturer of the belt itself.
the shop had dozens of belts hanging up like trophies on the wall. and i was asking them about this and they had all kinds of stories. many come out looking perfect, then they'll get one that is just thrashed. no explanation.

 

You guys have scared me so, that my car is having it's engine out as I type these words. I saw a friends 355 engine in the floor last week, like a battle worn machine, half its shape gone as the head was removed and layed out on the floor. The belts teeth striped as the car crossed a speed bump, at least ten valves gone...with 30K plus in a little over two years, I felt I could not take the chance. Nothing could be worse than to loose the belt at Summit Point during the FCA nationals latter this month!

 

Once again -- my car and some of the "official" documents provided to me "certifying" the work was done. I didn't believe them then but did (and still do) believe documentation from 1999 from another dealer. These 2 letters are something to expect from a typical used car dealer and I guess that's what we all have to deal with.
View attachment IMG2.pdf

 

I agree.

 

The other "official" letter.
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