348 348 Parts Thread

Does it correctly plug the bypass? The GS thermostat is correct at 56 mm width for the cap and correct for the height (close enough at 34 mm), but the GS foot shows to be only 28 mm.

In contrast, the OEM Ferrari 348 thermostat foot width is ~~ 32 mm.
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http://www.bilstein.com/services.php

Based on the price listings, looks like $65 each for a 348, and only $100 for the 355.

 

Very cool - SoCal members should take note that their rebuild center is in our backyard (Poway, San Diego county).

 

I'll measure the hole probably later tonight. My car is up on jackstands as I type. The idler pulley froze. What a relief! I didn't see the warning light for the electrical, but did feel the lack of power steering (Mondial t, you know). I had visions of a new rack or pump ($$ yipe!). Naw. All I need is a new belt and a bearing. While she's up there I'm going to install the 54mm 195 degree X-1/9 thermostat I was out buying when the steering got a bit more "sporty".

Anyway, I am 99% certain that the hole is smaller than 28mm, but I will measure it and post. As I recall it was about 23mm. Certainly my car has not been overheating as you might expect if the bypass never got plugged.

 

If the bypass was blocked buy the thermostat foot cold it would not overheat it would just take a long time to get to operating temp. The problem would come when it got to temp and tried to open, if there was not enough movement available in the bypass foot spring the themostat would just push itself to bits and probaly pop the top off or push the foot through the bypass hole, there would then be stray bits of metal floating around the cooling system with obvious bad effects.

 

Thats cool man! I dont know who does them here or what they charge.

I shall investigate! Someone close to Mount Isa (not much of selection actually), as the freight cost would kill me for 4 shocks to post and receive.

We definitely do not have anyone in Mount Isa that can do them.

 

Pap, maybe Bilstein has a shop in Oz somewhere.

Anyway, I haven't got to installing my new thermostat yet, as I am back again in the flywheel. My first attempt at out-engineering Ferrari (!) is a failure, but I have learned much, and have great hopes for attempt number two. I am off tomorrow to acquire the "secret ingredients" and this weekend will be "mixing the potion"! We shall see, but I will be very surprised if, by Monday, my car, for the first time in likely years, doesn't have a flywheel that is QUIET!!!!!

How long it may stay quiet we shall see, but for now, that would be a fantastic win.

While I am about all that, I will be getting in the thermostat housing and seeing what's what.

More later.

 

Whoa, are you talking to me?

I didn't say "always plugged"; I said "bypass never got plugged." That would mean that the car would overheat as the coolant would be constantly bypassing the radiator.

 

You're right, mis-read post

Humbly grovel apology............

 

Oh, they have plenty. I would like to see if there is one near by. I live out in the middle of nowhere and I dont really want to pay freight for 4 shocks from here! Would cost more 5 times more than what it would cost to do the shock overhaul.

Cool man, looking forward to it.

And dont do it again!

 

Thanks for taking care of that for me!

 

Lol!!

 

OK, right now I am a bit frustrated because I don't have a prototype machine shop in my garage. So, to let off steam, I am going to share what I have learned.

First, grease. Grease comes in temperature ranges with a "drop point", NLGI grades. Temperature range is obvious. Drop point is what temperature does it get thin enough to drop through a standard size hole in a cup. NLGI grade is the consistency, i.e. how "stiff" it is. You can have grease that is rated for high temperatures and is high tech enough that it has no drop point, but is still not stiff enough to stay in place when your dampener gets warm. You stop the engine, all the warm grease runs to one side of the dampener, and then the engine will have a hard time starting due to the dampener being so far out of balance. In my last attempt I used some very high tech grease, no drop point, that is incredibly"tenacious", but it was only NLGI grade 2, so I was having hot start issues.

Also my flywheel was still making noise. A bit less then after packing with Kluber but hardly what I wanted. When I took the dampener apart, I noticed that it was contaminated with oil from the gearbox, and that it was being ejected from the center of the front side. That lead me to discover a major flaw in my dampener that I have not yet seen anyone discuss: the Teflon ring in the center of the front face. I don't know whether my Teflon ring got melted at some point, or was replaced with a make do part by the previous owner's "mechanic", or what exactly happened to get the assembly to the state that it was in, but what I do know is that the inner plate is located by the bearing on it's back side that sockets into the cup for it on the back plate, and by the Teflon ring pressing it back to locate the bearing in that cup. Only mine wasn't! This causes a further issue in that without a load between the Teflon ring and the plate, there is nothing to seal the inside of the dampener. Gear oil can get in and grease can get out.

To confirm this issue, I assembled my dampener with two bolts, along with their two spacers and four shims. Inside was nothing but the plate and the Teflon ring. I could shake the dampener and feel the plate sliding in and out of its bearing cup along the center axis of the dampener. All I have for inspection tools is a digital caliper, but I was able to get a pretty good idea of the gap between the front face and the plate's center hub face at about 0.035". My Teflon ring only sits 0.005" proud of the inner face, so obviously there is a gap. A gap that can admit oil, leak grease, and, maybe, contribute to my noise pollution. The noise the dampener made when I shook it sounded suspiciously like the same noise that it makes when I am sitting idling with my foot off the clutch pedal.

So I decided to shim the Teflon Ring. I got some 1/32" silicon rubber sheet, cut out a ring to fit into the front faces groove that locates the Teflon ring. Well, I guess my measurements weren't too accurate as the thing is still banging about after test assembly. I tried one and two more thicknesses of rubber and finally go it a bit under control. If I had a shop, I would enlarge the groove, make a wider Teflon ring, and back the Teflon with a ring of silicon so as to load it against the front face. That is a very heavy plate, about 12" wide, to be located by a 2.5" wide Teflon ring in its center.

As it is I am going to make some more silicon rings, wider ones, to load the Teflon. It doesn't really matter that the Teflon is not tight in its groove as the hub that is in its center is almost as big as the hole in the center anyway, so where can it go? Besides the silicon will make like a pillow with a dent in the middle and the Teflon will sit in the dent. I hope. Down the road, I will at least have a custom part made, if not go to a wider ring.

Now, about that aforementioned gear oil that refuses to stay in the gear box . I tried using some very high tech o-rings to seal between the engine shaft and the transmission shaft, but that was a failure also. The o-rings held up OK, they didn't seem to seal adequately, plus the drag between the two shafts made shifting less buttery, especially when stopped, where it became a struggle to get 'er into first.

Plan B on that is to go back to Teflon rings, but to back them with some o-rings between them and the engine shaft. I found a source for some precisely sized o-rings and have some that I am pretty sure will work!

OK, I feel better now. I will try to get a lot of this done tomorrow and finish on Sunday so I can take her for a drive and see if I can finally have a quiet god-damned flywheel. Funny thing is that I am pretty sure that it was the previous owner's mechanic's failure to fix this that lead to the car being on the market, so I guess that it is not all bad...

 

Oh, yeah, and so I also was able to locate some high tech, no drop point, NLGI 3 grade grease. I think this stuff will kick Kluber's butt, but we shall see. If that doesn't work there is always NLGI 4 and 5 although those are almost unobtainable.

 

Don't worry I have been furiously whipping myself with a shoelace..... it won't happen again....

Interesting post on the Kluber replacement option, my clutch/fly wheel was sounding like a hand full of nuts and bolts ratteling around in there but only on take up of the clutch in 1st and kicks back on the peddal. Presure plate and clutch plate look ok might repack with Kluber this time but please advise how you get on with NLGI's

 

Interesting mate!!

 

Tomorrow's the big day. She's all back together except for connecting the exhaust to the cats.

We shall see, but I strongly suspect that the reason my dampener was noisy (even with a fresh repack of Kluber) is it's worn teflon ring bushing. I measured the play of the whole thing assembled with no bushing at about 0.020" (not having a real depth gauge makes this diff. to be precise. So, I went with one layer of 1/32" silicon.

My engine shaft's Teflon seals now have "helper" o-rings, and that, I think, is going to really be a winner. Even if the NLGI #3 grease fails to work right, it would be really nice not to find it already contaminated after only 1000 miles when I disassemble the dampener.

Oh, one thing learned today. Forget all that nonsense about putting your Teflon rings in boiling water. (Who dreamed that one up???) For one thing, they DO NOT get any bigger - you still have to stretch them somehow. For another, they stretch just fine at room temperature. I use the tapered neck of a transmission fluid funnel to stretch mine and they stretched out and then compressed back with a homemade tool and never saw a bit of goofy boiling water.

 

A...name of thread is "348 parts sourcing, interchange?" There are already 9 pages to wade through. Once the technical find has been made and confirmed workable please feel to post your findings here. It,s a good idea to work out the bugs on other threads in 348/355 section or the technical section so that this thread does not become 500 pages long.

Thanks!

 

I dont think the boiling water was supposed to make them "bigger". I think the boiling water softens the seals which makes them easier to get on.

 

Sorry FBB, you are right. I'll take this elsewhere.

But as long as I am here: no, it doesn't make them any "easier" to get on. You have to stretch them to get them on at all and the only way to do that is to do that - the boiling water doesn't help or hurt - just a waste of time. Then you have to compress them to get them inside the tranny shaft since you stretched them to get them on. I made a tool out of 1/32" aluminum and a hose clamp. Others use shim stock, but that doesn't work as well for me as my aluminum tool, especially with my helper o-rings "pushing back".

When I continue this elsewhere, I'll post a link.

 

Any one know a part cross reference for a 95 348 phase sensor? AKA by some as a Cam sensor? I looked and looked on all the threads and no luck, I bet somewhere someone has knowledge of a cross reference for this part.

 

Hey Chris - I think the best you are going to find is the hall sensor part (there are several alternatives for about $20). You would then need to get a blank 3 pin bosch connector and assemble the whole unit using the old bracket. Somewhere in this thread someone mentions the hall sensor cross reference.

 

Thanks Troy, I guess what I really need is the blank 3 pin Bosch connector, my sensor did not fail just the usual connector issue. Any idea on where I could find that item? Maybe a website that you have used for electrical connectors?

 

Eagle day has 'em!

http://www.eagleday.com/ampconnectors.html

 

BTW, the other thing about that sensor is that the "cup" gets magnetized. I put mine in an oven warmed to 350 degrees F. and shut off. Let it sit for about an hour. That removes any magnetization. It also burns the lacquer or whatever they are coated with off, so then I hit it with a light coat of black lacquer. No more "Phase sensor" errors.