On my drive home last night I noticed the engine was breaking up in the higher RPM. Is it normal for plugs to be dripping oil? Haha who else is excited to see inside this engine? Image Unavailable, Please Login
I would put plugs in it and see what happens. You have one bank that got water in it. With rust like that plug wire problems are common. Replacing those would be my next move. The picture isn't good. By oil I assume on the top side and not on the electrode? If so that is a valve cover issue and is not uncommon. Does not usually cause anything but a small mess.
Brian, She has to last 3 more weeks for me. Thats exactly what I planned on doing. There is dry build up on one electrode, the thread is covered in oil on all of them. It burns a quart of oil a week now. I'm playing with the idea of a coil on plug conversion, what are your thoughts on that?
Coil on plug has been done before, search the forum and you should be able to find the thread, it was quite informative from memory.
COP is a good system. Just remember that the market place does not reward modifying Ferrari's. When you say the thread is covered with oil. If it is wet fresh oil it was in the bottom of the well and got on the threads when the plugs were removed. If it is dark and burned on that is another matter.
I'm the gent who pioneered the C.O.P. mod on the F355. I have had perfect sucsess with this going on 7 years or so (except for one MSD ignitionbox failure). A few other adopters had a glitch. While I posted exactly what I did, they did the work themselves and I can not vouch for their work or what wire, material, connectors, cable routing they used, All I know in my case is that the conversion has worked perfectly for me. I've travelled distances with it, and have tracked the car as well a few time of hard driving at Road Atlanta with absolutely no problems. What prompted me to do the conversion in the first place was a situation similar to Brandans... I experienced a misfire or two and had a bit of loss of power with the slow down light coming on. I checked the plugs and there was a little oil fouling on a couple. Probably due to not a lot of hard driving and a lot of slow in town driving where I couldn't open her up and get on it to do the "Italian tune up". I looked into the cost of replacing the spark plug wires ( as well as the plugs) to be sure everything was as it was supposed to be. At the time there were no alternative to the stock plug wires and the over-the-counter price from Ferrari was around $700 for the wires...ouch.. must be a better way. I had just finished building up a 16v Abarth head Fiat 124 2L twin cam motor with a distribitorless system using C.O.P.s and figured what the heck, I'll see if I can do it on my Ferrari. Did the homework, found the parts and made the conversion...Haven't looked back since and absolutely no regrets. The way I designed the system made the conversion very easily reversable and no modifications to any parts.... all "bolt on" or "bolt off" if one decides every to sell their car and wants to bring it back to stock. I did have to fabricate a spacer so the spark plug cover plate on the head would clear the top of the coils. I had to use an extra set of the plate gaskets. The finished spacer with the plug cover plate looks absolutely stock. search the forum using my name and C.O.P. or coil on plug and check the thread out. But then again, your milage may vary if you proceed. At the time I was contemplating "kitting" it for others, but the labor to make the harness was very time consuming, and I didn't want to field any questions or complaints to those who were not so "handy" with their hands and install experience. I'm just a Joe who enjoys tinkering with my toys, and while I'll help others, making into a business wouldn't give me the R.O.I in enjoyment for this hobby. I've worked in an engineering department and the customer service people always sent phone call to us from the customers who were clueless and 30 percent of our time were bascially telling them to RTFM, diplomatically of course. JD
Along with getting new wires and plugs, replace the plug wire cover (says ferrari on it) gaskets along with the 'four hole' grommet on the back end of the same cover. Hopefully this will keep the water out this time.
It honestly a mix of both. The car needs all of its gaskets replaced, valve guides, etc. She fired right up with new plugs today and is running fine. But this engine is very very tired.
I found the post and read over most of it. We have CBR coils on the way but after reading your thread it looks like they will be to tall. Its a great read for anyone that has some time. Your kit looks well thought out and I would agree with you that most issues experienced by others comes from the wiring. M & W makes a great ignition system that I prefer over a MSD.
It would destroy obd2 compliance but I've thought it would be nice to install an E38 pcm from a C6 corvette. It's cheap, you would have COP and you would then have full control over programming plus up to 2.5bar custom speed density operating systems for forced induction.
Its a great idea. We are doing something similar buy hardwiring a engine management system into the stock ECUs.
