Engine-out major: Blessing in disguise?

A few days ago I was looking at the engine bay of a 308. In pictures it is difficult to see the tight confines of the engine bay, especially the front bank of cylinders. I thought to myself that after you strip off the induction system and everything else just to get to the belts and valve shims, how much harder would it be to just pull out the engine?

Then it occurred to me, that is exactly what Ferrari did with subsequent models. Of the cars I would be interested in the 348, Mondial T, TR, and 355 all require pulling the engine to do a major service.

I was reading this awesome thread a few weeks ago about a skilled DIYer doing the engine in his 512TR.
http://ferrarichat.com/forum/showthread.php?t=172024&highlight=512tr+make
Removing the engine allows so many other things to have access. A shock weeping oil could easily be rebuilt. Questionable suspension bushings or rubber boots could all be replaced. Basically every electrical connection would be cleaned and inspected.

The expense is considerably more obviously to pull the engine due to shop labor rates, although I wonder what discounted opportunities arise when you pull the engine for service in any of the V8 cars? Looking at that old 308, I thought of what I have read about hamfisted servicing, about old fuel lines leaking and incinerating the car, about neglected water pumps failing and effectively destroying the engine. Once the PITA of pulling the engine has been completed, all of these "while it's out I may as well..." things could be done with relative ease. Then I wondered about a 360 with its access panel behind the seats, what nooks and crannies of the engine bay will never see an inspection because all the servicing is done with the engine in the car? What neglected part will wear out or weather and cause other issues, parts that would have been inspected and replaced while the engine was on the bench?

So my question to the learned owners of 348 & 355, do you think that because your engine is theoretically pulled every few years or 30,000 miles, do you think your cars stand a better chance of surviving the ages without catastrophic failures due to neglected maintenance?

Basically you have went through the trouble (no choice on the 348/355/TR) of pulling the engine, an owner may as well fix everything known to be wrong while it is out.

I would be interested in your opinions.

 

That is what I was thinking when looking at the 308. Very cramped working area while in the car, it would be much, much easier to do a laundry list of maintenance procedures if the engine was out. You would think the difference in time saved by not removing engine would diminish the more things you have to do. You could easily spend a couple of hours fighting a stubborn nut buried under the valve cover, whereas on the bench access would be much easier. A few of these situations, and you would be time ahead to just remove the engine. Or so goes my thinking.

As I understand it the need to pull the engine is simply because you cannot remove the cast belt cover and the belts while the engine in in the car for the 348/355/TR. I would expect that most other models newer and older that have not been rebuilt would never have had the engine removed for the life of the car. 20 years from now when you purchase a 30 year-old 360, pulling the engine and making sure everything is refreshed seems like the most prudent course of action. But with the mandatory engine-out cars, this will have been done several times and many of the items not usually addressed in a routine major service would have already been discovered as being marginal and replaced. This is why I posed the question if the engine out really is a (expensive) blessing in disguise, because it catches issues often overlooked on other models.

I assume Ferrari went away from the engine out (and now have eliminated timing belts for chains) because of the high servicing costs and complaints from customers. Is this correct?