348 engine out major

Cali.

 

Thanks for the kind words Bob.

But please don't think I'm an "angel". I have been in my share of dust ups on here. Heck I have even had my knuckles racked for say bad words. LOL! I share to help out the 348 Brotherhood, and to pay forward the help that was given me when I was brand new to Ferrari ownership.

 

Lets get this belt off and have a look at what 9 & 1/2 years of wear and tear does to it.

 

If you remember for a few posts back I said to put the cams on the marks. The main reason I do this is so when I go to find top dead center again I don't have to fuss with it too much. Now that I have the valve covers off I lined up the cams to there marks. Two of the cams lined up pretty much right on the marks, and two of them were off by half a mark. if I lined up the cams to the marks on 1/4 the cams on the 5/8 bank would be off. If I lined up the the marks on the 5/8 bank the 1/4 bank was off half a mark. Last time I did the major they were all dead on the money.

So what gives? We'll find out in a bit.
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First thing I do is loosen the retaining bolt on the cam belt tensioner bearing.
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Then I wedged the end of a long ratchet handle in between the tensioner, and the water pump to get some leverage for compressing the tensioner spring. That little spring has a lot of force behind it.

I leverage the bearing down then I retighten the tensioner bolt to hold the bearing in a compressed state so I can take the belt of the pulley.

I'm not worried about damaging the belt, tensioner bearing, or the water pump for that matter, because they are all gonna get changed anyway.
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And here is the belt off the car. You can see some skid marks on it from the bearings starting the seize up.
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Lets have a closer examination of the belt.

The teeth don't appear to be in bad shape. Even bending them backwards the belt looks okay after nearly a decade of use. And it has been HARD use. Many dyno pulls, sitting in one place for months on end, full throttle blast, stop and go traffic, even hitting the rev a few times. The engine was not babied.
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How about a close up of the top.

Not bad. A little bit of cracking where the skip marks are from the bearing, but nothing horrible.
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And here we have the manufacture numbers worn off pretty good from the years of use, and abuse.

It is a Dayco Isoran belt number 132843, 182RHD280.

The other numbers that are worn off are the manufacturing numbers of that particular run of belt. There is a code for reading them, but I don't know it off the top of my head. If someone knows it please post it up. Otherwise I can look it up later to figure out exactly how old this belt is.
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Now I wanted to compare the old belt vs the new belt to see just how much the belts stretched.

So I lined up the ends, and pinched the belts together so that the teen meshed. I didn't want to try and keep the belt from shifting as much as possible.
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Then I looped one end of the belts over the long socket extensions I still had in the secondary injection tubing , and with another extension on the other end I stretched the belts tight and compared the difference.
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Just eyeballing it, and comparing the new belt (pictured on top) vs the old belt (pictured on the bottom) the old belt stretched about 1/4", or 6-7mm. This is also why my timing marks were off 1/2 a notch. But for nearly a decade of use that isn't bad, not fantastic, but I'm not gonna lose any sleep over it.

I know there is a much more accurate way of measuring this, but I just wanted to do a quick and dirty version just for an idea.

What have I concluded after this? In my opinion the timing belts are some TOUGH bastards, and can take a pretty good beating. Almost 10 years of putting the smack down on this belt and it looks pretty stinking good.
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Let's get the bearings off and have a look at them.

First I removed the tree nuts holding the the tensioner housing to the block.
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Next I removed the retaining bolt. Be careful when removing that bolt because the bearing will pop out with a good amount of force.

You can really pull it off because the spring is still in the housing, which is why you have to take the housing off to get the bearing out.
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Here is the old tensioner bearing, spring, and spring housing removed from the block.
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Now for the idler bearing.

Let's get the retaining bolt out of there.

Yeah I know the tensioner is in the back ground. I actually took both bolts out at the same time, but the way I'm posting this it didn't work out that way.

Anyway, I removed the retaining bolt from the idler bearing.
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And now for removing the idler from the block.

You will need to insert a 10mm 1/4" long socket into the bolt hole to act as a fulcrum for the puller.

Do Not, I repeat, DO N O T try pulling the idler bearing off without something in that bolt hole. The idler does not get pressed into the block, it's pressed into a bracket that the retaining bolt holds TO the block.

So insert the 10mm long socket in the hole like so.
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There is very limited space between the back of the bearing, and the rear cam belt cover, for the claws of the puller fit in. So what I had to do was grind the end of the claws down until I could fit them behind the bearing, and get a good grip on it.
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Now fit the bolt of the puller on the end of the socket.

Then the arms to the back of the bearing, and begin pulling it out by turning the bolt of the puller.
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