Joshtownsend's 1992 348 engine out service and maintenance thread

Got some more work done today. First I got the motor to TDC. Checked all the marks and everything seems to line up perfectly. You can kinda see the timing marks on the picture. If its unclear to someone, i will edit it and make it brighter. I went head and used 2 different paint markers to mark things on the pulleys themselves. I got this idea from another poster on here on his video which i highly recommend. Here is the link to his first part...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FpFnNurzzQI

I then pulled the crank pulley off after i pulled the ac compressor off. Then took off that fancy nut. I tried to make a tool like in the video, but it didn't seem to move for me..it ended up tearing up the nut so i had to hammer it off and will pick up a new on. Good thing it was made of aluminum huh

Next i took off the Hill bearing and then took off the water pump so i can send it out for rebuilding while im gone out of town.

Finished the night off with the girl making me some ice cream with whip cream and some twix candy bars on top!!!
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haha, i caught that.. I actually watched the whole series three times.. just for good measure.

 

Well, got a little more work done yesterday and this morning before I left. Finished taking off all the front pulleys. Worked on getting all the measurements for the valve shims. Its actually a very easy process on replacing them when doing an engine out since you are already taken the cams out.

You first start by taking the came holders off. Its very important to know that they are stamped both on the block and the cam holder themselves so... peeps like me cant really get it wrong when going back together. See one of the pictures where one of them is stamped "19" on it. After you remover the cams, you will see the valve cups that have the shims installed in them. you simply just pry up on them with a very small flat head screw driver and it will slide out. If it does not come out, try to spin it around. If the motor is in good health, it should be well oiled. Once you have the cup out, there are 2 openings, one on each side that will allow you to place your small screw driver between the cup and the shim itself. Just work it on each side a little bit at a time till it comes out. Again, it just takes a little bit, not very much force at all.

Once you get the shim apart from the cup, you can measure the shim itself. You will also notice that on most of the shims, its actually going to be stamped on the back, but you should always measure it to see what the actual measure is. You can see in one of the picture that one is labeled "4.05".I would also recommend a manual caliper vs a digital, although I did use a digital, because its will be dead on every time vs the chance the digital one be off since we are talking about 0.01 mm or so.Its also helpful to make out a sheet so you can write it all down like i did. I have a word document that i can email to anyone that wants it.

Once you get the measurements, you can the see what shims sizes you need and what shims you might can reuse somewhere else to save some money... for example.. i have a 3.95 shim on intake valve 7, valve 1 that i need to replace but valve 2, needs a 3.95.. so ill just move it over and not have to buy a new one. One other thing i notice is that there are all different sizes on the valves, so its not like every shim is 3.90 or 4.15.

Once you have the cams off, you can easily slid off the aluminum ring that hold the cam gaskets, you can get started on replacing both of them in preparation for reinstalling them.

I took off the upper intake manifold to ship it out for powder coating. its pretty straight forward as well. Take off all the 10mm bolts on the top, disconnect the tb's and all the vacuum lines and then underneath, in the center, there is a one nut that needs to come off, it is a 13mm and you can get it off with a 1/4 racket fairly easy, at-least mine did. This nut holds a throttle blade looking piece that opens and closes between the two intakes and is attached to the upper intake itself. Don't worry about it coming un-sprung, it does not and stays right with the upper part.

Got the upper intake and both valve covers boxed u and shipped out to the power coating and got a list of all the parts i need to put everything back toagther, not come the week long wait to get back on this thing...hahah

btw.. it appears i have reached my "limit' for posting pictures. Anybody know how i can get more space to post pictures? i really don't want to deleted the pics i posted in case other people need it. thanks Josh
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I might gain 4hp by just cleaning them!!! hahaha.. i though about adding about 500 hp to my 348... by installing a ls motor!! im pretty sure its gonna happen, maybe not with this car, but Ill probably buy another one and swapping it over. im very impressed with the way the car handles over all, just needs alot of hp to be really fun... ls motor will help that out quite nicely... my vette made over 1200 with a blower...

 

turbos would be easy to make... just hate how long they take to spool up... blowers have the "hit" of a NOS car and upper power of a blower.. watch the short video of my car ...the short run was on my track tires..

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0QPKFpOIqKI]Jt's Vett - YouTube[/ame]

But.. just want to enjoy the Ferrari ;life for now.. i have no need for power..haha yet

 

I appreciate that. I have been sick the past week, other wise i would have had some updates.. I hope to have the motor back together in a few days if i can get well.

 

Well, its been a while and had a lot of things go on in life that have prevented me from working on the car... but.. I have made lots of progress since then.

I got the value covers and the upper intake back form powder coating. They turned out great. I don't care for the "wrinkled" look, so i went back with smooth.

While I was on hold with parts ordering and waiting, i went ahead and welded up the shoulders of my cams and pulley. I went ahead and did 3 welds on each, spaced them apart equally.

I also finally got all the value shims changed out after hours of measuring and remeasuring. Now I should go another 60k miles with nothing to worry about.

All the intake cam shims measure 0.21 while the exhaust measures either 0.31 or 0.32. I choose to go back to this number instead of the 0.35-0.40 that you can do without cats because like Erie pointed out, my timing is setup for a "catted" car and i didn't want any issues.
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Now that i got every shimmed in its right places, it was time to place the cams back in for a final time. If you have also been keeping u[p with some of my other questions, this is where i messed up.... which turned out to be a good thing. I accidentally dropped a washer down one of the main oil drain holes and could not get it out. So , i went ahead an dropped the oil pan to get it.

This is where i realized that the oil leak that i thought was coming from the value seals, was also coming form the oil pan itself.

Two things i was surprised about.
1) The oil pan was very clean and no crap was present at all, just slightly used oil.
2) You could see the oil pump chain tensionors from here which i was going to just assume they were fine since I didn't notice any plastic debris when i drained the oil and didn't hear anything when the motor was running. They looked almost bran new with no wear at all.

I know the car was serviced at Norwoods in Dallas about 7 years/4k miles ago but the records didn't mentions if he replaced it or not. So either he did or they just have not worn much as all in its lifetime.

Anyways, i cleaned the oil pan out anyways and took a couple of picture to show the chain tensionor block but it didn't show all that well.

When putting the oil pan back, i when back with a good bit of silicon around each hole and made sure this time with was sealed properly for years of leak free driving.
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From here, its just a matter of reassembly of the all the parts i took off beforehand. I put the timing marks back to the original position on the cams and the wheel. then used the "Ernie" trick with the Hill engineering tensionor to place the belt on nice and easy.

After that I put on the value covers back on. From here its all down hill and took only about 2 hours to get the motor ready to be placed back in the car.

The motor itself was a bit of a change to get back in and had to have 2 friends come over and help with the install, but after a few hours, it went in and all the was left with the fill the fluids up and turn it on.

I went head and put in some Red line 75w90ns for the trans/rear end and used 10w30 Mobil one for the oil. I think it took around 12 quart because it was completely dry.

When you take the motor out, something that helps is to let all the gas drain out of the car. Why you ask?? because, although it may be fine since the motor has been run, but i like still like to prime the motor anyways for a min of two and let the oil pump get oil all of the motor to ensure everything is well lubricated. After i did this, i put oil in the car and crossed my fingers!!!!!

To my surprise, it started up the first time with no issues what so ever. I let it run for a little bit and checked the fluid and rained the air out of the radiator lines and went for a spin for a few miles to wash the car.

SO, how did i celebrate this 1.5 month long drought of not being able to drive a Ferari??? Well, that was a simple thing for me... I took it last night on almost a 200 mile trip around Houston and the surrounding areas!!! The car ran great and it reminded me why I like this car so much. It really is a drivers car and with everything i did and all the parts i replaced and checked, it looks like i should be able to drive a long 7 years of so and not worry about anything but putting gas in it!!!

I hope everyone enjoyed this and it was helpful to at least someone on their own journey of belt change outs, i really feel that if you take your time, and have a little bit of knowledge, that anybody can do it because there are so many people out there to help you out with information.

I would personally like to thank Dan at Daniel at ricambi america for all the late night and weekend emails and he willingness to assist in shipped parts the next morning when i realized I need something else, of coarse Ernie for the quick responses on my many little issues and "pnicholasen" ...whos videos I followed step by step and althoguht i don't know your real name, your videos really help me move forward thru the entire process and avoid most of the mistake I surely would have made if not for you.
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