Techs, Are you guys seeing an increase in Ferrari parts failures or out right failures upon installation? I am very worried. When GM specs a chinese waterpump they seem to work. The chinese can do good work if you hold then to important specs and don't try to drill them down on cost per piece. If you drill them they will never say know just shortcut some part of the process and give you a part not properly to spec.. That is just how they roll. I got a new Ferrari waterpump and it has all the makings of a chinese part. It has the shiny plastic/rubber bearing seal that you can tell is not the nice pliable rubber SKF uses. The pulley snout has a poorly cut burred slot where the woodruff pin resides. SCARY! Then the rubber O-rings to the Thermostat housing are barely to size and actually leak with no pressure on the system. The new Ferrari oem O-rings have the same problem as what caused the failure of the O-ring behind the pump body. It is perhaps 2.5mm thick and it needs to be a industry standard for that size of 3mm. I ended up buying a stock viton o-ring for the pump body from mcmaster carr instead of using another new Ferrari o-ring destine to fail. I bought my parts from the local FNA dealer. We need to use them even if they cost more to keep them local in business. I'm not liking these new parts! What are you guys seeing? I'm thinking of extending my next service interval because I think my old parts are better than new Ferrari/chinese parts.
Well if it says made in China you do not worry much, but if it says genuine Ferrari parts and looks like this then what you have to say, even they were surprised, they never seen anything like that but overtime they conviced too. Image Unavailable, Please Login
Anyone who services Euro cars has no doubt heard of the brand name "Uro". It is universally regarded as trash, "Uro trash". Their stuff is either poorly reverse engineered or made with worn out tooling and always sloppily done, certainly to a price as you elude to. I have read on their website that Jaguar has selected them as a supplier to Jags vintage parts program. Perhaps Ferrari has adopted a similar strategy for older replacements.
I used a Uro plastic transmission pan (they're disposable with an integral filter) on my 2005 Jag. Same tranny that BMW and Audi use BTW. I looked it over pretty carefully and it looked fine to me. It's been on there a year with no issues. Same for the seal you replace at the same time. But the story of these Ferrari parts is absurd. My vintage Maseratis and Lamborghini have porosity issues with castings ... I just passed on GM oem parts for a radiator & condenser. They weren't cheap in price but the construction compared with what I pulled out was absurd. I spent some time and found aftermarket ones with good reviews instead. Time will tell of course. It's a chinese jungle out there now.
Although my similar post was ignored in another thread by the resident keyboard experts, the reality is that what we once were able to purchase from FNA or SKF is a far cry better than the current replacements. Although there are many examples in the decline of quality parts, most shops and serious DIYers can relate to this specific issue.. In recent years, the absolute junk that was provided by FNA for the lower timing chest bearing stands out. A non-branded, no country of origin part serving a critical function in a labor-intensive spot...A few owners and shops got burning by premature failure of that engineering marvel. Fortunately Hill and NTN have a quality solution....readily available through Ricambi. All I can say is that the biggest problem I face as a shop owner is finding quality parts. It didn't used to be this way.
It's to the point all the great quality parts suppliers do the bigger production runs Ferrari has very small runs and wants to pay nothing so they get all the second rate manufacturers to do their work. They do not have the attention to keep a quality supply chain going. Once the original run parts are gone the cheaper stuff starts heading in. After those crappy parts are exhausted then if manufacturing techniques advande only then you will get a equil or better part. Seen this play out over decades with OEM;s One must pick and choose wisely, sometimes its better to rebuild
The statement or myth regarding parts made in China is often false. I personally would rather not support them for other reasons but in my contract manufacturing company I have gone up against China manufacturing and have seen and touched their parts and the quality was fantastic. Like everything in life, you have good manufacturers abd bad but to assume all China manufacturers are poor is a bad assumption.
Absolutely so. A friend imports specialty tools from China .As another poster stated if you hold them to a tight spec they will do fine work. When built to a price it's the same as anywhere, problem is we buy from them for the price. Can't trust them with proprietary stuff though.
Hopefully they are learning. Remember the 1950s when those sickening words "Made In Japan" were a warning rather than a quality statement?
Yes this is the point of the thread. I hope there might even be some solution. As you posted We have wins on some pitch battles like Ricambi's refusal to stock the "for sure" failure Ferrari timing bearing and finally a solution from our savior. Here is an example of the junk in a ferrari yellow box. This 0ring barely fits the back of the water pump housing. It barely stands proud for a seal. Over a short time it takes a set and flattens then leaks coolant. I had to source a viton seal from McMaster. It stand proud and forms a good seal. For the Tstat I had to make my own gasket! Junk! just junk! Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login
O-rings are common items and a Parker O-Ring book is a handy reference. No need to buy O-Rings in a fancy yellow box as you put it. I read it, your welcome Proper specifications and price always play a role, with every manufacturer on the planet. That said, I have seen amazing quality come from China at prices untouchable for American (or other countries) manufacturers hence the reason so much now comes from China (and I will leave the political comments out)
I am familiar with that specific o-ring problem. What's interesting is that the "same part" is used on multiple models, yet seems to have different part numbers. This begs the question; is this an instance of manufacturing quality or simply "QC" where the correct part gets put in the wrong parts bin or vice versa/ Ferrari does seem to deviate from industry norms and use 2.5mm o-rings, where 3mm would be expected. Regardless, it's a problem and not necessarily one that's country specific. To have to start second sourcing parts is just another time sink to get these cars fixed correctly. I should be able to order what I need from the OEM, without having to second guess if what I got is correct or manufactured correctly. This simply is not the case and hasn't been the case for a long time. I guess that why all these 10 minute jobs I read about take longer in real life...LOL!
I completely agree. No one should every need to verify if a part is correct. It's frustrating to say the least. I experienced this recently with OEM (well, from Ferrari) 95 355 wiper blade that did not fit. Not a single person accross muliple dealers could understand this. I finally determined early 355's have 348 wiper arms. This was also not my first experience with this issue, but it's also not unique to Ferrari (sadly) Regarding "10 minute jobs", I will always defend that statement as I can't do anything in 10 minutes, don't want to and don't want to hire someone that fast either as mistakes are likely to follow. Doing any job proper takes time.
Exactly. The time I have taken to seal this simple cooling system is just ridiculous. And this is not my 1st rodeo with this system and this model. It never should have leaked from the 1st place because of exactly the reasons you stated. So now I am adding more work for myself pressure testing the system when in the past, confidence in OEM parts was a "swap and go" affair. People wonder why it costs so much to fix these cars right.
Interesting about the undersized o-ring. We had some discussion a while back about which molykote o-ring lube to use when re-installing and some guys had been using the Molykote 55 which is reported to make the o-rings swell. http://www.ferrarichat.com/forum/technical-q-sponsored-algar-ferrari/408412-correct-molykote-grease-manual-specifies-when-lubing-o-rings.html
Hey Kevin, another interesting point is O-Ring compression is much less than one would intuitively think...
JRC, It says on the box genuine ferrari. FBB, speaking of Ricambi, that water pump came from Ricambi. Few years back I asked Di Fatta Brothers for a unobtainable rubber part inside the fuel pump, he was very kind to get it directly from Italy in an original Ferrari package. At the time of delivery he mentioned Ferrari does not make them anymore and they are not original Ferrari parts.
Its a minefield out there and Ferrari are making some pretty fundamental mistakes especially when it comes to o-rings. Measuring them is one thing but they seem to think that one grade of material can be used on any application which is not the case.
...Even something as simple as spring washers...The last lot of factory #10569279 spring washers that we purchased were as soft as toffee! We thought it would be easier to use the factory washer in our clutch conversion kit rather than having to source the part from another supplier. When tightening up the clutch cover bolts the spring washers just splayed out from under the head of the bolt! Shocking...
