456Ms Owners do u adjust or replaced valve guides every 5 years?

Adjust valve guides? How?

 

No. 27000 miles no adjustment no oil just runs.

 

Valve guides should last the life of the car if they are good manganese or silicone bronze guides or sintered steel replacements. Ferrari's suppliers gave them some valve guides for the earlier F355s (changed to sintered steel in the 97/98 timeframe), 456, 456M, and 550 that were closer to brass than bronze and way too soft. This only happened to an unknown percentage of the cars and was somewhat random. Not even all guides in a set were sometimes affected. If you are planning to buy one of the affected Ferraris, have a leakdown check performed to confirm good or bad guides. If good, you are probably OK, but some guides have not shown a problem until around 40,000 miles.

So no, regular changes of valve guides are not required in normal circumstances.

 

My 99 456M had them changed when the car was 11 years old with 17,000 miles.
The guides in only two cylinders were leaking.
I don't expect they'll need changing ever again.

 

Killer- Sounds normal, just two brass ones out of 48. We have one 456M owner whose guides lasted until 40,000 miles and then she started smoking badly. Job is normally in the $10-15K range, depending on who does it and what guides are used, not sure about yours. Sintered steel is not necessary, but many use the OEM sintered steel guides. Good bronze guides will last as well if sourced from a good supplier, of which there are many.

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Forgot the other half of the question. Valve clearance adjustments are recommended at 15,000 mile intervals, no time requirement. With the tiny valves, likely adequate as long as you can confirm it was done in the past at all. Cambelt change time is a convenient time to do the adjustment, but if the belt change is just a lock and swap with no leaks, wait for 15,000 miles.

 

No.

 

Matt,
Your numbers are completely wrong.

 

Kind of hard to understand how you could remove the entire top end of a V12, pull the heads, remove 48 old valve guides, replace 48 valve guides with ream to size and seals, refit the heads with new head gaskets, replace and time the cams with new aux and cambelts and tensioner bearings, adjust 48 valve clearances, button everything up with new gaskets, etc for $2K. Just the service kit with seals, gaskets and head gaskets will cost that much.

 

Let alone do all this in 8 hours !!!

 

Matt- Do some research. There are several threads with cost numbers in this forum. The numbers are pretty much all in 5 figures unless someone does the work themselves, and you need a full-up machine shop to do that. Even if you pulled the heads yourself, it would then be smart to send them to a machine shop to do the actual guide, seal, and valve installation.

Why worry about it anyway? You do not have a 456M yet and if you do a bleed-down check, you will know you do not have an immediate problem. All you are doing now is making uninformed WAGs. If you want to know how many hours it takes for a valve job, look it up in a Ferrari flat rate schedule or ask a Ferrari technician.

Just to give you an idea, a 5 year belt change with cam degreeing and all the correct parts being replaced, plus fluid and filter changes and all the checks required usually runs aroung $5K, and that is a lot simpler than a valve guide replacement of 48 guides.

 

The going price for head rebuilds on 355's (8 cylinder) is around $5K. That is just the machine work and installation of parts. Does not included getting the heads off and back on. $2K is funny, very funny

 

What parts are needed to adjust valve lash? And, I believe 550's have hydraulic lifters so what needs adjustment?

 

Dave- You need shims for a 456 or 456M to do a valve clearance adjustment, like my old Ferraris did. Usually only a few are out of spec, but you need a selection of shims. So best to have it done by a tech with lots of shims. They have to be new, too. The shims are ~$12-40 each from Ricambi, so good not too many are usually out of adjustment. Relatively easy job (at least on the 2 valve 4 cams I had) with the correct tools, but obviously you do have to remove the cam covers and that entails pulling the intake manifold. Which is why most owners have it done when they change the cambelts and degree the cams.