1980 308 GTSi "Improved" Rebuild

I have owned my Ferrari since 1994 and enjoyed it immensely over the years. Now it is time to rebuild the vehicle including; engine, transaxle, suspension, electrics and body.

I started (and sold many years ago) a racing cylinder head engineering firm (IMSA, Stock car at all levels, H-D road/flat track, lots of drag and other forms of competition) and just retired as an adjunct professor for Porsche, Bosch and M-B in a special program in Stuttgart, Germany. I still teach/research here in Canada but at 62 things have slowed down a bit.

I just sold my 1977 Porsche 930 road race car (built from scratch, numbers matching car with Porsche's supply chain help), really enjoyed that car but frankly too much for this old guy now. It ended up really being an early 934. Instead, I now race the stable mate of my 308 Ferrari, a much "improved" Panoz GTS.

I have disassembled the 308's engine and transaxle and the major planned modifications (most parts have been acquired) are detailed below. I will gratefully accept all advice as I have limited Ferrari experience.
- 360 crank acquired (thanks to Bill, GT Cars)
- 928 Motorsports supercharger kit (but built lighter crankshaft supercharger pulley)
- NFF camshaft pulleys with Gates racing belts
- NFF aluminum radiator
- custom valves (& guides, etc.) supplied by NFF (all stainless, 1mm larger intake valve)
- I am following the advice of another F'chatter who used Hayden fans to replace the OEM fans, those fans just arrived
- valve springs & titanium retainers from Performance Springs in Australia
- Webcam CIS compatible cams
- modified CIS system (CNC'd fuel head, larger fuel pump, adjustable WUR, larger capacity fuel lines)
- ARP rod bolts for stock rods (advice from Carobu)
- the pistons are Wiseco, modern metric 3 ring design with Napier 2nd ring
- oiling system is already modified with AN lines, windage tray, larger cooler, etc. I was thinking about a dry sump conversion but will likely not do that as this is a street car
- exhaust is improved headers, no cats (old car) and stainless muffler/extensions
- ignition is Electromotive with aluminum distributor block-off plates already fabricated
- suspension is already on the car, QA-1's, better bushings, all new ball joints/tie rods/etc.
- transaxle has a bleed hole added for the reverse/1st gear shaft plus double lip seals on the differential and the shifter shaft
- car already had Euro fiberglass bumpers, I took the OEM stuff off years ago as this was originally a U.S. car out of Florida. The trick stuff happening is that we have just about finished the mould for the engine cover with the moulds for the hood and removable roof yet to be built...we are going carbon fibre to get some weight out of the car rather than build a "Godzilla" motor. The plan is to retain full OEM functionality. I plan to paint the engine cover and hood red, just like the rest of the car but leave the roof in the classic 2x2 carbon weave. My long-time race car fabricator (has build me several championship winning race cars) has a son in the carbon industry and he wants his own carbon business so I offered my stuff up for moulds and to be the 1st customer. We built aluminum mounts to replace the heavy shocks. If the other carbon stuff works out we will likely make carbon bumpers as well.
- I have started to re-wire the car using Mr. Bird's fuse upgrade as a starting point

I will post some of the pictures of the above as time allows. I would add that we pulled the sleeves from the block yesterday, I have new sleeves from the U.K., below is a picture of the sleeve puller I designed that my tool & die guy built for me, I wanted to be sure that the sleeves came out without damaging the block so I did not use a "generic" puller.
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The sleeve puller simply fits over the studs and pulls the sleeve out in a balanced fashion.

Good thing we pulled the sleeves, #8 was just starting to leak!
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I have to jump into the hospital for some heart surgery at the end of this week so not much is going to get done until I get out of surgery (human parts wear out too).

However, if anyone has advice of what to watch for or thoughts on what to improve, please let me know. I am not a Ferrari expert. The overall goal is "nicer than OEM" 308 that is reliable and fun.

I will post action as it happens. Hopefully I can get the engine together by the end of April.

Best,

Dr. Steve Hummel, P.Eng.
(from Canada)

 

Ok, here is existing fiberglass front bumper, we built a;aluminum mounts for front and rear bumpers. With the carbon stuff and some other weight savings options we are going to try to get over 200lbs out of the car without compromising its streetability.
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Front brakes are the bigger Brembo kit, rears have the GiroDisc with rebuilt stock calipers. I have a spare set of 993 TwinTurbo Brembos left over from my 930 race car but I think that they are overkill for a street car. Below also is a larger master cylinder so pedal travel is minimal and more "race car-like".
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I bought Nick's water pump years ago and will be re-using it. His aluminum radiator just arrived below. It appears to be over 40lbs lighter than the OEM radiator in the car.
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I am installing the 165 degree fan switch to operate the Hayden fans.

Like any engineer I have built a library of documentation of the parts, modifications and repairs so that it is easy to recover part numbers and to learn from mistakes, etc.

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Thanks to Mr. Bird's engine removal process it only took a few minutes to get the engine & transaxle out. Did it alone, super easy, great process!

Headers are not OEM, just got back from ceramic coating. Rest of exhaust is stainless. Still have to weld in 2 O2 bungs to set up the fuel injection though.
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Will detail fuel injection modifications at a later date but the short story is:
- in past as a researcher did 2 fully funded CIS race application projects for Porsche turbo's, learned a lot, applying all that to this project
- CIS is not equivalent to electronic injection so leaving lots of power on the table but hard to beat CIS simplicity
- fuel head is CNC'd internally for more fuel flow
- fuel pump is much larger than OEM
- fuel lines are larger than OEM
- WUR regulator is adjustable (I did a bit more work versus the typical adjustable WUR so I am curious to see how the engine dyno's out)
- I do have an intercooler, I am going to try to fit it in, it is an air-to-air unit, if it does not fit I may try an air-water intercooler (I am using a different engine coolant expansion tank to free up some room for an intercooler, not the end of things if I cannot fit an intercooler in because I am not using too much boost)
- biggest challenge will to be sure that enough fuel gets to the engine
- I dyno everything (street & track failures are way more expensive, better to catch a problem early in a controlled environment) so I plan on exploring the limits once I get the engine on the dyno but based upon Porsche research this system should have enough fuel flow to handle over 20lbs of boost (not ever going to go there)
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Below are springs & retainers. Cams are pretty mild (for CIS), 224/224 @0.050", 110 deg lobe centers, 0.320" lift, classic single pattern design. Grind is Webcam 179e. CIS cannot handle cams with much overlap so stuck with limited timing. I wish that there was more lift but concerned about flipping shims (again, do not know much about Ferrari) as the engine will accelerate fast due to; supercharger, lighter mass rotating assembly and the aluminum flywheel that we have just started to build (using OEM starter ring). Clutch is the AP Borg & Beck semi-organic disc with the heavy spring pressure plate. I may have a problem there if the engine produces the torque I think it will but the dyno will tell us.
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So the Ferrari's stable mates are a highly re-engineered Panoz GTS (about 175 lbs lighter than stock but much stiffer chassis with hugely improved geometry, 408 cid pump gas Ford Windsor, Ferrari F40 brakes and whole bunch of other tricks learned from racing 46 years) and on the other side is my Ford 427 Windsor all aluminum 1934 street rod engine (ran it in the Panoz last year to" break it in"). The Mr. Bird engine/transaxle recommended removal strap is on the engine stand.
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I did just get delivered one of Carl's Mega blow-off valves for the supercharger. It is much larger than the normal one he supplies but given the cost of rebuilding a Ferrari engine versus a Ford I am going to err on the side of "more blow" than "not enough. This thing is HUGE!
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A bit of a piss-off is that the Compomotive wheels had the clear coat cracking so I disassembled the wheels and will be taking them to my favourite body guy to get them blasted clean and then likely powder coat them. Fronts are 17 x 8, rear 17 x 9, using Michelin tires, they fit fine under the OEM wheel wells.
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I already drilled a pressure relief hole for the Reverse/1st gear shift rod. since everything was apart I drilled from inside the case to prevent another leak point. Dark line is not a crack, just a pencil mark....
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Public thanks to a few people who have offered valued advice to get me this far, I know how competitive this industry is and appreciate your guidance:
- Bill, GT Cars
- Steve D. (THE sleeve guy)
- Nick at NFF
- Bert (Carobu)
- Glen & Paul Forrest (my tool & die guy & my automotive machinist, I forgive them for being Chevrolet drag racers)

 

Spend day cleaning & inspecting the old sleeves. I wire-wheeled them all to inspect for any issues under the coolant deposits on the sleeves. Sleeve #6 has some significant corrosion as photo shows. Looks like I dodged a bullet by timing the rebuild now as there was a small leak as shown previously on sleeve #8 and sleeve #6 is pretty corroded. The corrosion is right into the o-ring seat.
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Tomorrow is block day. Pressure washed the block on Friday and removed the front cam drive bearings (installing new ones). I noticed that there are some coolant deposits inside the block so I will take the time tomorrow to brass brush them away with a strong detergent. I noted all the sleeve seats looked good on Friday but I will check those again tomorrow.

I will try to measure up the rest of the transmission as well this week. Everything has been good so far but if I need to replace synchronizers, etc. now is the time to do it. Pretty lucky, neighbour down the road is chief mechanic at a Canadian national transmission repair chain (Mr. Transmission). Chris is his name, this past summer he taught me how to rebuild TKO600's (what we use in the Panoz) using all the trick Liberty Gear parts. Either he was a good teacher or I was a good student (or both) as the 2 transmission builds performed well. He inspected what I had pulled apart & measured to date, it appears I did not beat up on the transmission too badly during my 25 year ownership.

Simple injector cleaning tool arrived on Friday from MercedesSource.com. Based upon what I see it seems as though one could also adapt this neat tool to measure injector flow. Very slick device.

 

Question to community, should one be using a non-curing compound around the line o-rings to enhance their ability to seal against the engine coolant? If so, would Curil-T be appropriate? If not, what is appropriate?

 

New versus old starter, more weight savings.
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New cylinder sleeves arrived. I measured them versus the original sleeves and all looks good.
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Back to the shop to see if I can remove the water jacket and oil gallery pipe plugs and to hand off the metric hardware to my tool & die guy who is making the aluminum flywheel. Rather than rivet the steel clutch plate to the aluminum flywheel we are going to use countersunk flush mount fasteners, this makes it easier to service in the future (including replacing the steel friction plate if we have to in the future) even though I only put one clutch in the car over 25 years.

 

Back from the shop, measured up the 360 crankshaft versus the original 308 crankshaft for the cam/oil pump drive...looks like we need a spacer 0.147" thick to get the crankshaft gear in the right location. One aluminum spacer coming up!

Block is going into ultrasonic cleaning tank and then hot pressure wash tomorrow, hopefully we can get the oil/coolant plugs out with the wash heat. It appears that these aluminum pipe plugs can strip easily.

Curious as to why Ferrari did not cross-bolt the main bearing caps on these blocks given how the block is cast. If you ran a lot of boost on these engines you would likely need a "girdle" or machine for main cap cross-bolts (or both).

 

Engine back from ultrasonic cleaning. Managed to get the oil gallery plugs out but no luck with the water jacket aluminum plugs. Looks like a good part of next week will be spent cleaning the block (carefully). Found one sport where aluminum had degraded, looks like it will be JB Weld time to support the o-ring wall. Fortunately the "divot" is not in the o-ring land but behind it. I will be examining this area closely for any fractures, etc. The rest of the block looks good, a thorough cleaning and inspection will hopefully verify that or uncover any other problems.
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Ferraridoc, yes I did talk to Nick and Steve. Economics do not make sense if I stay with CIS, real potential is unlocked if you go real big and EFI. They both talked me out of big bore given my goals with the car, I appreciated that advice from both of them.

The goal here is a nice reliable street car. My darling wife is a bit of a lead-foot and too much power is not a good thing. CIS is relatively easy to maintain and troubleshoot as well as to tune and it is a bit more fault tolerant than an EFI system. CIS is definitely cruder but those simple advantages advantages outweigh the benefits of EFI. The other advantage with the supercharger is that more torque is generated at lower RPMs.

Even though my wife is an experienced "stick" person she likes "torquey" engines (careful, no jokes, she is Irish, the daughter of a British Army officer and has proven that she can shoot any weapon better than any man I know, sober or inebriated, her idea of vacations are things like participating in the "world's largest paintball tank battle" in the UK, real tanks, and doing actual jousting on horseback, we think Ferraris are expensive, try dressage and show jumping, her hobby costs make mine insignificant in comparison).

The 360 crank is an easy swap and gives relatively low cost displacement increase compared to sleeves, especially when you have to replace the pistons anyway.

Since I am in Canada and resources are in Canadian $ everything has a 30% premium (versus U.S. $) plus our 13% HST and the current extra costs due to our trade problems at the moment. If I went sleeves then I probably should do the rods (360 titanium or Carrillos), then I would do EFI, then I would build stainless merge headers, then I would replace the CIS aftermarket cams I already have, then I would go with titanium valves, then I would go shim under, then I would go dry sump, then I would put even bigger brakes on the car than the current Brembo/Girodisc kit, etc. It never ends.

I have this 1962 Ford Falcon I am looking at to convert to a vintage road racer...I could build the whole car, including engine/transmission, for what a full-on big bore 308 build, with all the right features, would cost. I must admit though, even at age 62, trying to control "horsepoweritis" is rather difficult. The only thing controlling me at this point is the fact that the 308 is in my wife's name. If it was not, the disease would win, even though I have a "voucher" (yes, a real written one) from my wife for another car of my choice (a garage bay is currently open).

Maxflynn, I know nothing about samsaprunoff’s fuseblocks. Please let me know where I might find them. Thanks for the advice.

Rod bolts arrived today. We will be re-sizing the rods after I finish cleaning the block. The aluminum material arrived today as well for the aluminum flywheel. Some lathe work will be happening next week. Pistons, rings, wrist pins, valves, guides, etc. are expected at the end of this week as well so there will be some pretty active machining over the next couple of weeks.

Heart surgery went well but have to be careful over next week, cannot work too many hours or lift anything over 10lbs until the arteries heal. Amazing work they do...I have to tell you, our tax rates here are worth it when you have public health care and get to go to the best hospitals in your province (bit of advice, always choose teaching hospitals for major work). Looks like they killed my problem. Our system is far from perfect and not as good as some of the European systems but overall it is pretty good.

I started to clean off the head gasket material from the block today and began work on the corrosion left in the de-sleeved block as that is light activity, but time sucking work. We were able to get the oil gallery plugs out but the water jacket plugs are pretty tight. I will be using the "old racing trick" of JB Welding their perimeters to prevent any dripping leaks and will also start the engine up with Bar's Stop Leak to assist with any other minor leaks. I was able to get out the large steel sensor plug for the water jack, it needs to be cleaned up as well.
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Tomorrow off to Toronto to drop the Compomotive wheel centers off to my body guy to blast them and re-coat them with a semi-gloss silver/gray finish with no clear coat to avoid cracking finish in the future. I will also be testing my new CIS injector cleaner/measuring device later this week as well.