360 Can you tell what variators you have by removing the valve cover?

If there is no green dot, it's unfortunately very improbable that they were done. As far as if there is a visual difference between the two, I have no idea. You have a basic idea of the life my car had, and despite all of it's neglect it still managed to get the green dot.

 

Unfortunately I don't have an answer to your direct question and am probably going to be telling you something you already know but I went through this exact same thing a few months ago. So here is the story.

First I had no record of the varitators being done and I have a very early US 1999 build with good records all the way back to a month before the original purchase of the car. I called 3 Ferrari dealerships and all of them were not very confident but leaning toward the car not needing the upgrade due to what you are seeing with the vin not falling in line. I finally called FNA and went back and forth with a guy for a few days and ultimately he said that yes all 360 before engine X (don't remember the number) needs the change. He was very confident on this the last time I talked to him while all the previous conversations I had with him him he wasn't sure. So I am assuming he talked to someone in the know finally but he did not divulge that info.

So now I needed to figure out if my variators were new or old. Luckily they dated them with a <digit-letter> date. For example 9A is January 1999, 9B is February of 99. and so on. (I only remember the 1999 codes it might be different for 2000). So I looked as I was doing the belts and I saw this. Image Unavailable, Please Login
My variators were from February of 1999 (9B) and there is no way they were not the original ones. I post this so others know (even though there are probably less than 10 of these cars that still need this) as well as to address the fact that its hard to visually tell which variators you have. Finding the date code should be fairly easy while looking at the variators (which I know is not your original question).

I should also mention that getting the variators off the very early cars is a nightmare. I sent my car to a very knowledgeable specialist in my area (who literally told me he thought he would never see this problem again) instead of to the dealer after over hearing the Ferrari dealer tech tell the service manager he had never changed these before. Anyway the guy who did my variators said he had never seen so much lock tight dumped into the camshaft and they broke many tools (original ferrari factory tools) trying to get the variators off, They tried to freeze the camshafts and a few other things. I don't remember how they actually got them off. At the time Ricambi had a new Left hand exhaust cam shaft for around 10000 and a Right hand for 7000. So replacement was a no go.

To make matters worse if you have the old Variators you probably have the old left hand Tensioner and Tensioner bracket which needs to be updated. I know I did.
On the positive side I had the car properly timed during this ordeal and the car responds beautifully. It comes alive just above 3000 rpm instead of 5000 I have seen in some other cars and (if you keep it stock) a 1999 is the only US model 360 I would own. I hope this helps someone.

 

Thats a big ole negative. I was amazed that they had figured out a nice way to say 'eat it kid'. If i remember right it was 'this campaign has been closed' or something close to it.

If you do check out the date codes I would be interested in what they are.

 

FYI, I had the failure last year. You have to remove the timing belt covers to properly check the variators. Btw if your interested in the cost, well I did almost all the work and made a few upgrades and it still cost me $8,000.00 I was told by the experts that I got off easy. I couldn't imagine having someone else do the work or having more to fix.

 

Most common is bent valves so you have to remove the heads, replace some valves and guides. It generally doesn't damage the bottom end.

 

I am not an expert but it is my understanding that they crack at the radius to connect to the shaft. SO, you are going to need a camera to inspect them or maybe a mirror. There were some drawings posted once (on this board) that showed the change. The change was small but apparently enough to reduce the issue.

 

From my experience, taking the valve covers off isn't going to give the results your looking for other than possibly creating an oil leak. When mine broke I removed the access cover behind the seats and took off the belt covers we didn't even figure out what happened. My first thought was a broken belt, much to my surprise the belts were tight and all looked good. It wasn't until I pulled the motor and was turning the motor over by hand with the valve covers off when I noticed the exhaust cam wasn't moving.
See thread https://www.ferrarichat.com/forum/threads/go-big-or-go-home.582865/

 

^^^^This^^^

I would imagine the time from the crack starting to the thread failing completely is probably microseconds..... A guy on the UK forum had a failure with the new variators earlier this year.

My philosophy is leave well alone based on the fact that the new ones installed under the campaign have been in for >40 k miles. I don't want to swap them for potentially worse ones (I.e. the new ones still fail, poor design, could be a flaw in the material/machining that leads to the crack). The installation is part of the problem (over torqued) so why take the risk now.

I'll review if lots of high miles car start losing variators.

 

One more note I heard, is that most of the variator failures happened around the 30,000 mile mark. Which obviously fell inside of my cars mileage. So if I were a betting man and my car had 50-60k I wouldn't worry about it. Which would also make sense why there was a campaign by Ferrari. If they were going to fail well outside of 30k, they would've done nothing. But since it was happening usually under warranty, that's why they did it.

 

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