360 Cam Belt Adventure

Oh that's just the OCD me. It's only my opinion but with the braces in place you cant really see the coil pack or plug extraction and there is a chance for FOD to go down the deep hole. Getting the rear cam covers off isn't terribly hard but would be much easier too.

The plug grabbing boot in my socket is worn out so it wouldn't hold the plug. I am replacing it now with some new high density foam but the whole job is blind as you know with the cross brace installed. I just think I would enjoy the work more if I could "see". I may not agree with this if its a bear to remove but I'm just sharing my thoughts.

 

Yes, Scott is the man for doing that work. I hope I get the chance to shake his hand one day!

 

Cyls 5-8 timing is right on the money too so I am feeling pretty good.

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Looking at Scotts dirty engine has me thinking he is enjoying his car way more than I am! I never drive unless the weather is perfect which is my loss for sure.

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I am at the "lock the hydraulic tensioner" part of the process and in Scott's video he says he was going to attempt to lockup the cams and rotate the tensioner bearing to compress it until he could insert the pin, which I think he is showing here with the allen key at the 40 min mark in the vid. I want to do this also but I am questioning why he showed at the end of the vid the hydraulic tensioner removed and in a vice to compress? Does it need to be compressed off the car?

screen shot of Scotts Awesome Vid.

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So no comments to my question above had me just give it a try with the tensioner bearing. There is a lag in it's motion when you compress it so it's a good thing I saw in Scotts vid how he compressed it in the vice. The problem I had was that the piston with the through hole in it had twisted a bit and was not in line with the outer body holes! Total PITA to get that corrected.

It might not be obvious to the untrained eye, but there is not way to insert a locking pin in this puzzle!

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I let the piston ride out a bit more by loosening the tension until I could get a pin in the the hole and turn it back into alignment, but it was still a bit off aand not aligning with the rear hole. I had to carefully compress the tensioner with a large clamp and work the pin through.

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Success!

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I also used the same type of clamp on my cam pulleys albeit much smaller size! They are Kant Twist clamps.

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Yeah I know, I guess I didn't want to look up the torque specs for the bolts! I may do that for the other side but the clamp I have was perfect. I am trying to find out if we use loctite and if so what variety on the tensioner bearing bolt. Do you know?

 

I ended up removing the bank 5-8 tensioner and doing it on the vice as described. Super easy! ...and nice to check out the part on the bench. Odd to me that the 1-4 belt was a lot harder to put on than the 5-8 belt. I had to help the 1-4 belt a lot more than the 5-8. Maybe it was due to the recess locations of the cam pulleys IDK but the difference was very noticeable. Getting close to being done with the "delicate" part of the procedure!

 

i am going the other direction now and on the re-assembly part. A re-use of the special flywheel lock tool has me being able to engage more screws this time around so there is some wiggle room there and it doesn't always fill to void the same way depending upon where you stop the rotation to position it I presume. I could get three in really easy this time and the fourth almost made it with my fingers...

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I think Scott should take the extra 2 minutes next belt change to put the relay covers back on before doing the job. It makes the space so nice to work in!

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Even though I have a very comfy carpet to lay on I gotta get a lift for next time!

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I have a question about the CAM belt tension after running the car like Scott did in his video at 1:01:30.

I did this same thing before buttoning up the whole job and the curious gene in my made me decide to check the belt tension again before putting the covers on. They had lost a bit of tension after the engine ran for 30 seconds, and the gaps went out of spec on the hydraulic tensioners too, well one side anyway. The belts were in spec at 214hz and 206hz before firing the engine and before you ask, yes I followed the procedure and turned engine over by hand at least 6 times between tension bearing adjustments. The frequency measurement after engine run were 165hz and 166hz!

This was a bit alarming to me so I turned the engine over by hand to TDC again, in preparation to make some more adjustments but after turning the engine a couple rotations the belts came back in frequency spec and the tensioners also!

Is this normal? Thank you for any help/input/thoughts here.

 

Normal...YES!
I got my answer in the Tech Section here:

https://ferrarichat.com/forum/posts/147370521/