Hi all, as we all know, when working on a car you sometimes need special tools. With a VW or a Mercedes, one can find them for sale on ebay etc as plenty have been made. Ferrari special tools however seldom come onto the market, too rare. Often it is possible to make them yourself. I made some simple tools for my 550, in the picture below: - On the left , the 3 aluminium bridges are a copy of the Maranello Skunk Works idea of fixating the camshafts, prior to removing them (for replacing the seals), and for safely reinstalling them in the correct position with no risk of the camshafts moving and bending the middle valves. The M12 *1 threaded rods screw into the plughole. The aluminium bar is square 2.5 cm , but I sawed 3 mm of the side so it fits between the cam lobes. The half holes are drilled into the alu by using a 24 mm drill. (tape two bars together with a 2 mm strip between them , so the drilled holes are only around 11 mm "high" ) - below that is the simple stand on which you can fix the magnetic micrometer holder for determining the TDC on cyl 1 and 7. It is fixed onto the head by the original valve cover bolts It consists of a strip of 4cm wide steel, welded onto two short pieces of tube, and the steel strip has 6 mm holes for the bolts which go through the tubes. - to the right the tool for unscrewing the large ringnut of the fuelpump covers. Forgot the dimensions, but I used steel strip and pieces of an old 4.5mm drill. I also made a smaller one for the fuel level sender. Image Unavailable, Please Login As you can see, these are simple tools that can be made with materials everybody can find. I am looking forward to seeing more home made tools, please post, so we all can learn!
Interesting topic. I am in the process of a full restoration of my 456GT and have had most of the car apart. I found that for normal maintenance you need surprisingly few special tools. have a box full of special tools for old Lancia, who had a policy of being very easy to work on for the DIYer, except for items Lancia didn't want the costumer to touch which were fitted with ring nuts of weird sizes. But always with thread pitch 1,5mm, so anyone with a lathe was able to machine his own should he need one. And also machine the required tools. Apparently the criterium was the lathe; if you had one you were supposed to be qualified to access/service/repair everything, if not you had to go to a dealership. Some special tools I made for the 456 that may be of interest to others as they are probably more often used: Top two pics: oil filter socket, so you can tighten these with a torque wrench (rather than by hand as I have always done) mid: a tool that locks both timing gear sprocket wheels to each other so you can change belts without the cams rotating bottom: a little tool to pull spark plug leads. M10 thread so needs a long bolt screwed in as a handhold. Very handy. I have some more, for instance a tool to easily replace valve shims. Other special tools required for a specific (supposedly) one time job I generally discard/convert once the job is done. For instance one of the (internal) ball bearings of the cam timing mechanism in my engine had gone bad but very stubbornly refused to come off. I had to knock two of the balls out, and fabricate a 2-leg puller with the legs in ball form in the position of the removed balls. This one took so much effort to get off that I took a pic. Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login
Haha, I even made a mistake in describing my own tools...The stand for the magnetic holder is not for measuring TDC, but for the micrometer for measuring valve lift...TDC I measured with a TDC tool I made, with a rod in a tube. The tube end screws into the plug hole, and the rod is connected to the micrometer on top of the tube. It was just fun to make it myself, even though you can buy them everywhere. (that is why I did not picture it.) @ Bart, the first pictures of what you made do not show, can you please check?
Image Unavailable, Please Login 3D printed rear main seal installation tool. Sent from my iPhone using FerrariChat
Not a 550 tool but I made this for my 355 https://www.ferrarichat.com/forum/threads/355-cam-locking-tool.126908/
I struggle with pictures on this forum. Sometimes they don't show at all, sometimes they do and sometimes I get them twice and don't know how to delete one of them. On my laptop all my pics in above post show as intended, but on my phone they don't, I only see the bottom two with the last one twice. Beats me. Glad I'm better at working on cars/boats than computers...
Are you sure it is home made haha It really looks like a engineered solution to me, same as the 3D printed rear seal installation tool from Brogenville DIY has come a long way, which is good!
OK, second attempt. oil filter socket, cam lock tool (out of soft aluminium) and spark plug lead removal tool.
Making piston stop. 550 has 12 mm spark plug hole , to my knowledge there is only one product available in the market for $60 by the time gets in your hand. You can make one using the old spark plug, tap it to 8mm x 1.25 and use same size bolt and flange nut for less than $ 2 and half hour of your time. Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login
