Thank you! I will spend a little time this weekend to take a good look at my vacuum lines. I did look at these components carefully last time but I want to make sure I haven't missed anything. Thanks again for the great pics and the detailed write-up. It is a big help to me and to the other 612 owners. And greatly appreciated.
This project has been on a zig-zag path for some time now, frustrating my initial intention to write this thread as a Point A to Point B how-to guide. To restore some forward momentum, here's a post on today's zig: the replacement of the thermostat and the big radiator hose running in the V of the engine. How we got here is -- what? -- a zig-zag path. It began with the removal of the driver side air filter box, MAF, induction elbow, and throttle body. This was to make way for swapping in the 599 version of these same parts. When I went to remove an oil breather pipe running from the induction elbow to a 3-way connector under the intake manifold, I found that I could pull this pipe freely out from under the intake; in other words, the connector had failed. (I have written about this previously; apologies for the repetition.) To fix this simple problem requires the removal of the intake, a fairly major task. Because the removal of the intake exposes the big central radiator hose, the might-as-well urge kicked in. I ordered a replacement part from Scuderia Rampante. Here are some photos of the OE unit and the Scuderia Rampante version side-by-side: Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login A noticeable difference is the external wrapping on the Scuderia part. The part is $250; $274 delivered. The OE hose slipped off quite easily. The new hose does not bend as much as the OE unit and required a little extra effort to install. Here are some more photos: Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login Regarding the thermostat, the teardown was also easy. Here's the parts diagram to show the components: Image Unavailable, Please Login Here are some photos of the thermostat seat. The seat is actually part of a complex casting which includes the water pump and the fitting for connecting the engine block to the coolant return hose. Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login Here is a photo of the take-off parts on the left and the replacement parts on the right. It's funny, but the O-ring (#15 in the parts diagram) that goes between the thermostat and its seat is very much bigger than the replacement part, while the O-ring (#7 in the diagram) that goes between the thermostat and the thermostat housing is noticeably smaller. I am putting my faith in Ferrari and Eurospares that these new parts won't leak, and also some "Right Stuff" gasket maker. Image Unavailable, Please Login
While on the topic of the large radiator hoses: I had also included in my list of might-as-wells the replacement of the two large hoses connected to the water pump. However, when the new parts arrived they were bright red, not black like the originals. These photos show the replacement parts sitting next to the originals, and also the bag from one of the replacements, to verify that these are Genuine Ferrari parts: Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login I'm on the fence, whether to install these. They're are so front-and-center when you open the hood; they're not factory original; and they're fugly. I'm thinking I'll hold off on the swap, and leave the OE ones alone until they feel old and squishy. Out of curiosity, just now I went out in the garage and test fitted my intake plenums to the intake manifold, to see how their red color matches up with the replacement radiator hoses. The factory wrinkle paint on my plenums had started to delaminate. So with the intake coming off anyway, getting the factory paint stripped and replaced with powder coating went on the list of might-as-wells. Here is a photo I copied from a thread in the F430 forum, that I used to select the correct powder coat product: Image Unavailable, Please Login Here's the photo I just took, showing the three refinished parts and the two hoses: Image Unavailable, Please Login The color match is pretty good. (Also, the powder coat is not a perfect match for the factory paint.) It still looks too "J.C. Whitney" for me (Google it), but it may grow on me. Regarding the powder coat, the color is close enough that even at a car show, with a sister Ferrari parked next to mine, no one is likely to notice. Besides, at least here in Northern California, Ferrari owners rarely raise their engine covers at the car shows. For those who do take a closer look, there is a distinct difference in the texture of the factory paint and the Prismatic powder coat product. In this photo of the mating point of the intake manifold, wrinkle painted gray, and the powder coated side plenum, you can see the factory paint has a kind of crystalline or snowflake texture, while the powder coat is more uniform grainy texture: Image Unavailable, Please Login By the way, my out the door cost for refinishing the three plenums was $430, more then double what the F430 poster paid in the Detroit Michigan area. Out here in Cali it seems that we get both a Ferrari tax and a California tax. Plus an actual 10.75% sales tax.
Thanks as always Bill. The price for the intake painting seems pretty good to me compared with uk prices for that job. But no, not sure I could live with those red hoses either.
Six weeks have passed since my previous post, so here are a few photos to prove that I have in fact been plugging away. This first shot shows that I have installed the refinished side intake plenums and the complete intake tract on the passenger side. (The center plenum is merely resting in place, without fasteners.) The intake tract includes the 612 throttle body, the 599 elbow, the 599 MAF, and the top half of the 599 air filter box: Image Unavailable, Please Login The 599 MAF swap requires us to re-use the bottom half of the 612 air filter box. The 599 bottom half might be made to work but it would require extensive mods to the 612 mounting points. Note that the use of the 612 bottom means that we must also use the 612 air filter. Unfortunately the 599 top half uses eight fasteners -- two on each side of the box's four sides -- while the 612 has just two fasteners on each of the long sides. Also, the 599 top is not a perfect match for the 612 bottom. However, it sits squarely on top of the 612 air filter, and when clamped down on the 612 bottom the air filter element's thick rubber gasket seals the two halves quite well. To clamp the 599 top to the 612 bottom, I have used a half-assed collection of hardware store screws, washers and nuts. I am confident my solution will be adequate to hold the box together, but I wonder if @brogenville or anyone else has a more elegant solution: Image Unavailable, Please Login Here's a photo of the intake tract on the driver's side, where I have installed the 612 throttle body and the 599 elbow. You can also see my Fiammenghi headers, with the secondary air valves mounted to the headers and the smog pump hoses in place: Image Unavailable, Please Login Finally, here's a banner that I've hung in my garage, which well expresses my Ferrari-modding experience: Image Unavailable, Please Login I see this as a take-off on a speech President John F. Kennedy gave in 1963: "We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard." Here we are six decades later and we still haven't figured out why else we needed to go to the moon. Two decades from now (I'll be in my 90's!), I expect I'll be asking the same question about this Ferrari project.
