Interested in investing on my '77 308 GTB, but don't know how to play it.. in your opinion, what will be the best investment upgrade? best to all! Jota
Solid stainless exhaust valves is the first thing I would do, new cam pulleys second (if you still have the plastic ones), and if you do the valves it's worth changing the guides, stem seals, and match the inlets to the ports.
More involved than I thought; I wasn't aware the pistons were different. Sounds like plenty of drama. I wonder what the gains would be on a carbed car.
Dramatic as the 2V heads flow poorly. Scott and others would know the real difference as I think they have done this before (I seem to recall Scott was making some manifolds to suit.)
If the 2v heads flowed so poorly why did the early cars make 255hp (more than a QV)? If I were the OP I would search for euro cams and as mentioned earlier, just update the valve train.
Andy, emissions equipment and de-tuning reduced the power in later cars (including the QV.) There are several threads in Fchat about improving the flow of the 2V heads if you want to see the numbers. This '77 GTB may well have decent road cams already.
It's worthwhile searching and reading on this website. Lots and lots of good (and bad!) ideas. You need to define for yourself the goal of an "upgrade". Do you want more reliability (answer: fuel hoses and fuse blocks), power (answer: see prior posts) or coolness (answer: lowering springs and big tires).
But they never gave 255hp! Even the "Euro" version. Just as the "Vetroresinas" never weighted 1090 kgs or 1150 kgs - or never were "300 lbs lighter than the steel cars": this was only factory folklore, as every "cognoscenti" knows. The factory quoted "255 hp" in the adds, commercial brochures, etc, but these were SAE hp. On the homologation papers with the department of transportation in Italy, the same factory quitely wrote "230 hp", which was the real power in DIN hp of the carbed dry-sump engine. The reputed TÜV in Germany tested the carbed dry-sump engine in 1977 and found 229hp in DIN Power. The factory itself decided to quote only DIN power starting 1980, and most of the last carbed cars sold here in Europe in 1980 had a small sticker affixed in the owner's manual above the "255 hp" figure, which said "230 hp". Rgds
Keep it fully original. Find someone very knowledgeable on this particular variant of the car (which model is it? US? Euro? etc...) check the car for every part, and bring her back to full factory standard if needed. Rgds
+1. the 76-77 US cams or Euro carb cams (they are same) will make a seat-of-your-pants difference. throw them in and jet the carbs accordingly.
Agree. Spend money on getting back to original and then pick up some concours awards and/or Classiche if you want to increase its value by investing money (which is how I read your initial post but not sure that is what meant).
No problem with that but they (235/255hp) are still bloody faster than the US spec cars. On the track I never saw a stock QV that ran faster than my 2V. We used to run nose to tail all day long but there was never a difference between the two.
I don't know but I had my stock US QV at 150mph at one time and still can go faster if let it. To me that's more than enough power.
they were 255 HP SAE or 230 HP DIN (the same thing): QV has more power (240 HP DIN). This is a stupid thing written on @@@@@ books by @@@@@ authors that just could copy data without reading what there was written after them. No 308 engine ever had 255 HP: the correct power (DIN) figures are 230, 214 and 240 (EU Carbed, EU injected, EU QV) ciao
It's US spec. We are trying to see if a shop in California can rebuild and pre set the carbs for us, and as well add the sealed bearing for the butterflies, since the engine makes pop pop pop noise at idle and read somewhere it's due a vacuum leak through the old unsealed bearings of the carbs, and as well doesn't let you tune the carbs good enough.
Actually, the answer is a flat out no - with the introduction of the 4V heads, Ferrari also changed oil passages in the blocks to match up with the revised heads. So 4V heads are completely incompatible with the 2V blocks, and similarly a block from a 4V engine can not run 2V heads.
