Good day, here is some pictures of a 355 that was burning 3 litres of oil every 100klms. Notice the one clean piston, assuming washed by sticking injector, and all the others look normal colour. The liner on the one clean piston is shot, its now about 30 thou over size, no ring marks, just worn and clean. Straight forward it would seem but a couple of odd things, firstly the white colour on the exhaust valve stems, im thinking that if it was burning oil out of the exhaust the stem should be black and not white, does this suggest coolant burning out the exhaust ??, but it wasnt loosing any coolant and not over heating, and also there is no trace of oil burning out the exhaust, i would have expected to see oil all the way up the back bumper, but no oil and no smoke out the back. Anyone seen this before on a 355. Cheers Steve Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login
Is this your car or are you a mechanic at that shop? From other posts it seems you are from a dealer in Calgary. Seems to me that a dealership going to the internet for technical advice of what is a pretty basic mechanical malady does not speak well to the capabilities of the service department.
We are an independent Ferrari specialist and not the dealers and yes its fairly straight forward, as i wrote, but with a couple of twists and i thought this might be interesting to 355 owners as they are well known for this problem but to the extent of 3 litres every 100 klms, ive been doing this kind of thing for over 35 years i have not seen one burning this amount. Thankyou
When i first saw this car the customer had just bought it and brought it straight to us for an oil change, he then went for a drive of approx 300 klms, on returning back he came to the shop asking if we had put enough oil in it as the oil light was flickering and the engine was some what noisy, IE rattling like a bag of nails. We checked the notes to see that the correct amount had been put in and could not see any leaks, so that started the ball rolling, what was going on. We added oil to the correct level and went for a drive of around 100 klms came back to the shop and checked the level, sure enough it was over 2 litres short, looked at the plugs to find one plug completely fouled, did a leak down and a compression check. Straight of the bat, before doing the leak down, i thought valve guides as i had some experience with earlier 355 valve guides, but that didnt explain no smoke and no oil up the back of the car. The car actually drove pretty smooth, i think that the seller must have known the problems and maybe he put a set of new plugs in just before he sold it. As for the possible stuck injector, as i said it ran pretty good and exhaust temp was equal on all 8 cylinders and there was no sign of overheating. Cheers Steve
With that much oil going out the tailpipe I would expect the 5-8 cat to be glowing red and the "slow down" light to be on.
With that much coking around the valve stems near their heads on the worst cyl I'm amazed that sucker ran anywhere near what could be described as smoothly. How many miles on odo out of interest?
Are you sure other dash lights on car are even working. My guess is some of them have been bypassed. If i have so mush as a missfire for a few minutes i get codes.
