456 power loss and oil thrown out - any guesses? Plus Ferrari specialists in Spain

Can anyone hazard a guess as to what has happened with my 1994 456?

I was returning home this afternoon, engine fully warmed up, on the motorway. I accelerated and changed up from 4th to 5th at about 100 kmh, when I heard something - not quite sure what- and I felt the engine lose power. The car continued to run, but with very little power, and didn't want to rev above about 2000 rpm. No warning lights appeared, and oil pressure and temperature and water temperature all remained normal. The car began to smoke very badly, so I pulled over and found that the smoke was coming from a large amount of oil spread over the left hand side of the engine (looking from the front) that had covered the exhaust and was burning off. I could not discern where the oil had come from and moreover the engine did not want to restart. So I had the car transported off the road.

Now I could understand a power loss as a electronics issue, and I could understand an oil loss if some pipe has broken, but a power loss with an oil loss has me confused. The best idea I have right now is perhaps some oil pipe has broken and in covering part of the engine with oil has affected some electronic module. Does that seem possible or does anyone have a better idea?

I've had this car about 2 1/2 months now, and I was thinking to take it for a service to a Ferrari specialist, because someone familiar with 456s will be able to spot issues that I don't, this being my first time with the car. It seems to me from the few hundred km I've put on the car that it's basically sound but has been little used in the past years. The failure today has me worried, but if it is a burst oil pipe that has in turn affected an electronic module, that is not too bad.

Anyway, this issue has forced my hand and I think I'll have GT Stradale in Madrid look at it (www.gtstradale.com). They come recommended as very good Ferrari specialists; has anyone here used them? (Perhaps not, since I don't know of anyone else here in Spain.)

 

Thanks for the reply, a drink has been drunk! The engine didn't stop when this issue occurred, it kept running, with no strange noises and only a loss of power. Is that possible with belt snapped, valves bent/broken, conrod broken, or worse? Not on engines I'm familiar with where those would stop the engine. [When I bought the car I was told the belts had been done (by mechanics at a private racing circuit, so no bill to prove that). I looked at them and they looked new.] I haven't checked them after the problem today.

A bit more data: the oil was mostly towards the back of the engine, on and near to the coolant tank on the left. I should have taken a photo, but didn't. And no, no fire. I've had oil coat hot engines before, and I've never had it catch fire, have you? When I was a student, many years ago, I raced another chap down the Pennine hills in the UK in my Fiat 126 until crankcase pressure blew a great amount of oil out of the dipstick hole. I was doing about 85 mph, I think, which was rather faster than that car had any right to be doing... That was extremely impressive when viewed in my rear view mirror, as the oil vapourized off the hot exhaust, but there was no fire. Another time I had an oil pressure sender fail on a car and again plenty of oil landed on the exhaust, and there was plenty of smoke but no fire. So I've always thought that a fire isn't very likely with oil leaks. Perhaps I've simply been lucky? I always carry a fire extinguisher in my classics and have never had to use one yet - touch wood.

 

Thanks. Yes, it doesn't seem to have an OBD2 port. I suppose they came later than 1994. I'm still confused about the mechanical issue that led to the oil blowout. I will report back when I have more information.

 

I decided on Friday that it was best to have the car sent directly to a Ferrari specialist in Madrid, for several reasons, including that my breakdown cover would do that but might not have covered me if I had had the car brought home first and had only later decided to get it sent. And the chap I have spoken to who runs GT Stradale seems very familiar with 456s. The downside of my decision is that I don't have the car to check what has happened. I will have to wait for later in the week when I'll get news. When I look at diagrams of the engine I don't see so many options for where oil could come from near to the coolant reservoir.

 

By the way, about fire extinguishers, just a couple of weeks ago I bought two new fire extinguishers, one of which I put into the glove box of the Ferrari. I have been impressed by this new technology that uses chemistry rather than a compressed gas, which means that a fire extinguisher lasting 50 seconds weighs just a few hundred grams and fits into the glove box:
http://www.fss-esp.com/index.html
I don't have any link with this company except as a customer who hopes never to have to use one of their products.

 

Exactly. I've never had the occasion to use one, but having one in the glove box or door pocket means it's available straight away.

 

So, I finally have a diagnosis from GT Stradale in Madrid. It's a bit of an odd one that he said he hadn't seen before on a 456. Apparently the fuel pressure regulator broke. That allowed fuel to flow into the oil. The oil level rose and presumably the crankcase pressure too, until it blew off one of the tubes recirculating crankcase gases. That is what spewed oil over the engine. The engine stopped either because of the fuel pressure issue or because some of the electronics was coated with oil. I think I did the right thing giving the car to him to look at, because I would have had a hard time to figure that sequence of events out without an intimate knowledge of these cars. Anyway, the oil is contaminated with petrol and the first thing he is going to do is to check the compressions to make sure that the fuel wash hasn't damaged the cylinders.

 

Perhaps you are right. The flash point of the oil would have been reduced by the added petrol, and the cloud of smoke when the oil burnt off the exhaust was impressive. But it probably looked more impressive than it really was in terms of the volume of oil lost. Anyway, whether because it was not a great amount of oil or otherwise, it didn't ignite.

 

Yes indeed. Julio at GT Stradale certainly seems to know his stuff. I do a lot of the maintenance of my cars myself, but there are things that only someone who sees a lot of similar cars -a specialist- can spot quickly because of being able to make comparisons.

 

What you are describing is more or less as it happened. The engine started to run very poorly, with little power. I was near my exit from the motorway, so I attempted to get to it. It would have been much safer, had I got to it, than stopping on the motorway, but I couldn't quite reach the exit because I had almost no power and the engine started to smoke after that vapour return hose blew off.

 

I didn't explain fully in my first post my mental calculations on the Friday that this happened. The motorway was very busy with freight traffic -carrying fruit up to the Netherlands and the rest of northern Europe!- so after the power loss I was trying to work out the possibility that I could damage the engine by trying to get off the road, versus the probability of some dozy driver ploughing into me while I was stationary on the shoulder. I opted to try to get the car off the road, but the km leading to my exit is uphill and the car just wouldn't do it. The 456 is a wide car and the hard shoulder was narrow. It was very stressful waiting 3/4 of an hour for the breakdown lorry with huge lorries thundering past a few centimetres away. Anyway, I didn't get hit. Now I hope nothing untoward turns up with the compressions. We will be checking for other fuel system issues so if there is anything we should find it. And I'm going to get all the other bits and pieces I noted in the few hundred km I've driven looked at while the car is in the workshop.