Anyone changed a cam belt on a 612?

I looked at the 575M repair manual. They actually have the procedure for replacement of the only the outer bearing with the tool that I previously mentioned. I guess that this bearing probably has the most load on it from the cam belt.
For removal of the front cover, Ferrari says to first remove the motor from the car, then remove the oil pump drive access cover and remove the drive sprocket from the pump. Then they want you to remove the ring nuts from the drive shafts, leaving the sprockets on. Then a special tool is threaded onto the ends of both of the threaded drive shafts and the whole front cover with both drive shafts and oil pump sprocket/chain is removed from the engine block using a slide hammer that threads into the special tool bar that is attached to the ends of the drive shafts.
All in all, not an easy repair. They also mention that the gear lash between the drive shaft gears and crank gear must be checked at multiple crank locations and adjusted by tapping the cover position before tightening it down. Also not an easy process, which cannot be performed with the cylinder heads on unless you want to bang the pistons into the valves while rotating the crank around to check the gear backlash.
It makes me want to just remove the outer shaft bearing, feel what the inner bearing play is like and then install a new outer bearing if the play is minimal.
Otherwise you are looking at a bunch of work.

 

I've done my 550 front cover with the engine in the car, but I had the radiator out for more room. I believe Moorfan did his with the radiator still in -not sure.

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Cover should be the same as the 550 and 575M and owners have removed those covers and posted in the 456/550/575 forum. Hill Engineering has even had

new front cover bearings ​

made after the originals went NLA. Definitely a different layout for how the engine is fitted, though. Sounds like there is less room in the 612 for a lot or work, including on the F1 system.

 

John posted as I was writing.

 

If you pull the front cover with the cam drive shafts in place, it looks like the oil pump drive sprocket on the nose of the crank will not clear them. That is why Ferrari has you remove the driven sprocket from the oil pump, so the chain and oil pump drive sprocket will come off with the cover.

 

In the "While you are there" category, what are the thoughts on the need to change the Connection Sleeve (The hose between the water pump and manifold) and the Belt tightening pulley for the Alternator/AC when doing a timing belt change? My car hasn't been opened up yet but its pushing 42K miles. I don't want to throw away needless money so are these high failure/wear parts?

 

Just to clarify - my heads were off in the above pics because I had around 20-25% leakdown in several cylinders. Unfortunately after the heads came off, and I repeated the leakdown on the block, I still had essentially the same figures, so the block came out. Then I found several pistons with frozen rings - two freed up with very strong solvents, but the third one was well and properly frozen/rusted and would not free up.

 

Does anyone replace the cam bearings as a part of the 5 year service? I always understood the service to be the timing belts and the tension bearings. This is getting way more involved. So the clue to the bearing failing was the noise that you were getting before and after replacing the timing belts and tension bearings? Any other tell tale signs? Any noticeable wear in the bearings? Leaking around the bearings, etc?

 

All of the bearings could possibly show some seeping/throwing of grease regardless of source. On the lower timing bearings, the telltale sign would be a single laser engraving of "170787" (reproduction Ferrari -- which, in an ideal world, should be replaced) on the shell, instead of the full SKF part number (originals), or the NTN numbers (Hill Engineering spec). If you have the SKF or Hill variant, base your decision on appearance, feel, miles, etc.