B0nehead move - need help!!

I all seriousness Brian, cummon, you don't mean to tell me the Ferrari's are specifically designed to leak? I think that they leak because of piss poor quality management, than they do because they were designed that way.

Well all I know is, that my 348 does not leak, and I used the Hondabond HT. If the Permatex is a superior product then I will look into using it in the future. But for now I'm sticking with the Hondabond, or at least until the tube runs out.

 

No one designs a motor to leak but Ferrari accepts it and Honda does not.
The spend a great deal of money seeing to it.

In the engine assembly room Locktite 518 is rationed because it is expensive. When they run out which is common they revert to silicone. They know it does not work but they are that cost concious. Oil leakage is not a high priority.

 

I agree. I used it on my 30K service when I changed cam seals and adjusted the valves.

Before the service I had a few minor leaks around the cams.

Now, NO LEAKS PERIOD!

Well worth the 18-20$ a tube

 

I might just be talking through my a$$, but IMHO, you can be sure most of the people working at Ferrari dont carry the same last name as the owner. When you cant even take your car into service anywhere and trust it will be repaired or serviced correctly, why would expect all the people building it to care a whole lot? They have the same BS going on at home as all of us do.

Many of you guys running a buisness that requires laborers know what I mean. Good help is hard to find, and harder yet when you arent watching constantly over thier shoulder. You would think it would be an honor to work at Ferrari, but when you find things on these cars that wernt finished well, or built incorrectly, you know it was the workers fault and not the designers who done it. Honda, and many other car makers invested in complex and robotized machinery, and many machining processes of the engines are not done by humans. All they need is for the people to do final assembly. They did those things in order to have a more troublefree product going out the door, not necessarily a "better" product. The Ferrari is better designed, and uses a boat load of F1 technology, but its put together and created by humans. And we humans have a big tendency to f*** up.

Someone asked about that nut, what would a shop do? Well, cross your fingers because you never know what a shop will do. Its not always the shop owner working on your car, its the mechanic he hired. And maybe last night his S.O. didnt give him any, and beached at him all morning before he left for work this morning, letting the door slam. Now he's gonna "fix" YOUR car. He's on the clock working against the flat rate book and just dropped a nut into YOUR oil sump. Whats he gonna do? Why do you really think most shops keep the work area off limits? Because they really dont want customers seeing thier PO'ed mechanics slamming tools around and laughing at customers cars while they screw stuff up and pass over work you getting charged for. Thats why I always liked the MB dealership I frequent. The shop is wide open and no one will ever stop you from walking through.

Thier are products and processes that we can use on our cars that are vastly superior to what was used building our car. And while its apart, if we do our best putting it back together, it shouldnt leak fluids any worse than any other car on the planet.

 

To build on what Brian and Paul have said, there is also a cultural aspect to this. A Japanese engineer would consider it an insult to his craft to create an engine that leaked oil on the floor. In Italy it is just considered controlled lubrication. What matters there is how the engine performs and sounds. If it leaks, put a tray under it; not important. It is a simple matter of what the end goal is, (intentionally) boring cars that don't leak for the masses or high strung sports machines for the enthusiast. The definition of quality is fluid (no pun intended, really).

 

I am of that same mentality. How in the heck can you design such a beautiful car, talking Ferrari here, have all of these high maintanance "requirements", like the very close timing belt change requirements because the belt can break, but it's okay to accept an oil leak that could run the engine, or gear box dry????????? That is just plain silly.

 

For gaskets I use Hylomar Universal Blue. This has stopped oil leaks on 1960's Mini Cooper's, and on my 308GT4. Only place I can find it here in Toronto is aircraft supply places.

Gerrit