Hey guys, as you may remember I am new to the Ferrari world. So I have a black 81' 308 GTSI we picked up for a good deal in R.I. A little background, the car has 43k miles on it, had the belts done about 50 miles ago, and 7 years ago. I removed the cam covers and noticed a very small amount of oil on the bottom side of the 2 exhaust cam gear seals. What is a acceptable amount of oil? Would I have to remove the cams to replace? Is this easy and a no brainer to do while I am at it or a pita job?? Maybe leave it alone and just do the belts and tensioners I have in a box? It is my understanding the oil will deteriorate the belts over time and that is why I should care. On my 911's I could care less about oil drips. I also figure with the consensus being that these belts must be changed every few years regardless of mileage, maybe doing the belts in five years and only a few thousand miles the cam seal leak would not do much deterioration to the belts? Totally in the dark here. Had this car about two months and getting nice here in Boston and time to to drive it!
It is fairly common for the seals to leak - usualy as they were not properly installed. its a finckey job. Mine used to leak as well, and it would smoke.. so it was anoying... but did not do any damage. belts - every 5 years or 15K miles was the recco, from Ferrari, they they came out and said 3 years no matter what.... you pick. if you are going to do the seals, have the valves done as well, and make it a party! you will have good peace of mind.
My 82 GTSi the cams stay in the valve covers come off. The rear will be in the distributor base covers. Check the valve clearance whilst in there. I removed the rear bonnet for clean access.
I was thinking about this problem, it's very common and almost universally accepted but it's a PITA and I really don't like something this minor to be this irritating. In thinking about the oiling system it occurs to me that the pressure and volume of the oil and the pressure build up in the crank case with inadequate valve cover venting leads to a positive pressure build up that will cause oil leaks past seals. I've not had this problem of leaking seals on any of the vacuum sump engines we've done. It's a PITA to install the vacuum pump for the sump but it does work at pulling down pressure in the crankcase and stops the minor leaks. Bottom line I believe the engine was designed around being a drysump but cost or something nipped that down and all the wet sump engines suffer as a result.
