F40 boost settings, and other questions

Although I do not own a F40, here are my thoughts:

-The boost can always be increased later. Best to start lower and sort through all other issues to have a well running car.

-Have seen issues like this on other Ferraris. The cost to rebuild is typically lower compared to a new unit and will ensure there are not electrical melt downs later in the future.

-Since the car was sitting for a long time, have you considered cleaning the injectors?

 

Have the boost dialed back to the correct factory setting so the car can run optimally, not only is 1.2-1.3 too high for USA pump gasoline, it's unnecessarily high for road use and IMO not a great idea for the life of your engine.

After a lengthy period of not being used, it is not entirely uncommon for the alternator to need rebuilding, have that done.

I thought I read that you have purchased new fuel bladders? If the fuel bladders are indeed 30 years old, coming off a period of not being used, I highly recommend you change the fuel bladders immediately before you drive your F40 at all, IMO that's essential to the safety of your car.

 

Understood.

Still, they should be replaced as they are 30 years old.

I liken this to looking at 15 year old old tires that usually check out okay, so you take a chance on them.

As you say with the bladders "hopefully they will remain intact", but the thing is, when they give out it will be without warning when the car will be running & hot, and then at worst you may lose the whole car in spite of any fire suppression systems, and at best there will be not inconsiderable fire damage even with the fire suppression systems.

The last F40 which famously burned to the ground had both an on-board fire suppression system (which apparently didn't work) and nearby hand-held units which proved ineffective although they were deployed, it was still a total loss.

Why take a chance with catastrophic consequences a million dollar car?

 

I would leave the boost pressure as is and will immediately change the fuel bladders. Don't start the engine nor drive the car until they will be changed.

This one pictured here below was 13 years old

ciao


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That's a standard Italian F40 fuel tank: it's a racing fuel tank with foam inside, but came standard with the car.

Ciao

 

Alberto, I don't always agree with you, but here I do 100%.

 

From memory your car is running non standard turbo's? LM spec? if that is the case then I imagine the ecu had also been adjusted to suit the extra fueling needs for that increased boost.

Agree with everyone else, rubber can look fine but naturally degrades, it would need a pressure test rather than just a visual check, but at that age you are really chancing your luck in such a car. I have a bag tank here from my single seater which is the same age as an F40, looked fine in the car but once out and flexed, the rubber cracked straight away. Same with injectors, a visual check is for leaks only, they have an internal mesh filter which can clog up, and with twin injectors per cylinder if one goes down you will run lean. Bob Houghton looked after this car for you, if they were happy with its set up I would not go with the recommendations you are now getting as they seem rather sketchy.

 

Just dropping the boost by turning down the wastegates will not help the fueling though throughout the whole rev range, only the stop end would be affected when hitting that 1 bar plus, so poor local fuel would need to be addressed via a full remap of the weber ecu, and based around the uprated spec, to be on the safe side, followed by a rolling road tweaking to finalise, is that what they plan to do?. A garage full of expensive cars does not always an expert make, what I have stated is basic info most amateur tinkerers like me know, and applies to even the most mundane of turbocharged petrol cars so I hope a remap is their proposed solution.

Your car, your call but you are playing with fire, literally!

 

You took the words right out of my mouth, as I was reading the comments I was going to say exactly this.

Why not get a second opinion from an entity that actually specializes in F40s, or, from an authorized Ferrari concessionaire that has someone who has worked specifically on F40s after he was factory-trained on them in 1988 - say Ferrari of Houston or Ferrari Newport Beach?

I know the entity you are using successfully stores cars and to facilitate this therefore works on many different makes & models, but I wouldn't describe them as F40 specialists.

My recommendation: send the car to Ferrari of Houston and let them do everything it needs, it'll take them a few months and to next year to complete all the work anyway.

 

If the tanks are original then all the rubber from them to the injectors will be 30 plus years old as well, plus tank breathers etc. A couple of owners on here have given first hand accounts of how these are also found to be dangerously perished when they have carried out a tank change on there own F40s which is also worth bearing in mind.

Many an F40 in recent times has gone up in flames as a result of high pressure fuel spraying around that very hot engine bay. Even the best fire suppression system wont keep those at bay when they are being fed such large amounts of petrol.

 

if you are gonna ship it you wld be better off sending to brian crall no?
http://www.hillcountryferrari.com/

 

Are you getting your fuel at Buc-ces!? I would love to pull in and see an f40 refueling there

 

Ross,

You’ve got at least two guys who know what they are talking about telling you to replace the bladders.

I’d listen.

Matt

 

I don't own an F40 myself, but I have built a couple of turbocharged motors. If memory serves me correctly, I believe you begin to see diminishing returns after 1.0 Bar of boost. In my experience, 14.7 PSI to about 16 PSI is pretty good for the street, without blowing things up. I've run 22 PSI on the street with a very large intercooler (right out front, so super cold), but for just around town, I usually would dial it back to around 18 PSI, in some circumstances, anything above around 21 or 22 PSI would suck the entire fuel rail dry (and I didn't feel like tearing the motor apart to install a larger rail or different injectors).

Speaking of which, you also want to keep in mind that, even if you can run higher boost pressures, this might cause the injectors to operate at a higher percentage of their expected utilization. In other words, if the injectors are designed to provide X amount of fuel, but you are running them and asking them to constantly provide X times 1.5, then you may experience a distortion in the fuel delivery pattern or other bad things. Just pull up any video on youtube which shows testing fuel injectors at higher than normal pressures, etc. and you can see how things can quickly derail and go off track. I'm not saying this would occur with the F40 (I don't know what they use in the way of fuel injectors), but it's at least something to be aware of. Just in general, when dealing with any motor - boosted or not - you always want to make sure your fuel injectors are in excellent condition.

I've also run other motors as high as 25 PSI (which was the max the turbo could provide) but my static compression ratios was clear down around 6.9 or 7:1 as I remember. I was also was running water injection, which helps lower cylinder temperatures. I don't know what the static compression ratio of the F40 is, but that's also a major factor in how high you can dial up the boost (usually). On the car where I ran 25 PSI+, you definitely could feel how the most power gains occurred up to about 15 PSI, then started to sort of trail away. After about 20 PSI, it felt like you were over stressing the motor and not really gaining as much additional power as you did from say boosting the car up from 8 PSI to 15 PSI, for example. On that particular motor, I also had to employ a setup which retarded the timing over a certain boost level as I recall.

Anyway, for pump gas, especially without any sort of sophisticated ECU's and engine management software, I would stick to about 1.0 Bar max for the street. I think I would also look into installing the LM intercoolers - or whatever the larger F40 intercoolers are - if you haven't already. That seems like a really nice upgrade from what I have seen and might allow you to safely run 1.0 Bar with more of a margin of error than using the stock size intercoolers.

Just my 2 cents.

Ray

 

Ross, isn't your car an euro f40? If so, why are you even worrying about boost pressure and fuel quality? Unless your car ecu was tuned at some point, oem, euro f40s are tuned for the (still) crappy low octane italian fuel. +98ron will probably do more harm than good, causing detonations, especially given the execessive amounts of fuel f40s inject at any range.