I was curious, are the pistons on the Ferrari 360 Modena forged ??? What about the other parts, like conrods ?
Pistons are forged. Conrods are titanium. Factory blueprinted all 360 engines to 2% tolerance and dyno tested them right upto 10k rpm as it has been suggested but never confirmed. There are color codes for Conrods and pistons during assembly. The 360 Challenge and CS engines where balanced even more accurately, to within 0.5% tolerance. Heads where also polished on CS and unique pistons to slightly raise CR. From CS engine no. 89460, a new connecting rod was utilized which had a molybdenum insert in the area where the connecting rods are touching and allows greater end float. It's amazing the difference in con rod weights. To keep efficiency of production they where categorized.. See pics. Lightest con rods could be 380g vs heaviest being 408g, although not used on the same engine build. Between cylinders the maximum permissable difference was 4g. Image Unavailable, Please Login
I'm a visual kinda learner as well as an engine builder so when you correlate these figures to something common that we are all familiar with, like engine bay side panels, it's pretty impressive. The aluminum panels are about 1880g each while the OEM CF ones are about 893g each. So given the figures above, a full set of 8 conn rods weighs less than BOTH aluminum side panels on a Modena..
I believe Mahle are the (forged) piston suppliers to Ferrari, incl F1. They do great pistons for your muscle car and virtually any other car too.
