Gearing up for major

I am getting ready for my 355 major and procuring the necessary items to complete it. I thought I would share a photo of the first "Genuine Ferrari" part needed to start.
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Indeed. The more neglected the car, the thicker this part will need to be.

 

That bag will need to look like this.

 

Just an update. The engine is out and getting ready to degree the cams and replace tensioners, tensioner bearings, and belts. Also will be replacing those bulged CV boots and some other 27 year old items while I'm at it. So far, (knock-on-wood) everything is going well and haven't found anything that looks out of the ordinary. I'm hoping the project will continue in this direction.

 

Getting ready to reinstall the engine back into car this weekend, and hopefully will get her put back into her winter spot in the garage and thus freeing up the lift. I have to say that degreeing the cams wasn't that bad. I think the hardest part was getting the dial indicator rod to sit on the follower (tappet) edge and stay at a right angle especially on the exhaust cams. But once that tweaking was done, it was able to be followed out just as the WSM outlined. I checked all 4 cams before changing the belts, cam seals, tensioner bearings and tensioners and then after. It turns out that they must have been done before because they were all dead nuts except for the #8 exhaust was a 1/2 of a degree out. I made sure to check each one several times to be sure I was coming up with the same measurement each time. I can definitely see that if your dial indicator isn't sitting perfectly you can end up with some pretty erroneous numbers and get confused. This is where having a lot of patience really pays off. Anyways, I would like to give a word of thanks to Kenny D for posting his videos as I found them to be very helpful and would recommend that anyone doing this for the first time watch these and use them as a guide along side of your WSM. I have degreed cams before on small and big block chevy's, but this engine is no such animal. When you see that these followers need to be within .06mm or .002" and that translates to 1/2 of a degree on the crank, it becomes clear that there is little to no room for error. I will post when the job is complete.

 

Well, I was able to get the car put back together over the New Years weekend, and after completing I can say that it really isn't that bad of a job as long as you take your time and don't rush anything. I will post some pics that I took along the way. The whole "lock and swap" vs "degreeing" argument is really unfounded by my perspective at least, as it was relatively easy to just do it the way it is outlined in the WSM and it is nice to know that after you are done the cams are timed where they should be. I will mention a few findings that I feel are worth noting; the first of which was after removing the timing belt covers I noticed the 5-8 side had a lot of slack on the opposite side of the tensioner. As soon as I rotated the engine clockwise the tensioner moved out and took up the slack, and the belt appeared to be tensioned properly. As a side note, both tensioners were replaced in 2003. Another snag worth noting was upon bleeding the brakes, I was able to vacuum bleed the LR just fine but when I got to the RR I only got about 1/2 pint of fluid out and that was it. I put my wife in the car to attempt to manually bleed and when she pushed the pedal down, I had no rear brakes at all and couldn't get any fluid back there. It was only after starting the car that I was able to resume bleeding, so I assume that the ABS system was preventing me from getting rear brakes due to movement of a valve. Pressure bleeding may have been a better option. The clutch bled just fine.
And if anyone replaces their coolant hoses with the ones provided in the Ricambi 30K kit, make sure you tighten the bejesus out of those hose clamps to prevent coolant leaks! I thought I would break those clamps going that tight, but they are pretty stout and were able to stop the leaks only after reaching full tightness.

 

Well kinda too late, but I don't really have any driveability issues right now. I'm not 100% sure what the 355 uses for injectors, but I know GM used multec injectors that were self cleaning and couldn't be cleaned. But considering that you had yours done I will keep that in mind should any issues arise.

 

To post some other info I gathered while doing my major, here are some before and after measurements;
Old belt #1-4 intake was 2.41mm @ 0.5 degree ATDC. #1-4 exhaust was 2.29mm @ 2.5 ATDC.
Old belt #5-8 intake was 2.41mm @ 0 degrees and #5-8 exhaust was 2.29mm @ 0.5 degrees BTDC
When fitting new belts I was able to get those numbers as close to zero degrees as I could within less than half of a degree on the wheel. I can see why folks who set 4 cam engines for racing like to use bigger degree wheels, the one I used was a Comp cams I believe 14".
I attempted to attach a video of the 5-8 belt that was loose on the drive side after I removed the belt covers but it was too big of a file. And in a previous post I mentioned that the tensioners were last replaced in 2003, but after looking again in my service history I found they were replaced again in 2010. But as I understand it the tensioner in NOT supposed to allow the plunger to be pushed back in, only out as the belt wears. And when I rotated the engine clockwise the tensioner clearly extended to take up the slack, so after I shut the engine off the crankshaft must have slightly rotated counter-clockwise and the tensioner plunger retracted allowing slack to develop on the backside (drive) of the belt.
Also, another worth-mentioning item found in the WSM is that they want you to stretch the new belts and then "run" the engine before rechecking. Boy that would be a lot of work!

 

EDIT Just as an fyi the last major was done in 2016 with belts and tensioner bearings. I did see some grease escaping from the bearing seals, and the tensioners were over 2.5mm showing that some belt stretch was there. So the 5-7 year interval would seem to hold up as a good timeframe, unless the car is tracked or stored outdoors in the weather.

 

OK, but I was with the understanding that the tensioners were only able to extend and not retract under normal operation. In fact, the only way to retract them is to remove them and push them back in with a bench vice. But maybe there is some allowable retraction?