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Well, there's that notion of building a valve shaped cup into the top of the piston .... provided you don't care what it does to the flame/pressure wave. Toyota did have it's troubles. The 3sGTE wasn't made for the MR2. They yanked the 3sGTE out of the Celica Turbo rally car for the MR2T after dropping the Mk1's supercharged 4aGZE. From a quick google, most honda 16v 4-bangers are interference engines, almost all nissans, some of the ford escorts, most hyundais, most mitsus (and the mopars carrying mitsu engines), the chevy spectrum, ... and every italian car I've ever owned are all high compression interference engines. About the only non-interference engine I've ever owned was the 3sGTE ... unless you count the '50s and '60s american iron with rocker arms. And, over a four year period, my '88 Celica AllTrac (3sGTE) and '88 Ferrari 328 consumed just about the same amount of maintenance money. (Part of that was the turbo that went bad and melted the pastic fitting on the radiator. -- What rocket scientist uses a plastic radiator connection on a turbo cooling line?) Okay, so the Alfa uses chains. Ask a mechanic about changing a tensioner on one of those. It might be easier to just change belts every few years.
Help me understand how these belts can be so degraded in just 36 months that they're ready to fail, regardless of mileage. Assuming the belts are not exposed to oil by a leaking seal, how do they get so weak just sitting under tension? Is the material is deteriorating so quickly that there should be "freshness dates" on the belts to let you know when they were manufactured? These things are not exactly flying off the shelves of the parts warehouses, so you could be buying a belt that's already expired? Is the tension on the belt that excessive? I suppose there is an optimal freqency for at least turning over the engine to avoid having one piece of the belt curled tightly for too long? At some point, shouldn't the mileage enter the equation? If left long enough, is there chance the damn thing might just snap sitting in the garage? Mark
I have been driving F car a long time. I presently have a great mechanic here in Florida for almost 6 years who has been fair and honest who services my cars and I go by his advice. I have great Repect Brian Crall (rifledriver) whom I never met because he has given this forum so much of his valueable time and hisknowledge and experience to help countless people on this forum ==Priceless DM
yes...BRIAN CRALL is my mechanic and he is also a good person and a great mechanic to boot. he is doing my belt service very soon and i'm doing mine at 4 years.. just for the peace of mine....i will not let eney other mechanic work on my testarossa. thats just the way i personaly do things ....to me its about trust of the man working on my T R and i do trust his knowlage and experience ...................
I have an 82 Spider. It has a chain and I have not done anything but drive it and change the oil for 10 years. What do I need to do to maintain that chain?
Are you crazy, asking that question in this forum??? These apparently have ALL been asked before and should not be asked again! When it comes to major services, valve guide issues, or cracked headers this is the Ferrarichat Library, not forum. Seriously now, I've read that it could be the belt stretching over time if it sits in one position without being started. Makes some sense to me; I just wish they would introduce (or someone in the aftermarket would produce) a better belt to fix this scenario. Hmmm, wonder if any of the major belt manufacturers could custom produce a 'premium' belt that would last longer? Heck, $1000 per belt for 5-7 years? Sign me up!
New high tech materials allow for better belts. But, I suspect that there is such a small market for them that no company wants to do the experimental work to design, test and validate the lifespan of a new belt construction. There would be no payback, thus no incentive to make newer ones that would last 10 years or more. Most ompanies want to invest money to expant their market, not shrink it. New belt material would shrink that market. Using old belt technology and increasing the frequency of recommended changes, increased the market.
All true, but replacement belts for Ferrari's can hardly be considered a big market. I was thinking if their volume was cut in half and the price tripled it'd be a win-win. My company does auto parts, OEM, race, and aftermarket (not belts though). I know we'd do a small custom premium process batch for a premium price. But I have no idea if anything like this is even possible with belts, just throwing the idea out.
The slack should be taken up but there should be essentially no tension on these belts. Room temperatures are best for storage and normal operating engine temperatures do not hurt belts much. Very hot operating conditions and sustained high RPM do degrade belts but the worst thing is the cold. Those belts that get to freezing and below temperatures and sit without movement for months at a time go bad fastest. The 3 year limit is based on this worst case situation. My Maranello got used 1 - 2 times a week. It never saw temperatures below 50 F and the engine oil never got above 200 F. This is what I would consider the best of conditions for belt longevity. Although I am considered a maintenance freak I still had no intension of replacing my belts before 5 years and even then, at my leisure after that time approached. aehaas
I"parked" belts for long periods under tension will cause uneven streeses within the belt especially if you make a habit of switching off a red hot engine.
thats really it, not stretching so much as a 'set'...like a flat spotted tire, it no longer spins easily or happily! tensioner failure is also a factor......sitting ones corrode. thanks for weighing in aehaas! merry christmas! that's a smart man right there, too!
LOL! M-B 308 single-row timing chains were prone to damage too. On BMWs, the issue is the chain guides and tensioners, not the chain, per se.
No, that's not what I meant to imply. I'm only suggesting that if you do a search, find a thread on the same subject from last month, read it all the way through (all 20 pages!) and then if you still have something new to add, add it on that thread. Just because a thread goes off the top page doesn't mean it's gone. All the people who contributed to it are still here. You are better off to revive an old thread than start a new one on the same subject. Birdman
First of all, we all know that they do not typically fail in 3 years. Many people here have pushed the envelope and made it past 10 years on a belt. Most people will also admit that 10 years is too long and you are playing Russian Roulette with your engine. So if 3 is too short and 10 is too long, what's the happy number? Everyone likes to compare the Ferrari belt with a Honda. Yeah, the belt on my Honda is supposed to be changed at 105,000 miles. What's wrong with Ferrari? 1. Most Ferraris are driven less than once a week. Belts that sit do not last as long as belts that are used. Use it or lose it. The Honda is used daily. It's better for the belt. Ferrari belts do not get used enough to "expire" from miles, so it's time, not miles, that dictates their need for change. 2. In the case of 308s and Mondials, we're talking about 30 year old belt designs. You can't compare them to modern car belts. Yeah, it would be wonderful if someone would come up with a modern belt for a 308, but I don't see it happening unless you go the route Scott did and make new pulleys to accept a belt made for another car. 3. A Honda is designed from the start to be reliable. A Ferrari is designed to be high performance, and the associated maintenance required for that is secondary. Ferrari assumes that people who can afford their cars can afford to have them serviced properly. If you are like me and actually can't afford to have them serviced properly, better learn how to do it yourself! 4. With certain exceptions (i.e. S2000) Honda engines are not designed to rev and perform like Ferrari engines. Ferrari has to assume worst case when they decide how often to require belt changes. What's worst case? That you let the car sit for weeks without being driven, then you drive it at redline all day on Sunday, put it away hot, and ignore it for 2 more weeks. Repeat. If you think this is a false assumption, I say it's not for many people. Based on all that and more, they decide that 3 years is a good interval to recommend. It's pretty much irrelevant because unless your car is under warrantee, they are not going to fix your engine if the timing belt breaks at 2 years. They have analyzed the data and made a recommendation that will keep you safe from destroying your engine 99% of the time. It's a recommendation. You can choose to follow or ignore their advice. Your choice. I personally am going to go with 4 years. But I can do the belts myself. It takes me a weekend and costs under $200. I really don't think of it as a biggie. Then again, I don't have a car that needs to have the engine dropped to replace the belts. My opinion is that you can't treat this car like a Honda in service because it's not a Honda in any other way. You want the performance of a Ferrari but the reliability of a Honda. Not gonna happen, especially with older Ferraris. These cars have to be maintained to a higher standard. if you don't want to deal with it, Ferrari ownership might not be for you. Just my $.02 Birdman
Tommy, On the Alfa chain, there are two, as you probably know. The lower chain has no tensioner, but if it gets slack, it makes racket. The upper chain fails only if it is adjusted too tight (when it "whines" or has a musical tone emanating from it) or if the tech doesn;t put the master link back together. We have many (over a hundred) Alfa 4's with over 140K miles, some with over 200K miles, that have plenty of adjustment left and are not due for replacement. There is no "suggested" replacement interval from Alfa, not even for the Giulietta! We replace the chains when we're doing an "overhaul" (replacing all wear items) or building a race engine, but I know of no failures directly attributable to the chain in servicing thousands of Alfas over the last twenty-five years... The V-6 is another matter, however... Oops, did somebody say belts?!?!? <very big grin> -Peter
I was told that brand new belts that sits on the shelfs also have expiration date just like milk. Is this true?
A. They have no date. B. They do not sit on shelves that long. Ferrari parts are expensive and no one stocks lots of parts that don't move. You do not get to be a parts manager by being dumb in your inventory levels. Any dealer that does not turn fast moving parts like timing belts every month or two is out of business any way. The only thing that moves faster is oil filters. Due to the cost of inventory the Ferrari business nearly runs on the "Just on time" philosophy. A very small parts department can hold a Million in inventory easily.
What he said. The wrinkle is that you and I can get a nice 308 for $40K. If 308s were $100K and 328s were $120K -- i.e., the cars were still going to buyers who don't bother reading invoices or recording checks -- those $3K-$4K majors would slip by unnoticed. In the grand scheme of Ferrari-dom, it's small change, and the 308/328 are still a raging bargain.
I guess I am getting tired of this endlessly repeated topic as well. But I guess where I come from is how we, as a club, a group, a community, whatever you want to call this place...what would we tell the new prospective owner? Are we not teachers? Is not the largest reason all of us are here to learn and enjoy these machines?? When you learn to fly the instructors primary teaching is how to keep the student from killing themself. The flying community was intelligent enough to come up with rules that no one argued over. I believe we should do the same. As I have said elsewhere, I dont think anyone here really gives a darn how anyone wants to take care of thier car unless your trying to sell it. Its at that point that everything is laid on the table, or hid under the rug. We have many cases of cars being pawned off with rediculously obvious errors in mileage. Cars are being sold with less that 10K reported miles having shoddy carpet and cracked and split open seats, backed up with invoices no less! Some of us have known of cars that blew belts that were suddenly ushered away and sold indescreatly so no one was any the wiser. No one really wants to pay top dollar for a car that blew a motor. We know this. No matter what you would do with your own car, what you prescribe someone else do with thiers carries a lot of wieght. If YOU say the belts will last 7 years and 50K miles, and certain individuals blow motors, IMHO, YOU are responsible. These are not dime a dozen Hondas or Toyotas we can run off to a junk yard and buy a motor for for $600 and slap back together in a weekend. Many of us want the original motor in the car. I myself want cylinder heads that have never had thier valves bashed in or been welded on. Yet there are some here who have prescribed not even servicing the car, just drive it until the belts fail and overhaul the engine at that time, saving all the maintenence costs to get to meltdown point. I cant even comment on how rediculous this sounds coming from a place that supposedly is so in love with cars we hold the Ferrari above all others, yet want to maintain it for less than a Honda. To recap: A 308 engine "repair" after a timing belt failure will cost a minimum of $6000 in parts and machine work. This is an "in car" repair to only one cylinder head, without any whileyourintheritis. And thats on a car with no cylinder head or piston damage. Take it into a shop or a dealer and be prepared to spend in excess of $15K A 308 engine "overhaul", with the engine out, will cost well in excess of $10K in parts and minor machine work. Start adding in mashed cylinder head repairs, or needing to find a used head because yours is beyond repair, and the costs can multiply beyond the value of the car. Be prepared to spend $20K or more at a dealer for a simple overhaul. Still want to compare these to a Honda or a Toyota? The only reason anyone, myself included, would prescribe changing the belts at an earlier point is simply to prevent "any" possiblity of failure. Honda and Toyota know that not all thier cars will go 100K on thier belts, but who cares? The few that dont arent going to cost Honda or Toyota that much in the big picture. The belts on 308's have, in some cases, been documented to go well past 50K miles and 10 years. Would we prescribe we all do the same? Ferrari recommends changing at 3 years or 15K miles. Anything past that you do at YOUR own risk. Although 5 years and 15K may probably be relatively safe, thats not what I want to prescribe YOU do. Myself, I would never want to encourage someone to walk out all the way to the edge. Its like pushing an airplane out to its absolute structural limits in a turn with a good friend along, and neither of your wearing a parachute. I really believe this argument should be settled for the good of the newbies coming in here and everyone stop arguing about it. They fail. Its only a matter of time and they will fail. We know this. We know it costs a hell of a lot of money. We know that in some cases people will be without the car for many many months, and possibly never see the car run again due to financial loss. Its happened. This question is going to keep getting asked and we need a unanimous answer to offer the newcomers. If after that they chose not to check or change oil or service thier car, thats thier deal. I hearby propose someone make an official Ferrarichat service schedule and we all agree to it. I appologise for the passion. NOT! I simply want to see as many of these cars kept on the road as possible by the people who truly love them. When a marginal car blows a belt, there is a good chance of it heading off to be cut up. Lets not let that happen.
