My TR's engine finally DONE! Lots of PICS...

For those who may have been following my exploits of doing a full service on my Testarossa, I would like to submit the latest pics showing progress made so far.

Yesterday I made new plug wires, cleaned the dist. caps, and assembled everything onto the motor. I bought wire in bulk as well as the crimp connectors locally - now there's a switch! Instead of using the old wire lengths I placed them on the motor itself and cut them to the length that gave the cleanest installation. Then brought everything into the house to sit in front of the TV and watch my favorite car-related shows. It is quite a time consuming job for a TR. IMPORTANT TIP: After making each wire I measured the resistance to see that everything was okay, normally you'd think that would be sufficient. But when I screwed the wires into the dist. caps the connection was not always good, on 5 out of 12 wires I had to snip and re-attach them until I got a good ohm reading. I also had to source a carbon button for one cap as it was practically disolved. I got one from a Mercury Tracer cap and had to sand it slightly to fit, and made a spring from a ballpoint pen. Again very tedious work but cheap...rare on anything Ferrari. The last thing to do on the motor is make and install gaskets for the oil return lines at the bottom of the cam covers.

I have 2 exhaust systems, one will be left stock. The other I'm thinking of hacking up into a free flowing system the hollowed precats and cats, and then going out the back of the car...havent' worked out all the details yet.

Please excuse the messy shop as I've been so focused on getting the motor done I haven't made time to clean things up.

Also note all the new fasteners...and the old crappy ones. I had to buy new as you just can't get first rate results any other way.

I would like to describe each picture with text, but the "preview post" option doesn't seem to show the pics in the post text as in the old system, so I'm not sure how to manipulate them...so I'm spelling it all out here with all the pics below...I hope!

 

So far it's taken about 3 months, but for over one month I let it sit. So I would say 6 to 8 weeks for everything...including all the detailing, painting, and sourcing new parts. LOTS of hours and late nights!

On the air intake box I used Plasticote brand black crinkle paint. Using crinkle paint can be difficult as it took me two tries to get it right. You need to do 3 heavy uniform coats about 10 to 15 minutes apart in the right temp and humidity. The hard part is getting the coat to be "uniform" as the second and third coats are hard to tell visually. And the stuff is hard to get off if you get it wrong and have to redo it. I am happy with the results on my air box.

For lifting the car I simply used two floor jacks, one on each side just in front of the rear subframe attachment points. You must go very slow and carefully. Once the rear was as high as I could get it, I lower the front down to within inches of the floor to get the rear end to pivot upwards and gain maximum clearance. And with the rear bumper removed the motor rolls right out the back on the dolly. I removed the front wheels to allow the nose to go as low as possible and the rear as high as possible. It's a bit tense as you watch the nose get so close to the floor...you must be very alert at all times. A helper would also be good as a 2nd pair of eyes may see something your missing.

 

Thank You Everyone! Yes, I am very happy with the results of my work so far. Tonight I installed the engine back into the car. I only bolted up the subframe for now. It's a lot of...up....down...check this...check that....down...up....well you get the point. Not an easy job for one person using hand tools and floor jacks, but it's in. Tomorrow I will start hooking up the various systems, hoses, and wires. Even though I cleaned up the engine bay,the motor just doesn't look as good in the car as it does out of it!

 

Well...for the hoses I kinda cheated a bit. I looked high and low for metric braided hoses with no success. I was in my favorite local autoparts store walking past the machine shop when a machinist saw the hoses and said "Hey....we don't sell that stuff to the public...that's only for the big trucks we repair!" And I said these came off my car....are you saying you have this type of hose? Well they had "similar" hose in inches, so I bought the closest size they had. I then had to use a hole bit and drill to ream out the hoses at the ends just slightly, gotta be careful doing this! I then cleaned them out very good and that is it. The crankcase vent hose that goes to the air cleaner was the most difficult one. I could barely make it fit and then only after lots of wrestling with it. So I will probably change this for the correct one soon. There is a European Auto repair shop a little over an hours drive from me, I plan on taking a trip up there soon to get the right ones.