Technical engine documentation?

Just curious what information you are looking for exactly? Usually someone in a position to rebuild this sort of motor and/or swap over to using "stronger rods and pistons" is someone who is also able to sort all this information out either from the hardware provided by the company supplying the new rods and bolts and/or through simply taking measurements during the tear down, inspection process. Not sure what specific info you are looking for exactly, but usually most torque specifications are derived by the size and material of the fastener. You can usually download specs from some place like ARP and use that as a good general guideline for torquing down nuts and bolts. There are also formulas for clamping loads for things like head bolts, studs, etc. On my Toyota, I run slightly higher torque on my head bolt studs, for example; but each additional 5 or 10 lbs of torque translates into something like an additional 1000 lbs of clamping force (or whatever the math ended up being). So you have to be careful.

Stuff like piston to wall clearances, bolt torque/stretch, camshaft timing, etc, etc. all that is a function of whatever modifications you are going to make in most cases, as well as the specific alloys being used. Usually most things like connecting rod bearing clearances, cylinder wall to piston clearances, cylinder wall taper, piston ring gaps, etc. - all that stuff should basically be able to be determined as you build the motor and select parts and figure out what oils you are going to run. There are generally accepted guidelines for a lot of things: piston ring gap is often a function of piston diameter multiplied by some factor based on application. Same for bearing journals.

As far as the factory info... not sure if that information is out there for the motor itself. Sometimes you can find people on eBay who have downloaded PDF files off what appears to be the computers in Italy and are selling the information kinda "out the back door". On my 458 Italia, for example, years ago when the car first came out, I bought a manual from a guy in Italy on eBay and the information appeared to be a direct download from some internal Ferrari documents. I don't know the full story, but the information regarding the motor was missing (stuff like piston size, etc, etc). The seller claimed he was "going to get that info soon", but I never heard back and he vanished off eBay.

If you search eBay right now, there are a couple people based out of Italy selling PDF versions of the 488 service manual. That's probably about as close as you are gonna get. Your best bet is to email those guys and ask if the PDF docs contain specifics related to the engine specifications.

Why do you need stronger pistons and rods? Higher boost levels coming?

Ray

 

Sounds like a fun project. Yeah, having the factory specs as a road map is always helpful.

Ferrari-tech and/or Rifledriver might have some idea where you can obtain the factory motor / rebuild specs. I believe I have it for the 360, but that's about it.

Ray