The Adventures of 42137: A Shipwright's Tale

Looks like it's been a while. Mostly that's because I've been doing other things but also because the car has been mostly problem free. Kinda. But there's been a little stumble right off idle. It's noticeable when pulling away from a stop as a little hesitation. After the revs are up it is gone. Seemed ignition related.

I pulled all the plugs and they all looked good. Then I pulled the rear cap and wires off. With a DVM I measured the coil lead at around 1.5k ohms, but at low voltage DC all four spark plug leads measured open. While this doesn't necessarily indicate poor spark performance, a DC path is a good indication things are good. I redid a couple of the lead ends at the cap end and one of the plug ends. That one plug end had a bit of black crud and the clip that goes on the plug looked a bit corroded. Was this my misfire? I cleaned it up and crimped it back on, but I also ordered a 10 pack of terminals from Kingsborne.

I carefully looked at the extenders. I have three black extenders and one red in this bank. Possibly I had a black one fail in the past and I dug out the red from my old GT4 parts bin? Hmmm. But I think I found another possible culprit on the red extender. There's a tiny black mark inside the extender and a matching tiny black mark on the outside, so it goes through. I added eight extenders to my Kingsborne order. If this was a black extender there is no possible way I would have found that mark. To get me through until the man in the brown truck comes in a week I put a couple layers of heat shrink over the extender to try to stop the bleed through. A test drive seems to indicate that something I did made it better.

 

As I was discussing with another 308 owner, the red and black extenders I have are the same length. The red one measures two thousand ohms, the black one measures zero ohms.

Kingsborne says the black zero ohm is correct for a QV.
Image Unavailable, Please Login

 

My understanding is that a resistor is needed in the circuit for radio frequency noise suppression. Spiral wound ignition wire is also required.

Modern spark plugs have the resistor built into them so it makes sense that the 0 ohm extenders are appropriate. However, if I understand things correctly, I don't think it would matter if an additional 2k of resistance were added by using the 2,000 ohm extenders.

Out of curiosity I measured the resistance of an unused vintage Champion N6GY spark plug (from my 308 Tool Kit). (To my surprise) It measured near zero ohms. I measured the resistance of a modern Bosch W8LCR spark plug (for my 1987 BMW) and it measured a little over 7,000 ohms.

 

It's right there in the part number: The "R" in W8LCR indicates it is a resistance plug.

 

Aha! Thank you!

 

So if you already using the Resistored spark plugs, you use the black with zero resistance and vice versa?

 

I haven't studied it, I don't know. It doesn't seem like the amount of resistance needs any precision. The wires have resistance also. The thing about the wires is that the resistance increases with length, so the #1 plug lead is twice as long as the #4 lead, so it has twice the resistance. Does that matter?

The untrained (including me) think of electricity in DC terms. But AC and RF don't play by DC rules. Dead shorts at DC can be open at RF and vice-versa. I know enough about AC to know that there's a lot to know, and I don't know squat.

 

The resistance value does vary per wire but doesnt really matter.

But you would generally not use resistor extenders or plugs with resistance leads.

 

So it tuns out that little black mark on the extender wasn't (the only?) problem. The stumble continued. Eventually I go to the front distributor car and pulled it out. Holy Moley! The coil lead termination in the dist cap was total charred crap. I can't believe that it fired at all. I had a chunk of Kingsborne wire left over and replaced the whole wire. Now it runs as smooth as it should!!

Magnecor has sold the red sheathing for the spark plug wires in the past, but I tried to order some and got an email response that they can not currently supply it. Hmmm.
Image Unavailable, Please Login

 

The car has not been oil tight. I drove to my dad's house and wouldn't park in his driveway because I didn't want to leave a Jackson Pollack-inspired memento. It's really time to do something about that. I sprayed it all off with Gunk and found that the oil gauge sender was leaking from the copper washer. About three drops a minute, that really adds up! And it goes down the left side of the engine, but some also goes into the valley of the V and then runs down the right side of the engine as well to ensure the maximum mess. I couldn't get a wrench on the flats of the sender, so I then tackled removing the whole oil filter stand. It's not hard, but the oil pressure switch needs to come off the back side of the casting to get the back nut. It takes a deep socket, all of my extensions, and a u-joint on the end of the ratchet to go under the plenum and unscrew it. It came off ok, but apparently I must have hit the plastic end because it was broken when I pulled it out. I used the 308 parts cross reference thread and got a replacement on Amazon. Perfect fit.

The wire on the gauge sender is getting a little bit brittle. I pulled the pin from the connector and slid some heat shrink over the wire. I hope this buys a lot of time. It doesn't look that wire would be easy to replace. It just disappears into some potting.
Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login

 

A thread here finally got me to order new fuse blocks. I didn't even look at mine, I just assumed. I have very slow windows, probably that's all I really needed to know. So Birdman sent me a pair. I was pleasantly surprised to find not too much when removing the old blocks. I did certainly have a little bit of a brown connector for one of the radiators, but compared to other pictures I've seen here - usually of the fuel pump wire - this wasn't bad at all. I'd much prefer to have the fuse blocks that fit the original covers, but I think they are out of production right now.

Putting them in was straight forward. I used a Sharpie to number the back side of all of the connectors as I pulled them off to keep everything in order. The windows are a tiny bit faster, but certainly not like new. But I don't have to grab them and pull them up anymore, they will lift on their own....eventually.

 

I have had an Unobtanium lever bezel in the parts drawer for at least a year. That means the bezel actually broke probably two years ago. Pretty straightforward job. The key to removing the panel is the screws under the ash tray.

Those bezels are expensive, but they are like jewelry they are finished so nice. A shame no one ever notices them unless they are broken. Hey, that's an advantage of a GT4! You get to stare right at these all the time! The GTS/B are down and back, sort of out of normal view.
Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login
I didn't get the replacement inlays. These are good enough. But they were all loose, They come up in the wind. I used some super thin double stick tape and stuck them back on. All good now.

 

All of this playing with the center console and the new fuse blocks reminded me that my driver's side window switch was getting dodgy. It took a few presses for the up contact to work sometimes. Centerline Alfa has switches that are a pretty darn good replacement. They plug right in and the arrows are an outline, not solid like a lot of the replacements sold today. The only real difference is the surround around the switch is black plastic instead of black anodized aluminum. Hard to even tell the difference. $42 each. The best part - it doubled the window speed! They went from "slow" to "not so bad for a 35 year old car", a great improvement.
Image Unavailable, Please Login

 

Time to tackle one last niggling item. My fast warm up hasn't been working, so starts are a little rough. Not that it doesn't start right up, but without a little extra air when dead cold idle is a little low. I tested my AAV and it seems a bit sticky. I sprayed a little lube in there hoping for some improvement, but I'm not sure what more can be done for that. The gawdawful USA-only 2k RPM cold idle booster hasn't been working either and that's a blessing when the AAV is working fine. I had machined a plug to go in the tube and then drilled a 1/4" hole down the middle, basically to throttle back the 2k rpm to more like 1200rpm. But it doesn't work because the electro vacuum valve isn't working. These little solenoid vacuum activators were all over my 1970's cars so finding one of these should be a snap, right?

Not so much. I did find something very close from AutohausAZ. It had these pins for connectors instead of spades, I think it is a BMW or MBZ part. I soldered spade crimps right on the pins. It also had an extra ear that I bent around the Ferrari bracket. It's close. And it's buried back in there. See what it looks like installed? Blends right in.
Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login
A strange side effect of replacing this is that the cold engine light in the dash suddenly started working. I can't even remember how long it's been since that light came on. In fact, I'm not 100% certain it ever worked in this car, I might be remembering it from my GT4 days. I didn't do anything to fix it, at least not intentionally, but now it comes on when cold and goes off after a few minutes of running. Cold idle still seems a little slow, and the difference in idle speed when the light goes off is minimal. I think I still have a little work to do here yet.

 

August 17, 2019, Bayonet and Blackhorse Golf Course, Seaside, California, 6:30AM, Concorso Italiano. Apparently only yellow cars are not afraid of a little wet grass. That's mine wayyy back there. Not mine are the two beautiful yellow Dinos in front, unfortunately.
Image Unavailable, Please Login

 

Later as the grass dried off the red cars were able to come out and join us.
View attachment 2821669

 

There is a "cold engine light?" Where is it? My 1983 Owner's Manual does not list it.

As always, magnificent work. I wish I could do the stuff you do.
​

YIKE! I have the very same Kingsborne wires (… or hopefully maybe not). Gulp.

Regarding the sheaths, I looked high and low. Could not find. I bought a set (and wires and … ) off of an fchat member who redid his 328. It would have been nice to use new stuff.

 

There are four lights in the dash binnacle. Upper Left is heater fan, upper right is cold engine, lower right is alternator, lower left is hazards. What do you have?

 

Big difference!

Instead in the upper right I have a "Spia segnalazione motore freddo" which translates to, … oh oh, … "Low engine temperature warning light".

I've never paid attention before. It lights at self-check upon engine start so its not the bulb.

I like my crow served with Siracha sauce please.

… I like your idea of reconfiguring the "Spia defroster" (heater fan light) to show when the radiator fans are on. Slightly more useful.

 

I just don't understand why they chose to highlight the heater fan. The heater works and you can feel it. They should have had it indicate the air conditioning being on because when the AC is on everyone thinks, "Is that really on??"!

 

Can you believe that it's been five years since the belts went on? I can't, but I have proof. When the Bay Area 308 group all changed belts back in 2014 Brian had commemorative polo shirts made for us.
Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login

 

So it's time for new belts. I found two leaking seals when I pulled the belts off. That's kind of disappointing in that either the seals don't last long, I bunged them up installing them, or I have some underlying issue that is causing seals to fail. The front intake cam seal had a very obvious oil trail running down the head and the lower front belt drive shaft was leaking. That one is interesting in that the seal is inboard of the bearing so the oil has to make its way past three seals to leak - the oil seal, the bearing inboard seal and the bearing outboard seal. But when it does it washes the grease out of the bearing, so it is a little extra messy. And a much harder fix.
Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login

 

Cam seal was easy to replace. Just pop the old one out, press the new one in carefully. However the lower drive is a project and requires at least one special tool.

The snap ring comes out easily, but the bearing... You need the tool. Draper 43137 Expert Small Insert Bearing Puller. I found it on Amazon and it shipped from Italy in record time. Nice. The instructions are a little Ikea-ish in that there are pictures, but not super clear instructions and I started off wrong. I mistakenly thought their picture indicating to drill the bearing to get the balls out of the race. I very quickly realized that drilling two hardened steel parts separated by a gap with a twist drill bit was a bad idea. A bit of contemplating made the obvious...obvious. I don't need to remove the balls, I need to wreck the ball retainer ring so I can scoot the balls out of the way of the puller inserts. A much smaller drill bit fits in the gap and I drilled between all of the balls and made a mess of the retainer, pulled the shrapnel out with small pliers and now the balls could be (sort of) moved around in the race. From there the tool works stunningly well. The bearing just pulls right out.

Behind that is a conical washer thing to press the bearing against the snap ring. Behind that is another snap ring. Behind that is the seal, deep in the hole. I drove a couple of long cabinet screws into the seal and pulled it out with pliers. Getting it all apart was easy-ish.
Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login

 

So I ordered all the parts for this: a new bearing, a new seal, and that little thin washer thing. And discovered a little gotcha for 1983 308 QV USA car owners. It turns out at some point during QV production Ferrari changed all of this. The bore got bigger and the shaft got bigger. This is shown in the QV parts manual, but it is not shown in the QV(US) parts manual at all. So I ordered the parts from the QV(US) parts diagrams because I think that's what car I have, and got all the wrong size stuff. I bought the parts from a couple of suppliers based on availability. I haven't yet returned the bearing, but Ricambi immediately sent a replacement seal with no hassle because Daniel is awesome. For some reason I had a bearing in my personal stock. Double order from last time? Same as a Moto Guzzi front wheel bearing? Whatever, there were two in the drawer.

How to press the seal in? Use the old bearing. I spend a minute on the belt sander making the OD smaller and a minute with the Dremel tool sanding drum making the ID bigger. It now slides in with minimal clearance, no interference fit and totally square to the bore. The final little but needed a big deep socket to get the last couple of mms in.

 

After pressing the seal in with the old bearing I had to use the Draper puller to get it back out. I set the snap ring with the bearing also, but it needed a little fiddling with snap ring pliers to get it all seated right. That little conical washer thing was a pain. I eventually attached it to the backside of the bearing with a couple of dabs of grease and then pressed the new bearing in with the old bearing. I didn't like the amount of stress this operation puts on the inboard bearing. Maybe the right thing to do is make an attachment for the shaft that would allow a nut to press it all in as smoothly as possible. It would still put axial stress on the bearing, but maybe not as much. I gently tapped it in with a hammer until it cleared the snap ring land. Snap ring was as snap rings are and took some finesse to get it all in.

From here it was just reassembly and belts. I had marked the pulleys and old belts before it all came apart. I transferred the marks to the new belts, put the new belts on. I always make two marks on each pulley and the belt, it just makes me feel better. Even then I checked everything at each step. Getting the cam pulley bolts torqued to spec is a challenge. How to hold the cam and not put tons of stress on the belt? I'm reminded that the older cars have a metal tab to ensure the bolts don't move and how much I appreciate that. OTOH, if the bolts do come loose you should probably get a giant oily mess to alert you before anything catastrophic happens.
Image Unavailable, Please Login