the lvferraripilot engine rebuild thread

Lots of cleaning and scrubbing today. Crank cleaned. Deck cleaned. power washed block and a few other parts. The main bearings have little to no wear.

I notice the bell housing a spacer plate must be cast from a different type of aluminum as I was not able to get them nearly as clean as I was able to with the block. As you can see, the block is super shiny while the other pieces are quite dull grayish.

I will use a flex-hone on the cylinders later tonight or tomorrow. I am using a 240 grit hone and will lubricate with 5w/30. I have used these in the past with great success. You just have to make sure you don't overdo it. I usually do 6 strokes clockwise and then 3 counter-clockwise at a pace of about 1 stroke/second.
Image Unavailable, Please Login
Image Unavailable, Please Login
Image Unavailable, Please Login
Image Unavailable, Please Login
Image Unavailable, Please Login
Image Unavailable, Please Login
Image Unavailable, Please Login

 

Timing driver cover and bearings are out and cleaned up. New bearings should be delivered Monday. The rings required very little filing. Top and second ring gap is set to .015. The heads should be ready Tuesday. I am going to wait until I have those on hand to drop the crank and pistons in so I can assemble all those items in one evening. Everything is looking good. I know I am going to hit a snag when I go to set those cams up.

Going to run with the stock early carb cams at first set to 110 lobe centers, as opposed to the stock 98 intake center (yikes!). With this compression that should put peak power around 7600ish. I know a little about the cam cogs/pegs/holes and their degree values but I have never actually set one up before. On paper I am good to go, but we all know how these things go once one is knee deep in this crap. Let's hope I don't win a Darwin award

 

The cylinder liners were flex-honed last night. Man I love that tool. Quick, easy, but dirty. Pics later.

I test-fit a piston and ring pack. The oil scraper rings were incredibly tight. A call to Newman calmed me down a bit (thanks Paul!). I called Total Seal this morning to see what I am working with here and as it turns out these are a standard 25lbs tension oil ring, and they are supposed to be hard to move! They relax a bit after a few cycles, but not much.
Pics later. At work yelling at people now.

 

I wish I could find these specs, but they are not in the manuals I am searching in. If anyone knows, I could really use the following torque specs:

mains bearing caps/nuts
rod bearing caps/nuts
cam caps/nuts
ring nuts on timing gears
ring nuts on drop gears
cam bolts to cam pulley
flywheel bolts

 

finally found some answers:

the 'Ferrari' way of torquing the heads is to first apply 35lbs of torque and then turn all the bolts 120 degrees from that 35lb position.

pulleys to cams: 72lbs
main bearing caps: 65lbs
camshaft caps: 6.5lbs
pressure plate to flywheel: 18lbs
connecting rod caps: 47.5lbs
flywheel to crank: 61.5lbs
ring nut to mainshaft: 129.5lbs
ring nut to clutch shaft: 144lbs

 

Mark, I found that method in a 328 tech manual.

 

Pics as promised
Image Unavailable, Please Login
Image Unavailable, Please Login
Image Unavailable, Please Login

 

Crappy pic from my iphone on my way out this morning. Short block assembled last night. Engine turns very smooth. My concerns regarding the tight oil scrapers is no longer there. A quick measurement for deck height with these pistons showed .047. Stock is .052. .005 does not make much of a difference with this motor, maybe .05-.07 compression, but the giant domes on these pistons bump things up quite a bit. I figure with these being forged rather then the stock cast pistons that these will expand to a yield a little bit taller deck height. Maybe another .003.
Image Unavailable, Please Login

 

Correct. I did not remove the liners as the liners themselves had less than .001 wear and taper. Had a couple of the liners required removing then I definitely would have removed them all and bored or replaced them correctly.

 

I considered getting them out, but was advised to not mess with them if the cylinders and rest of the engine was in good shape. A former dealer mechanic from Griswold Alfa/Ferrari and Ferrari of SF advised me this way. Different schools of thought for everyone I suppose.

 

You and Chris are going to have a couple serious engines once completed. I wouldn't be half as productive if it were not for my need to feed fchatters pics of my progress.


As a side note for anyone who knows Lotus engines. I was reviewing some cam profiles and came across the old Lotus '104' cam profile which was a rally cam they used years ago which is now a very popular upgrade for early NA Esprit owners (with hi-cpr setup). The 104 cam is nearly identical (other then lift figures) to that of the early US/Euro carb cams. It's funny that just 5 years ago I was 'upgrading' a Lotus engine to a 104 cam only to find this is a stock Ferrari profile. I made 90bhp/liter with that 104 cam at 10.5:1.

 

On my top ten list of things I absolutely detest doing is scraping stubborn gaskets. What a waste of time IMO. Anyway, yes I scraped all old the gaskets off of everything last night. Waiting for my heads to come back (shop said they would be done last week!).

 

I sprayed the gaskets with gasket remover for a solid week because I knew many of them would be very stubborn. Indeed they were still stubborn :/ Maybe I should have used the gunk you speak of.

 

Just received a call from the machine shop. Heads are done. WIll pick them up at lunch.