This will even make a dentist look cheap!

Not meaning to upset any dentists

My mate (no, seriously this is a mates car, not mine) goes for a Saturday drive and all was perfect.

Parks the 360 for the night up and on Sunday calls me asking to go and have a listen to his car.
Cam Variator...............out of the blue, no warnings, kaaaaaboooooom. Bendy this and that.

This is what's always in the back of my (and surely others) mind with F car ownership.

How the hell could anyone predict this? If there is a way, please do share.
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Wow that is a bummer....

What year is the 360? Was that the original cam variator part? I think there was a newer/stronger one available, not sure what year, etc...

Hope that is the only damaged done!

 

Interesting. Lets look into things further. (If this happens to my car I'm scoping it, testing compression by hand and then fixing it in my garage, redneck style!)

When were the belts done last -> belt tightness inducing metal fatigue on the bolt
How many miles on the car -> ibid, fatigue
How many track miles/how often? -> high stress on the part?

Any other details?

Can't predict this but, I'm sure there are ways to predict the risk. How round are the cam gears?

 

The car was serviced this January.
Never been tracked hard apart from the odd club days.
It was, is a 2002.
Lots of bent valves among other bits from what I am told.
The repair is said to be between $8 and $10K. A lot of money.

Kurt, you should play Dueling Banjo's when your'e doing it.

 

That sucks! Im changing mine shortly. How many miles/km on his car?

 

I think 70K miles or there abouts

 

there was a variator recall right? how does one tell if their car has had it?

 

I guess this is the following part:

Ferrari 360 Modena, 360 Challenge Stradale - EXHAUST PHASE VARIATOR
Part No. 190042 (Superseded From Part No. 194079)

This sells for £68+taxes here in the UK. Should we be thinking of replacing it as a service item let's say every 50k miles? How much labor is involved in changing these/do any other parts need to be changed "while in there"? (gaskets/etc)

It would be great to have the view of those in the trade about this!

 

Bad news........

Out of interest.....Why did he ask you to go listen to it?

It should be a later variator if it has been near a dealer in the last 10 years but the difference between them is quite small. They changed the profile of the groove after the threads to help prevent crack propagation.

Importantly they also reduced the installation torque and specified no thread lock to reduce the stress in the threaded shank.

I looked at this long and hard before I bought a 360 as it is a potential engine killer and as a man of limited means I wanted to understand the risk. I think he has been very unlucky.

Wrt to changing them, I understand it is a ***** as they are torqued up very tight into the end of the cam and the Ferrari tool for locking the cam can be ineffective. Many techs remove the cams to change them.

Finally a personal thought. Cracks can propagate from minute flaws in the manufacturing process or the metal stock used. These can sit there for years until they cause a fatigue failure so how do you know you are not replacing a good one with a potential bad one?

This is only the second failure I've seen reported on a forum and I applaud the guy for doing it as many wouldn't but it seems rare. If incidences creep up as the cars age. That could be the signal to start swapping them.

For now in leaving well alone......

 

By all accounts it's not an easy job and risks damage to the camshaft.

 

I just found out that on the service manual, section B3.02, it says

so unfortunately this does appear to be a service item (although it's not mentioned on the maintenance schedule in the Owners Manual, even though it goes out to 110k kms).

@Aldous - yep, I had heard that as well, although I don't understand why (not because I think it should be easy - just because I lack the relevant mechanical knowledge!). Is it because it is difficult to adequately support the camshaft in the vice while the variator is detached/attached back?

Edit: thanks Mike, I hadn't seen your reply

 

I found the relevant technical bulletin from Ferrari:

So Ferrari reckons it's "only" 1.5 hours of labor on top of a standard cambelt change. If you do this at an official dealer you should be covered by parts & labor warranty on the job done for at least 12 months so even if they f**k up the camshaft presumably you'd be covered? (worst-case scenario) If that's the case surely $200 of parts plus $300 of labor every 50k miles to prevent an engine rebuild would be worth it? Am I missing something?

 

Graham, I'm actually probably going to wear a pair of grease stained bib-overall.. Just loose enough my butt crack shows.

See I'm wondering if its belt tension and RPMs. Tension set on the higher side of the spec and high rotational inertia that propagates any cracks in the metal or leads to fatigue at the juncture where it meets the camshaft. I presume that Ferraris recommendation at 60k accounts for 10% track time during ownership.

I've read here where they can be so tightly adhered to the camshaft that it bends the camshaft during removal, thus trashing it.

I'd love to have a risk profile for this part for preventative replacement. Low miles on the fleet and infrequency of failure (vs IMS failure) means probably not going to happen.

 

Graham,

Again going back to your first post......was he free revving it?

 

This has been a concern for me from before getting a 360, but I went ahead and got one anyway. From what I've read, the 1.5 hrs. quote is BS. It may be what Ferrari thinks it will take, or wants to pay, on a brand new engine. But the posts by techs I've read say that because the thread direction increases tightness (makes sense, right? we don't want the rotational movement to back the variators off the cam), on an engine that's been run-in in real world conditions, the variators are really, really tight, and don't come off without some risk of damage to the cams (which of course are also expensive, if not unobtainium).

Add in what's been said above about possible latent cracks or weaknesses in new parts, and it's kind of a crap shoot. You can change them out, but only with certain difficulty and risks involved in damaging something in the swap process itself, with no guarantees that will keep the catastrophe from happening. Or you can just leave the parts as they are and revisit around the 100k kms mark (or sooner). I'm not even half way there in mileage, even counting a few track days here and there.

That said, I have a friend who had his variators fail and cause damage, and the costs were something like $20k+ to repair the damage. Nothing remarkable about how he drives his car (I'm not even sure he's ever tracked it, for example). He wasn't doing anything to really stress the engine when it happened. I believe his car is a 2002. He's back on the road and still loves the car.

For Ferraris, it seems like there's always some weakness. The 430 engines have a different design and are not known for variator failure, and of course they have timing chains, not belts, but there is a known exhaust header problem not found in 360s. In worse case scenarios, the headers can crack and send debris back into the engine riding on the reversion waves. 360 headers can have their pre-cats break-up and do something similar, but that doesn't seem to happen on 430s.

And for those of you with 360s who haven't swapped their heat exchangers, there's another worry (and another topic/thread).

 

All above is true.. but as for 430's, their issues are only becoming known now. I argue because Ferrari's are barely driven, the vetting period is twice or three times as long as other models as far as discovering weakness in each model. When the average age of the 430 fleet is 30k miles we'll know how reliable the traction control, their variatiors, heat exchangers, etc. are. The model IMHO is still too "new".

 

Agreed. That's an issue with Ferraris in general. Few drive their cars like normal, so Ferrari gets away with not fixing things under warranty because the warranties time out long before enough miles are put on to reveal flaws. Since their warranty history is so low, they have no incentive or even the knowledge base from claims like an ordinary manufacturers would to fix weak designs. This is likely to change as at least some cars, FFs and Californias, mainly, get driven more on a daily basis. What Ferrari learns from that will likely filter up to the more expensive cars driven less frequently. It's expensive, but I urge all California owners to drive their cars as much as possible and buy the extended warranties so Ferrari can improve next generations! Or, they can just drive an SL instead and suffer huge depreciation on a car that's not nearly so much fun to drive.

 

LOL. True. So true.

 

from the service records of previous owner. ouch.
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What was the mileage when it happened/what year is the car?

 

10,932
2004 cs

 

I've had this happen to my 2001 360 Spider in May 2012 (at 67000 km's). Cambelt variator broke, lots of bent valves, cylinder head damaged etc. Total bill €8100. Ouch!!

There was a recall for the cam belt variator but Ferrari told me my car already had the 'new' variator. And it still broke off, no warrenty at all. Still pisses me off

 

This is the one thing that scares about another Ferrari, I'm lucky had a 328 and 348 and both never had any issues.

 

The car wasn't being driven hard at the time, and it was only started and running at idle.
Mileage is around 60K miles, so I guess things like this can happen, but it's never nice when it doe's.

He asked me to go and have a listen thinking that it might have been a header cracked or something. Immediately it was obvious it was something very ugly when I heard it.

Still, it will be running again any day, so it's all good again, apart from the bill.

 

Ouch, gives me a lump in my throat. Mine have been done but still no guarantees I guess. These cars are worth the risk, till something like this happens.