Very interesting find on my car re: engine number

So I was poking around F-chat last night and looking at some old threads about engine numbers. With the inspiration I decided to check out the number on my '79 GTS, carbed, 2V motor today, and guess what I found?

The engine number is F106A *0231*. Now please correct me if I am wrong but F106A denotes an early motor and not a later carbed motor which typically have an E following the F106A prefix, correct? The car is obviously wet sumped.

Now to add to the confusion my car has, or had, all the emissions equipment on it at one point. Cats, breather lines off the manifold, ect, ect; it is all sitting in a box at this point. With all the emissions crap I had never thought that I might have an early motor in the car. From the history I have with the car that dates back about 12 years, it appears that the car has been registered in MD, NJ, and most recently in FL (the car had some of the emissions equip removed when I purchase it down in FL).

The last piece of the puzzle. The carbs are numbered 40DCNF 45,46,47,48 (from memory). I believe there are different sets of numbers of DCNFs that went with either the earlier cars or the later carbed cars. Wondering if somebody clarify the carb number scenarios for me?

So am I onto something here, or am I misreading the numbers?

 

That's a matched set of carbed numbers...for RF LF RR LR or whatever.

The engine stamping 'sounds right' as well, as the refers to "family" of specifications......it would not be changed to reflect the cam profiles for example as the block and all other components were unchanged.....

The early cars had air injection for North America, just not CATS or the flap door in the intake snorkel....

 

Oops. Left a digit off the engine number. The correct engine number is F106A *02310*.

 

Seems like you have an engine out of a '77 or earlier US version 308GT4 -- that's the only OM that shows F106A and 45/46/47/48. Also matches this Weber data chart:
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The '78-'79 US version 308B/S/4 use F106AE and 72/73/74/75, and all the carbed euro 308B/S/4 seem to use 35/36/37/38 or 57/58/59/60 carbs.

 

That would be happy news.........I suppose?

 

Not sure if I am 100% following your conclusion. Are you saying that just the 45-48 carbs match the F106A engine designation? If so I am not sure that quite definitively means that the motor is an early motor say if the carbs were swapped at some point for example.

Is the F106A(no letters following the 'A') designation definitively just for the pre '77 and earlier cars? I have just spent a couple hours searching F-chat and have not yet found anything breaking down the various engine codes. I have found probably somewhere around 20 or so folks who have posted their engine codes with carbed cars and every single early car had a F106A and every single 78-79 had a F106AE (I might have even seen some with a following letter different than 'E' for the 78-79s). It also seems that the injected 2v motors had a different engine designation as well as the QV cars.

The following thread is where I have found the majority of the posted engine #s of the various carbed cars.
http://ferrarichat.com/forum/showthread.php?t=176780

 

It seems pretty clear to me.

Your motor is not an E motor, it is earlier, he based his conclusion on what it MAY have come out of from the carb numbers.

The good news: You probably have better cams.

The bad news: Your car is not a numbers matching/original motor.

Doug

 

Thanks to both you and Steve. This is awesome news as far as I am concerned. As a matter of fact I was just posting on the "high lift 2v cam" thread earlier today inquiring about some cam upgrades over my 'crappy' emissions cams, lol. I am a 'hot-rodder' at heart and can't remember the last car that I kept with a stock powerplant. I have a BMW E30 w/ a BMW inline six cylinder, before that I had an E36 M3 with a 7 series V12, before that I had a 914 with 2.5L Porsche six cyl, before that I had a '74 Porsche Carrera with a 3.2L PMO carbed Porsche flat six. I guess it was destiny ;-).

Sure it could potentially hurt the resale value of the car in the eyes of some buyers, but I am sure there are a comparable amount of folks looking for a GTS that would love to have the added power of the early cammed motors. The car is not that original anyways at this point, it has been re-sprayed, had some non original interior bits when I purchased it, I have installed a magnaflow exhaust, removed the rest of the emission, ect, ect so this car would probably never been a good candidate for somebody looking for a 100% correct/pristine/concour car in the first place, even though it is extremely clean.

 

A follow up question here.

Today I took a look at the part #s on the camshafts themselves to ascertain whether I do indeed have the early cams or not. It wouldn't be doing me any good to have a non original early motor sans the early cams. The three cam numbers I could make out were A107994, A107995, and S105713, I could not find the number on the fourth cam.

In doing some searching here I found a couple posts where some folks who are generally considered to be 'in the know' stated that those are in fact the correct part numbers for the early cams. I also tried both Ricambi's and T Rutland's websites however and those part #s did not pull up anything on their search engine though.

Can anybody verify that these are the correct part #s for the early cams or steer me in the direction of a resource to reference that can prove unequivocally what I have?
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The reason those PNs are not be showing up on the Ricambi nor TRutlands sites may be that the US version 308 SPCs (which are separate manuals) are not included in those SPC data sets. Per SPC 161/78, the US version '78-'79 cams are:

A111695
S113258
A111694
S111696

so you definitely don't have those.

 

995 and 713 are indeed early carb cams.

Let's see how this spreadsheet pastes:
Part number Related to Int/Exh App Features Side Matches to
105713 107118 Exh 75-77 USA L A
107118 105713 Exh 75-77 USA L A
107118 105713 Exh 74-80 GT4 L A
107787 107788 Exh 75-77 USA R B
107788 107787 Exh 75-77 USA R B
107995 108007 Int 75-77 USA Dist Drive L C
107995 108007 Int 74-80 GT4 Dist Drive L C
107995 108007 Int 78-80 ROW Dist Drive L C
108006 Int 75-77 USA Dist Drive R G
108006 Int 74-80 GT4 Dist Drive R G
108006 Int 78-80 ROW Dist Drive R G
108007 107995 Int 75-77 USA Dist Drive L C
108007 107995 Int 74-80 GT4 Dist Drive L C
108007 107995 Int 78-80 ROW Dist Drive L C
108915 Int 74-80 GT4 R F
108915 Int 75-77 ROW R F
108915 Int 78-80 ROW R F
108977 109438 ? Exh 74-80 GT4 R E
108977 109438 ? Exh 75-77 ROW R E
108977 109438 ? Exh 78-80 ROW R E
108978 107118 ? Exh 74-80 GT4 L
108978 Exh 75-77 ROW L
108989 108990 ? Int 75-77 ROW Dist Drive L H
108989 108990 ? Int 78-80 ROW Dist Drive L H
108990 112830 Int 75-77 ROW Dist Drive L H
108990 112830 Int 78-80 ROW Dist Drive L H
109438 108977 ? Exh 74-80 GT4 R E
109438 108977 ? Exh 75-77 ROW R E
109438 108977 ? Exh 78-80 ROW R E
112830 108990 Int 75-77 ROW Dist Drive L H
114069 Int 74-80 GT4 R F
114093 107118 ? Exh 74-80 GT4 L
114069 Int 78-80 USA R F
114070 111696 Exh 78-80 USA Air Pump Drive R J
111696 114070 Exh 78-80 USA Air Pump Drive R J
114071 Int 78-80 USA Dist Drive L
114093 Exh 78-80 USA L
117125 117235 Exh 84-85 USA R K
117235 117125 Exh 84-85 USA R K
117125 117235 Exh 82-85 ROW R K
117235 117125 Exh 82-85 ROW R K

I don't even remember what the "matches to" column meant!

 

F-Chat is 'ing awesome! The wealth of information, and even more importantly the assistance, that can be found here has been invaluable to the ownership of my first F-car to this point. For some reason I had figured that my entry into Ferrari ownership would be like entering a black-hole with a dearth of useful information, and that the only thing that you had to go on were ole wives tales passed on from generation to generation. There really isn't any 'black science' about it at all in fact, a slight hue of grey perhaps but not entirely black ;-)

Needless to say I am quite happy to see this information. Once I got my Pertronix installed, and get the carbs running up to my liking I am going to the ole dyno shop. With the early cams, just headers flowing staight into a Magnaflow, my custom air intake (sans air box), Pertronix, no emissions, ect lets see if I might be able to break 190 (what seems to be average number for the early cammed cars). Throw in the P90X diet plan my car is on; euro bumpers, exhaust mentioned above, sans radio, sans AC, sans emission, three piece wheels, ect (I'll get this thing weighed around the time of the dyno too), ultimately I am going to have one of the meaner GTSs out there. Just like it would have been from day one from the factory if it wasn't for silly things like rules, laws, and regulations

 

Yup, my early injected 2v motor is an F106B
http://www.flickr.com/photos/moseley_ferrari/4087148761/in/set-72157622622414240/

Rick

 

Funny -- my '76 308 GT4 has a '79 carb GTS motor...I think we need to meet and swap

 

those cant be too early cams as the early ones have no flat sides on the shaft to facilitate removing the pulley

 

your car sounds great. dont sweat the numbers crap. DRIVE IT!