Your pinions requested on this particular repair a car I’m pursuing:

Pinions? As in rack and.... ?? <G>

Seriously, have you had a PPI done? If not, have someone who is Ferrari-skilled and experienced look the car over carefully. An engine out overhaul is not a bad thing. I personally don't think it makes much of a different if the engine was changed, so long as it is the appropriate engine for the car (i.e., a QV engine in a QV car, FI 2V 8 in an FI 2V 8). Did you check the 308 registry to see if folks posted engine numbers, and if the numbers seem to be consistent with those of cars built around the time yours was? Otherwise, I'm not sure how you verify engine number as original to the car.

Get a PPI. If the car is in good condition, servicing done or you intend to do it, and the price is right, stop driving yourself crazy and just buy the darn car. The enjoyment you'll get from driving it will far outweigh anything else.

 

For a Ferrari, this is not out of the question at all. I even do it to my Porsche because oil leaks drive me nuts.

 

"Resealing" a 308 engine is done with it in the car....I just had it done, transmission, shift shafts, and then up to the top end of the motor for cam seals, distributors, etc, it's a healty list of parts...

I thought this was your long sought after EARLY 308 you had found?????

 

As to "numbers matching" well as you said, our engnes were just dropped in by batch so a "range" of numbers kind of presents a pattern, but since Ferrari ceased the Certificate where it confrimed OEM transmissions and engines numbers I know of no service to confirm it....other than the Classiche process..

 

The clutch can be changed with the motor in place.

 

Yeah right! Here you go pulling peoples chains again. Let me know if you buy it so I can send you that $500 per the bet I made.

 

<< YAWN >>

oh boy

Think I'll go watch CNN instead.

 

FWIW,
It is not that unusual. IMHO, it is evidence of an extraordinarily attentive owner (read: anal) to whom price was no object. In fact, It was done on my car as part of the major, and played an important part in me purchasing the car. If that is what is causing you to hesitate on buying the car, than, in my opinion, at this point you are just looking for excuses to avoid pulling the trigger. Do a PPI and get the car...At some point, you can drive yourself crazy looking for things.

 

Chris,

When I bought my '78 GTS a couple of years ago, over the first winter I had it, I pulled the engine, cleaned it up, resealed it, did the belt service, degreed the cams, cleaned up the entire engine compartment, changed all of the hoses and fuel lines, etc. IMHO, it's the prudent thing to do with a 30 year old car. Now I have a nice clean engine bay, I know that everything was done, and done right, and the car runs great. I would not be suspicious of a car that had it done. I'd be thankful that it had been cared for.

Regards,
Steve
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Steve---that pic is great!!!

 

Very rarely would anyone pay to pull the motor to reseal without overhaul as it's quite a bit of extra work that I can't say you'd save a lot of time having it on a stand vs in the car unless you have a major leak at the engine to trans/oil pan portion. Sure its easier to work on the motor on the stand instead of bent over or under but it's not that bad.

I also recommend a professional PPI done as 308's can be very expensive quickly if they have sit up long.

We do a ton of 308's and it seems we have been a specialist of late fixing up "barn find 308's" that have been sitting for 10 plus years. Cool cars (I own a Euro QV along with a 348) but they are getting pretty old and the rubber hoses are usually shot if they haven't been replaced somewhere down the line.

Some of these old Ferrari gentleman get confused on wording by thinking cambelt service is an engine out service because other Ferrari's they've owned were of that nature. I've heard it more than a few times. So you may have that going on here.

I would suppose most of the engine outs for reseals (not overhauls) are like Steve's where they are DIY'ers that do their own service and must live where it snows and have nothing else to do in the winter time ;-) just kidding.

95% of all the leaks that we see on 308's can be repaired easily with the engine in the car. I've even done the front cover in the car when changing out the lower cam drive bearings.

 

IMHO, so many jobs can be done so much easier with the motor out, and the end result comes out so much better, that the debate over doing the engine service in or out of the car is of no real significance. If its a generally clean motor without a lot of issues, service it in the car. If its a filthy greaseball motor leaking from every seam, seal and gasket and all the forward running hoses need to be replaced and you want to do a lot of WYIT's, yank it. Personally, I would feel a lot better knowing the car had the motor out in the last 10 years and given a good looking over, than trust a car thats never been sorted since it left Italy 30 years ago.

Dude, stop worrying about the cars past, its the present you need to focus on. Records and history is nice, but condition condition condition are the main things to consider today. Engine replaced? Up until a few years ago the owners of older models could have requested a heritage certificate from Ferrari. If the seller does not have one, it either means they never tried (most didnt), or the car could have a different motor and Ferrari never issued one. But its a 308 not a Lusso. As long as it has the proper engine that little peice of paper is maybe worth the cost of postage to most people, at least value wise. No one is going to pay more for it, and no one should take less without it, its a wash. Its a nice peice of data and thats about it. If the car is complete, in decent shape, runs and moves and doesnt do anything bad, and if the price seems right, stop waiting for the planets to get into the right alignment.

 

Thanks. That's me and my friend Paul's wife (he took the picture). We have a lot of fun working on these old cars.

Actually, you are not too far off the mark. It was a winter project, and since I needed to remove all of the air injection tubes, install plugs, change all the hoses including the big hoses between the tanks in the bottom, plus clean up a very dirty engine bay, change all the hoses, etc., it just made sense to get the engine out, do a moderate engine rebuild, clean everything up well, and put it all back together the right way. I suppose if I were trying to make money on the work, I could have found a quicker, more efficient way of doing it, but it allowed me to get a lot of work done that I otherwise would not have been able to do with the engine in. If all I was doing was the belts, I would not have pulled the engine. But with everything else that needed doing, engine out made the most sense.

 

My 308GT4 does not have the original engine. The engine number shows up as way out of sequence in the popular GT4 database and was confirmed non-original by the Heritage Certificate (though it doesn't say what the original engine serial number originally was). Perhaps you can check you engine number on one of the GTB databases .