FrankenFerrari - V12 Ferrari 308

"Yes Dear". The basic reply for a long marriage...

akylekoz said:

New water heater and a puddle, how fitting.   Hey, that's punny.

Couplings are awesome...unless you forget to tighten them..... 

Hey, your wife picked up a water heater, that's a pretty good start.

I found red LS D585 coil clones on ebay...like $160/8?  Doesn't matter they were red so I bought them.  Finding a place to put 12 coils was a challenge though.  I wanted to tuck them away to keep the engine bay looking clean.  I settled for over the front cam cover.

I even found a use the the no unneeded throttle cable tube....I made a center support the the coils the drops into it.

I thought the wiring would never end....I'd forgot what a pain in the butt harnesses could be.  I had started wiring for a new ECU way back, remember this all started with an ECU change but then I got distracted but in a lot of pics you can see that harness I'd started hanging......

....but a V8 harness is pretty much worthless for a V12, start over.  There were moments of chaos but it got there.....

The 308 uses the old pointy end german fuses...like the 73 bug I had years ago that never seem to make contact.  Part of the old harness project included removing the fuse pannel for an upgrade....but that too was slitting unfinished and a wreck

Another little detail that needed attension was basically none of the studs where the right size and everything I had was pretty sad looking.  I bough a bunch of SS threaded rod and made new studs.

I played with dusting them with a torch to get a color similar to the OEM cad plating....but decided that was a stupid waste of time.  I did buy all need gold cad plated nuts and washers  though...new fasteners just look so nice....I couldn't help it.

Here's a few pics of getting the 400i torn down and cleaned up.

The first thing I discovered is my engine stand was almost strong enough to hold the V12....it only bent a little

Then I discovered the heads were really frikin stuck to the block.  It urns out this is a common problem with older ferraris....when I first rebuilt the 308 engine it took my about 6 hours to beat off 1 and and 11 on the other.  I was smarter this time ands made "head jacks" that bolt to whatever I could find on top and had jacking bolts that pressed on the head studs...it worked.

Then off to the local car wash with a couple cars of engine cleaner...someday I'll own a pressure washer

With the heads off I got my first look at the scope of the issues I'd be facing with the TR heads...5 studs line up!...almost...using them puts the heads a little off center but no need to sweat a mm there when there is so much more to panic about.  There was a WTF am I going to do now project pause after this pis was taken.......

After spending a lot of time thinking about re-drilling the head and worrying about not knowing just how thick the cast bosses around the studs were and having no clue how I would fix them if I broke into the water jacket and since the heads cost double what the whole 400i engine cost I decided it was better to risk ruining the block.  Looking back at the work I ended up doing to the heads this might have been a silly choice but at that point it seemed to make sense.

Getting the old studs out was a BUGGER of the job.  Some holes I was going to weld and needed to cut open anyway so I could cut them to get the studs out.  Notice on a ferrari block the head studs go right down into the main bearing bosses....yay?

But the 5 studs holes I wanted to save I had to get the studs out.....heat and a collet....and a pipe....more heat.....I got em.

I really wasn't sure how I was going to weld such a big chuck of aluminum but I was pretty sure that once I started putting heat to it in the basement, my wife up in the house would not be assumed with the smell of burning oil so I built a hood over the welding table.

and started preheating...I kept it wrapped and the heat lights on for a few days.  I'd weld then wrap it and keep some heat in it until tomorrow.

Then I welded...and welded....and welded some more. 

In the one its just stud holes but while I was welding I decided I hated the heavy stupid looking 400i cylinders and decided to just keep welding and convert to the newer design.

This was the point I realized I needed to do something about oil returns and mocked up some ideas with clay....then welded some more

I'd machined a lot of stuff over the years....so I kind of knew what should be possible....but I never welded the snot out of a v12 block then tried to mkae it useable after.....it should be possible....I think......Its really too big for my little mill but.....

I spent a lot of time getting the mill indicated in 

NOTHNG on the block was straight anymore.  It just rocked on the mill table....now what?.....

I decided a rough cut on the deck and drill the new stud holes so I could see how things go together was really all I needed right now.  so I used a 3 point setup on the bottom with a suport under each of the 2 corner and then 1 more up front by the main bearing figuring its kind or repeatable and should split any errors side to side.  Then  Located of the 5 original stud holes and skim cut the deck  (it was bowed about 0.025") and drilled and tapped the new studs holes.

With the heads kind of mostly sitting in place I deciced actually sitting in place was required before the timing cover could be sorted.  Actually sitting in place means the TR style alignment pins need to be added and the TR feeds oil to the head through the pins so that needs to be sorted including making sure there was block where the pin needed to be in 1 case.  Then drilling everywheich way to get oil passages connected.  I almost gave up and added external feed lines but I got it.

This is nice car/engineering/machinist porn. Please continue to tell us about your trade-offs, thought process and any set-up/machining tricks that you were doing. I am in lurker heaven.

mke said:

After spending a lot of time thinking about re-drilling the head and worrying about not knowing just how thick the cast bosses around the studs were and having no clue how I would fix them if I broke into the water jacket and since the heads cost double what the whole 400i engine cost I decided it was better to risk ruining the block.  Looking back at the work I ended up doing to the heads this might have been a silly choice but at that point it seemed to make sense.

 

Getting the old studs out was a BUGGER of the job.  Some holes I was going to weld and needed to cut open anyway so I could cut them to get the studs out.  Notice on a ferrari block the head studs go right down into the main bearing bosses....yay?

But the 5 studs holes I wanted to save I had to get the studs out.....heat and a collet....and a pipe....more heat.....I got em.

How are you tightening the collet on to the stud, I want to borrow this idea.

akylekoz said

How are you tightening the collet on to the stud, I want to borrow this idea.

I tried a few thing.  In the pic I posted I've got an R8 collet mill tool holder....like this

https://www.mscdirect.com/product/details/09693011

I had to borrow that

iirc I started with the 5C holder like this and got most of them

https://www.mscdirect.com/product/details/09670159

but I think I couldn't get it tight enough for the last 1 or 2....but I don't have the right wrench for the ring nut....I think I remember borrowing the wrench and then trying the ER collect and that's what worked....and you can see the torch in the picture. 

While the block was 3 point clamped to the mill and I made a reference cut on the top surface.

Then I flipped the block over and set it on the new reference surface and used an indicator on the main bearing surface to get the block as straight as possible...the bottom was twisted like 0.020", bowed up in the middle about 0.25" and bowed to the side ..0.010.  So basically completely ruining.

Then decided weld was needed when I realized the main bearing bores were also spring open...so yeah, COMPLETELY ruined

Or I could just machine them back straight.  Back on the mill.  I cut the bottom surface

Then used a big ball mill to get then as close to straight as I could, but left them about 0.005" undersize to allow for a final line-bore at a real machine shop.  If you look close at the second pic you can see the lines where I went back and forth with y -z position moves to make a circle.

That got the crank bore in the block ready for final cut but the pins that lock the caps on had also moved, they were sprung making the pin too far apart and followed the block bow in the y, the z was now good as I milled that.  Rather than weld the caps I decided it would be easier to make new oversize pins so I could rebore the holes in the block in the correct location so the caps would fit correctly.  

With the bottom surface flat and the crank location now known and good I roughed the cylinder bore holes.  I held off on designing the cylinders to see where the block was going to finish up but I knew they had to all be the same and in the right spots.

The water jacket area had to be larger than the cylinder top so I used a big slitting saw to open up that area

Then test fit a 348 cylinder really just because I had one and wanted to see what the block looked like with a cylinder

The block is ready to go out for final machining at the real machine shop!  Yay!

After the block came back what did I do next?  change my mind on the main bearings of course.  It turns out the only place to get 400i main bearing is a ferrari dealer and they cost about $100 per shell!  Not $100 per set or $100 per journal, oh no, they are sold per bearing shell so $1400!  WTF?!?!?!

no, no, no......

365 main bearings are the same OD and ID, a little wider but will fit, and locking tab in a different spot and I think $200 for the whole set......hmmmmm.......

silly wrong 400i notches gone but the bore messed up.  The next step I did by hand.  I used a parallel to line all the bearings up and clamped them then took a round file to knock down most of the weld, than finished with a pipe and sandpaper.  Not bad....and notice I started with the caps not the block just in case.

then recut the notches to match the 365 bearings and clean up the oil feed groove.

Same treatment for the block

In reply to mke :

My god! Your talent and attention to detail is amazing. Let me guess. You do brain surgery as a hobby?

With the block finished it was time for cylinders.  The original plan was 348/355/360 cylinders but as I got into it that just didn't make sense.  The best I could do on useded sleeves that would need to be refreshed was ...$120 each.  painful but the deal breaker was the spigots in the block needed to be opened up to get them round after all that welding and its not like I needed my arm twisted to make the bore even bigger.  Stock bore was 81mm, 348/355/360 are 85mm, I went 86mm figuring ferrari must have left a safety factor in the there....they must have.

 started with the closest iron sleeve blanks darton had then took of many pound of chips.

And they fit!

They didn't come off the lathe as round as they should be...they are pretty think and chucking was distorting them so I made a clamping jig and did a finish bore in the mill.

Then hone to fit ....

The pretty 10.7:1 pistons JE made me...in exchange for a large check, there was just no avoiding this expense

Ovid_and_Flem said:

In reply to mke :

My god! Your talent and attention to detail is amazing. Let me guess. You do brain surgery as a hobby?

I bugger up stuff too.  Like when I decided it would be a good idea to make head studs from full hard 4150.  I machines them, cut the threads with a die becasue my lather is english thread only, and black oxided them  Beautiful.

then broke most of them when I torqued the head because they were WAY to hard and cutting threads makes stress risers.  I got the heads torques and was walking away...ping, ping ping...WTF?????

But the new studs made from RC45 4140 with rolled threads (another phone a friend for the thread rolling) seems to be a winner.  I made the blanks and a few thread setup pieces and had them heat treated then the threads were rolled and cam out really nice.