FrankenFerrari - V12 Ferrari 308

I drilled and extracted all the plugs from the crank.  Didn't really see and gick while I was working but now I'll know its clean. for new plugs I thought I'd just buy aluminum bolts but the ones I found are like $4 each so I guess I'll make something.  The extractor i made from a dowel pin.  I cleaned the oil passages in the block already, but I'll clean up the feed to the crank again just to be sure.

Thread those oil holes and put in brass or steel 1/16 or 1/8 NPT allen plugs. And use Loctite on them. Mkes clean out easier next time too.

In reply to TurnerX19 :

They are threaded, m8-1.25.  The plugs were aluminum Allen, but most of the Allen ground away.  I hesitate to change material assuming ferrari knew what they were doing, but brass set screws are readily available 

In reply to mke :

Wow, 8mm is big. Many manufacturers use press in taper plugs. How do they seal?  There is no tapered metric thread standard.

TurboFource said:

Fingers crossed for you!

Fingers crossed in Detroit!

Good call on starting with sealer in the coolant.  We ran out Lemons car with a stuck thermostat and cracked a head.  Cracked head sealer is currently holding and may just be run full time in this motor until it dies.

TurnerX19 said:

In reply to mke :

Wow, 8mm is big. Many manufacturers use press in taper plugs. How do they seal?  There is no tapered metric thread standard.

Ferrari to flow a lot of oil to keep the bearings cool. 20w50 is the stock normal use oil to get correct pressure.  It looks like a 4mm drilled hole up to the rod.  Each main feeds 2 rods so its hole is 6mm.  The M8 plug hole appears to just end at the 4mm and the stock plug (which I just realized is readily available for $2-$4) is just an aluminum set screw, you bottom it out, (smack it I think) and cut it off smooth.

Very little came out, but it's more than zero and know I know it clean.  I found the ferrari plugs for $1ea +$10shipping  but the guy only had 9 and ferrari's warehouse is closed until September so can't get more until then.  Amazon had 8mm alum rod I can have tomorrow so I'll just make plugs and move on I guess and save enough to buy a couple rod bearings.

I got my 8mm hobby rods from amazon, so cute.  I ran a die down both ends of 1.

The into the crank and saw it off.

Then back to the lathe, I got 3 throws per rod throwing out the center section dug up by the pipe wrench.  Then ground them down flush and drove a round ended punch into them to to lock them in place.  I taped over the holes  to keep the inside clean, then a final clean on the outside and its ready to go.  The whole process took about an hour.  

I also placed the order for the new rod bearings and all the gaskets I need.  This weekend I'll clean up and prep as much as I can and hopefully reassemble the engine next weekend.  I still need to get the drop gear shaft out to heat treat....I'll try to get that out early next week.

You sure there was enough radial displacement of the aluminum to lock the threads? You did a test piece? 

TurboFource said:

You sure there was enough radial displacement of the aluminum to lock the threads? You did a test piece? 

I made 30 test samples, did a leak test then measure extraction force and did a t-test comparing it to the forces I measured extracting the factory plugs and found the p-value to be 0.46, so almost for sure my samples are the same as the factory samples. 

That or I guessed...because I've pretty much made a career out of being able to guess the right answer 

Seriously though I put them in as tight as I though I could,  tight enough that I snapped off the shaft on 3 of the 12.  Peened or not they aren't coming out 

In reply to TurboFource :

It only takes the tiniest upset in the steel to lock them. The original F brand ones have a very shallow Allen broaching, so never very highly torqued.

In reply to mke : Excellent!

I figured you did a test but I felt compelled to ask .....

In reply to TurboFource :

right, so I wasn't serious when I said I did any testing.  I screwed them in tight and peened them.

I do have the ECU setup up to blink a dash light for low oil pressure but maybe I should add more robust engine safeties and warnings to my winter to-do free projects list.  I could say set it up so if engine state=running && oil pres < (2d  rpm v pres table value maybe?) the rev limiter is set to 1500rpm && throttle max opening 20% ....or something like that so if an oil plug falls out or anything else causes oil pressure loss it will unload itself and I can get it shut down quickly.  I know I need to spend some time making sure what I have saved on the PC matches what is running in the ECU....its so easy to add stuff straight into the ECU I have a horrible habit of changing stuff in the ECU and not updating my saved files where all the notes and backup files live 

mke said:

I know I need to spend some time making sure what I have saved on the PC matches what is running in the ECU....its so easy to add stuff straight into the ECU I have a horrible habit of changing stuff in the ECU and not updating my saved files where all the notes and backup files live 

You need Jesus, or at least some form of source code control. GitHub is free and not terribly hard to use, and will save you from programming iniquity.

In reply to paddygarcia :

My programming answers to no god!  LOL

What I do isn't real programming.  The actual programming in the ECU I have no access to, but the program's job is to run a model which I create.  The model is a logic level thing that lets me use about 30 library functions and mine is about 600 lines at the  moment.   The model can be built directly in the ECU (using a PC interface) or on a PC then loaded to the ECU.  I use a gui interface that works exactly the same on the ECU or PC so at anytime when I'm in the car and connected to the ECU I can change tuning info like any ECU or I can change the model.  I couple months ago I added a few new lines to the model to read brake pressure transducers and convert the 0-5V reading to pressure.  Those lines I wrote on the PC and appended them to ECU's model...then realized I had one looking at the wrong analog input and corrected it in the ECU directly creating a mismatch between the ECU and the saved files on the PC.   It doesn't REALLY matter though because whenever I save tuning info, the model is also saved so if I open the file on the PC to review data the model is there.  The problems come when I want to do something big and load a whole new copy into the ECU

Working on the PC there is an option to use a scripting language to build the model and that is what real programmers prefer as its much easier to do revision control on, text comparitors work,  and would work well in git...so that is of course not what I do because its WAY too easy to make mistakes and requires a lot of memorization.  The gui interface walks me through what is required for each function so there is nothing to remember really then I use a simple version of the scripting to link and load all the little modules I build in the gui. 

Anyway, it needs some attention

The bearings and gaskets are due Thursday so I should be assembling the engine this weekend.

The heat treat place says $160 and 5-7 days.  That will ship to them tomorrow and they are only about 50 miles from here so I assume 1 day and that should mean it will be back so I can be putting the engine back in the car the in 2 weeks.

Evans has been really super service for us lately. We used Solar Atmospheres for gas nitride a while back too, but haven't been needing that lately. Bennett has been slow and confused...

In reply to TurnerX19 :

Solar Atmospheres is the place.  I've used them for other things in the past and they were quick and good so that's who I reached out to now.

Put the crank in and engine back on the trans

I did scare the bajesus out of myself torquing the last main bearing thinking a stud pulled out but it was the (clearly wrong)nut. I knew 2 were different but in my mind it made sense that the 2 that sit outside the oil pan were plated not black oxide when I first tore the 400i down and that is how I left it..... but no they are just wrong.  No way I'm getting the  right nut on a holiday weekend but I got  couple more  grade 8.8 which I know are got for 1/2 dozen torque cycles....I'll get couple of the right ones to have on hand in case there's a next time

In reply to mke :

I sincerely hope there is not a next time

AngryCorvair (Forum Supporter) said:

In reply to mke :

I sincerely hope there is not a next time

Thank you foe that thought but on take like 38 my confidence is not what it once was 

And then a wtf moment  like finding a valve shim on the floor

It came from an exhaust on cyl 12 just sitting a touch low

Apparently my plastic pipe bucket retainers are not quite enough.  I checkeded all of them  and just the one problem child so the cams are back in ready for the timing cover

Cams in, timing cover  on, cams timed.

Just to be sure I got it right this time I did a le3ak-down test....0% @100psi on all 12 cylinders.  The magic of gapless rings.

I'm not sure I've properly whined about the timing cover in a number of years but its frikin horrible from ferrari and made worse by the 308 install which requires the oil pan(/trans) on before the timing cover. The best way I've figured out to do it involves pre-assembling everything in the cover

Then try to get all the studs and shafts to engage

use RTV, especially where the cover need to seal across the block/head gap

at the last possible moment, slip a screw driver in and release the oil pump chain tensioner  and hope it goes together the rest of the way.  I just hate messing with the timing cover.

There are levels to this game and this project is some unbelievable, perhaps Michael Jordan level work.

The raw mechanicalness makes it fun to follow along - even for a Michael Jordan of baseball [if that] level hobbyist. 

Get .ready to breakout the hats and horns for a celebration .The leakdown test is really good news .With your coolant cocktail leaks may be a thing of the past .