As I was going through the valve train on this Interim Ferrari 330 I have at the shop, I found some excessive wear on a few of the roller followers.

The video above will better show the amount of wear I found. Not all of them had this much wear, but the bronze bushing in the middle of the roller wears as it rolls over the camshaft lobe. The excessive clearance causes the valve lift to change, affecting performance.

There were two solutions to this problem. First was to replace the worn pieces with new rollers, bushings, pivots and c-clips. The second solution was to replace this whole assembly with a kit that uses small needle bearings and modified rollers. I decided to replace the worn rollers with stock replacements and not do the modification. In my opinion, the needle bearing kit certainly offers less friction, and perhaps better performance, but was it necessary for a street driven engine? I could understand the need for more performance in a race engine, but even then, how competitive did these Vintage Engines need to be? The simplicity of the original design gave less failure points, and if normal valve adjustment intervals were followed, any wear like this could be found before it got this bad.

When I removed the distributor for inspection, I found the angle drive filled with oil! The drive seal had failed and was allowing oil to pump into the angle drive. I’ve seen this happen before where oil will continue to fill into the distributor and foul up the points!

After carefully marking the position of the drive gear, I removed the gear and popped the rock hard seal from its home.

Since this car is new to me, I tried to correct the little details that I bothered me like these wire nuts on the ignition system. These might belong in house wiring, but not on any automotive application, much less in a Ferrari! I also soldered all the connections and replaced the cheap crimp connectors.

With the wrinkle painting done on the rest of the engine compartment, I turned my attention to the air cleaner. Gone are the days when we could get good paint strippers, so we’re left with environmentally friendly stuff that is a lot less effective at removing paint. After two rounds of applying stripper and waiting for something to happen, I decided to take these parts to my local powder coater to finish the job.