Ferrari 365GTC/4 Bent Rod



5/12/07
Ferrari 365GTC/4 Bent Rod

head removal

I started my day where I left off last time, slowly raising the head off the block with the head removal tool. The corrosion on the studs fought me all the way to the top of the studs before the head finally came off.
piston #8

Looking at the top of piston #8, the one with the bent rod, we were happy to see no damage to the top of the piston and cylinder walls, but the some of the smaller coolant passages (top of the picture) were completely blocked! I opened these up when I cleaned the top of the block.
#8 piston

I went under the car and carefully tapped the piston out the top of the motor with the wooden handle of a hammer.
bent rod

As we saw earlier, the piston skirt was broken off, and the rod was pretty bent.
bent rod

The rod was so bent and twisted that it was knocking against the crank counter balance weight as the engine was running. Luckily, the engine was not driven after the noise was heard, so we don’t believe any damage was done to the crank.
head

Francois handed me two well worn broom handles specially cut down to fit in the cam saddles. They held the tappets in place as I washed the head in the parts washer. I’m sure other shops probably use nicer things to hold things in place, but a broom handle does a fine job at Francois!
head cleaning

I spent the rest of the day scraping gasket surfaces, and with a four cam motor, there are a ton of gaskets! It was easier, though still tedious, to scrape the gaskets from the left head since I could put it on the work bench, but I’m not looking forward to scraping the right valve cover gaskets since the head is still attached the motor!

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