I removed two acorn nuts from the valve cover and it immediately started leaking oil. I suspected not gasket sealant was used when these gaskets were installed by a previous shop. I have found, once a gasket starts leaking, even though this started with two nuts removed, the leaking will persist.

Resealing the valve cover gaskets would also give me the opportunity to take a look at the valve train since this is a new car to me. I previously took the car out for a test drive and thought the valve lash was a little noisy, so now was a good time to check valve lash.

With the valve covers off, I started to check the condition of the roller followers. I wiggled the rockers that were loose and listened to the lash. It’s hard to explain, but you can hear when a particular rocker has excessive lash just by the sound of the click of the rocker.

Just by coincidence, I found one rocker was pretty loose, and when I took a closer look at the roller, it was pretty chewed up.

I immediately took off that rocker stand to see how much damage was inflicted on the cam lobe, and found minor marking.

These stock rollers have a bronze bushing that allows them to spin freely on their axles, but when I took the offending roller apart, the problem was obvious.

The bronze bushing in this roller had worn away giving way too much clearance. This roller was just flopping around on it’s axle seizing on occasion and grinding against the camshaft.

I believe the damage to the cam was superficial, but something with the roller caused it to fail. I inspected all 24 rollers and found three more with excessive play but no further damage to the camshaft. I checked the oiling passageways and they all seemed clear, and didn’t find anything that could have caused this failure except for material failure. This roller failure has happened to a lot of my friends in the Ferrari business, and it can be from bad rollers. It’s hard to tell who manufactured these rollers, but I ordered a complete set from a trusted supplier.