As I continued to work on the 400GT at my shop, I was left with a ton of cleaning to do from the oil leaks on this engine. Not only was the rear main seal leaking, but it was also leaking from the main bearing cap. On earlier cars, the rear bearing cap can come straight down, but on this particular car, there is a cross member that partially obstructs the bolts. Some of these leaks would be impossible to address without removing the engine.

The owner and I both did not really want to pull the engine on this car, but the reality was I would never be able to address the leaks without it. The owner left it to my discretion and despite my best efforts and hopeful thinking, I decided it would be the best course of action. After looking at the rest of the car, and finding things to be in good order, I felt it was worth the expense of fixing this car properly. Although fixing anything properly is the best way to go, cars like the 400GT can make the owner take pause when the cost of repairs can exceed half the value of the car! I tried my best to keep that in mind, but years of deferred maintenance is what brought this car to this condition, and it deserved better work.

I had my friend Matthew over to help me remove the engine, and we continued cleaning all the dirt and oil that had accumulated through the years. Not only was this a dirty mess, but the coating of dirt probably insulated the heat around this engine causing it to run hotter which could have also added to the seals deteriorating and leaking even more. A clean engine could only help.

After a first round of cleaning, I marked all the cams, and removed them so I could rotate the engine freely without the risk of bending any valves as the timing chain and the front timing chest could be removed. There is so little documentation on these engines and the only shop manuals I could find were written in Italian. Even if I translated the manuals, I could see the instructions were vague and not really helpful. These engines were first made for the 365GTC/4 and were carried through to the 365GT/4 2+2, 400GT, 400i, and eventually 412. They’re Columbo engines in spirit, but the front timing chains are specific to these engines and disassembly was pretty tricky for me. Luckily I had guidance from Francois, and several other friends of mine in the business, but I have found that so few Ferrari Mechanics have worked on these engines, that their memories are distant and perhaps fogged by a little bit of PTSD!

I used my fork lift to hold the engine while the grease and dirt was removed, but I had to build a new engine stand to make working on this engine easier. I had brought my other engine stand down to Francois’ shop to build a 330 engine for another car, but needed a second one to progress with this disassembly. I went to the local Harbor Freight and bought two engine stands to make the special configuration Ferrari engines need to work on them. Needless to say it took longer than expected, but if you’ve ever done projects like this, you would know it always takes longer than expected!

After removing the water pump and oil pump housing, I could finally remove the timing chest from the front of the engine, and it confirmed my need to take things apart to properly seal this engine. I believe the 7/12 head was removed from this engine while it was still in the car sometime in its past. The evidence of all this RTV smeared around the water passages only on this side of the engine with none on the other head was the clue.

The back side of the timing chest showed the same evidence. I went back and looked at the compression numbers to see if there were more clues to the work. Here are the numbers: #1 167, #2 155, #3 145, #4 160, #5 170, # 6 165, #7 168, #8 200, #9 165, #10 165, # 11 160, #12 120, You’ll notice cylinder number 8 on the 7/12 bank showed 200 lbs of compression when the average compression was at about 158. # 12 is a little low at 120, but not a killer for a 50 year old engine, but I’m surprised to see 200. Perhaps cylinder # 8 had a problem like a burned valve, and the head was removed to repair so the evidence of just removing the one head is evidence of the RTV. We may never know, but that’s the nature of these cars!

I do know that we did the right thing by taking this engine out of the car as I saw things that could only be repaired with an engine out. This short water pump hose that connected the water pump to the timing chest was probably original, and never been replaced. As the rubber deteriorated, small leaks formed and allowed coolant to seep out, crusting over with electrolysis between the aluminum and the failing coolant. Eventually, this hose would have failed, and leaked all the coolant out of the water pump, making engine removal a necessity, but under dire circumstances!

These round o-rings that sealed the passages between the heads and the timing chest were pretty compressed and flattened, so resealing them without replacing them would be a asking for future leaks. Sitting down with a parts book to specify the exact o-rings I would need has been a daily routine with this engine!

Scraping gasket surfaces has been the extent of the rest of my days!

Let’s not forget the inordinate amount of cleaning this engine has despite having done it several times before. There are so many areas the seem to trap dirt and oil that cleaning it was a challenge!

Here”s the video of the process.