I continued sorting out this original unrestored Ferrari 330GTC at my shop, and I noticed the valve train seemed a little noisier on one side than the other. When a Ferrari is idling, there are all sorts of noises coming from the engine. Intake noise, exhaust noise, chain noise, and that’s not including things that could be broken! As the engine warms up, some of the valve train noises go away because metal expands as it warms, so listening to the differences helps discern normal noises and problem noises. Audio can also be very subjective, so I have to keep an open mind on what I hear, and not jump to conclusions.

Ferrari recommends valve adjustments at every 8000 miles, and often times with Vintage Cars, that interval can take several years, but can catch an owner off guard if they do a long long road trip or simply forget. The owner of this car said he was about 5000 miles since the last adjustment, but decided to have me take a look inside the engine.

The first problem I encountered when trying to remove the bolts from the valve covers. Two of the shouldered bolts were missing from the set of four that should have been on this car. These are special bolts that Ferrari used to secure the valve covers to the distributor drives in the back of the engine. The regular bolts that were substituted on this engine gave very little clearance to put a wrench on the head, and they were also over tightened. I worked very hard not to round off the head of the wrong bolt because getting these bolts off the back of the engine would have been a big problem.

Despite the $60 dollar price tag to buy two special replacement bolts with the shipping, I told the owner this was absolutely necessary to avoid giving the next guy working on this car the problems I had.

The valve train looked very clean, and it looks like this engine has seen regular oil changes and good maintenance, but I did find a couple of adjusters out of adjustment.

Before I adjust for lash, I remove the adjusters to visually inspect the valve stem, and the tip of the adjuster. In a perfect world, the adjuster tip is supposed to be slightly softer than the tip of the hardened valve stem so as these two surfaces act on one another to push the valve open, if there is any wear, the replaceable tip is the part that can be replaced. I tried to arrange these tips from bad to worse from left to right. The furthest one on the left shows a slight imperfection while the one on the furthest right shows all the hardness of the tip had worn away and the softer supporting structure of the tip was wearing exponentially.

I believe the noisy valve train was from these adjuster tips being out of adjustment, and maybe even the really bad one asking to be replaced! As a mechanic, I hate being accused of up selling work, but I’m really glad we decided to do this valve adjustment a little early!

I’ve been trying to post a new segment to my YouTube Channel called Ferrari Mechanic Struggle of the Week, and I talked about the shouldered bolts on the distributor drives and tool I made to access these bolts. The segment is after the drive I took in a Lusso I have at the shop!