I’ve been sorting out some issues on a couple 330s at my shop that can help all owners of Vintage Ferraris. I’ve done these repairs before, but it’s always good to check your own car to make sure these things are working properly. One of them is to check the seal at the fuel filler cap. The original rubber seal is usually hard and cracked. The modern fuels seem to dissolve the original rubber material, and makes it hard. I usually dig this material out, and break it apart to replace it with something more compatible.

I have found using fuel safe cork gasket material available from the auto parts store to works well. It comes in 3/8 inch sheets, and I cut it with a hole in the middle small enough to slip behind the center retaining plate of the fuel filler cap.

One of the mechanical fuel pumps on the cars I was working one seemed not to be working efficiently, and on closer look, I noticed the pivot rod that actuates with the fuel pump was working its way out of the pump body. This hardened rod is supposed to be steaked in place and it looks like it was working its way out. After pushing the rod in place, I bench tested the pump, and it worked fine, so its lack of efficiency was due to the rod being out of place. I made sure the rod was secure and reinstalled the pump.

On the second 330 I’ve been working on, I noticed a couple of oil spots on the floor near the rear tire.

When I removed the knockoff, I noticed it was filled with gear oil which pointed to oil leaking from the rear axle somewhere.

After removing the caliper, and the rear hub, I found the back of the brake disc and hub to be dry. Usually, when the axle seal goes bad, oil will leak past the flange of the brake disc and sling oil out around the back of the brake disc, but everything here was dry.

With the disc removed, I could see the oil seal was soft and pliable, and doing its job, so oil was leaking from somewhere else.

The other source of the oil leak often comes from between the splines of the axle shaft and the washer that holds the wheel hub to the axle shaft. Oil will migrate past these splines and find it’s way into the hub.

Whenever I replace a seal in the rear hub, I always coat the back of the washer behind the axle nut, and it looks like the last guy didn’t do this, so I used some rtv that is supposed to gear oil resistant to seal the axle up and hopefully stop the leaking!