RE: Ferrari recalls V8 engines...

[NonProphetOrg]

A bit off topic, but what was the story behind the Vauxhall fires, anyone? I heard snippets but no details.

[blueSL]

My experience with my lowly 355 is that whenever the engine comes out for cam belts, it never goes back quite right and there's a succession of oil, water and hydraulic leaks and electrical gremlins. Plus of course, replacing the crankshaft is a tad more difficult than the cam belts. If it were me, I'd be wanting a fresh factory warranty for the car and a loaner while they were messing about with the car.

[rockymount]

blueSL said:

My experience with my lowly 355 is that whenever the engine comes out for cam belts, it never goes back quite right and there's a succession of oil, water and hydraulic leaks and electrical gremlins. Plus of course, replacing the crankshaft is a tad more difficult than the cam belts. If it were me, I'd be wanting a fresh factory warranty for the car and a loaner while they were messing about with the car.

I'm inclined to agree with you blueSL (not because I've ever owned a Ferrari - never have and unfortunately probably never will), but simply because apart from changing brake discs, pads, cambelts and the like, I expect your average Ferrari mechanic doesn't get around to changing 'crankshafts' that often . I can just picture it now - Ferrari Mechanic in immacluate Rosso Red overalls scratching his or her head whilst thinking to themselves "WTF do i do with this bolt I've got left over!" and like you say, things never quite go back the same.

[ninja_eli]

morgrp said:

Credit to Ferrari for being open and honest about the problem, offering to fix and making efforts to contact customers rather than wait for customers to come to them - that's the kind of service you often don't get from a volume manufacturer.

You can imagine the problem is probably ten fold worse than what they claim it to be. Probably affects far more than the publicised number of engines too...

Ferrari haven't been known to rectify well documented problems. The procedure seems to be something like this:

1) Simply ignore it
2) Fix it under warranty rather than resolve the underlying issue, and wait for cars to fall out of warranty, all the while doing 3).
3) Where possible, ignore the issue exists until they ABSOLUTELY have to fix it.

To congratulate them on something that they should do anyway; most likely doing because somewhere down the road it will cost them more later; won't see the owner compensated for his loss of use of his car is silly.

[CarsGoVroom]

robinessex said:

Not these days. In the very old 'bad' days, engines were assembled by a 'fitter', the guy who hand fettled each component until it al wennt together. Then, as machinery improved, parts were measured after manufacturing, color coded for it's size, and selectively assembled. Modern machinery can hold such tight tolerances, that any combination of bits from the assembly trays will fit together. The typical tolerance on a crankshaft journal for size, eccentricity and parallelism will be circa 0.0015mm

I would agree, but I know for a fact on one rather large OEM, engine assembly lines assign groups to con-rod and crank assemblies.
The tolerances might be smaller, but for increased product quality you still assign groups. They bands might be smaller but they're still there.

[Captain Muppet]

CarsGoVroom said:

robinessex said:

Not these days. In the very old 'bad' days, engines were assembled by a 'fitter', the guy who hand fettled each component until it al wennt together. Then, as machinery improved, parts were measured after manufacturing, color coded for it's size, and selectively assembled. Modern machinery can hold such tight tolerances, that any combination of bits from the assembly trays will fit together. The typical tolerance on a crankshaft journal for size, eccentricity and parallelism will be circa 0.0015mm

I would agree, but I know for a fact on one rather large OEM, engine assembly lines assign groups to con-rod and crank assemblies.
The tolerances might be smaller, but for increased product quality you still assign groups. They bands might be smaller but they're still there.

You are both right - depends on the manufacturer, the engine and the plant it's built in.
Everybody wins (unless they drive a Ferrari).

[Neil G60]

Hardly news worthy is it? Hundreds of cars are subject to recalls all the time

[RatBoy M3CSL]

robinessex said:

Not these days. In the very old 'bad' days, engines were assembled by a 'fitter', the guy who hand fettled each component until it al wennt together. Then, as machinery improved, parts were measured after manufacturing, color coded for it's size, and selectively assembled. Modern machinery can hold such tight tolerances, that any combination of bits from the assembly trays will fit together. The typical tolerance on a crankshaft journal for size, eccentricity and parallelism will be circa 0.0015mm

Not sure I agree here, typical main journal tolerances will be 5 microns on diameter, straightness and parallelism, with pin positions in a 25 micron zone, typical main bearing clearances will be 25-40 microns, and selective colour coded shells chosen to give the right clearance on assembly, normally with plastiguage, unless you can guarantee the colour coding is correct, I recently had my race engine built and they were not..!, but you wouldn't take the risk of not checking really.

As for the cranks being the wrong size, if so, you would just change the shells which would be 100 quids worth + time, not 2-3 grand for the crank, my take is they discovered something much more seriously wrong with them, not just a grading issue..!, maybe they forgot to roll the corner rads.. !

Edited by RatBoy M3CSL on Wednesday 9th May 16:52

[carmental]

Jeeze. If that gets worse it could ruin ferrari's reputation.

[BlueMR2]

carmental said:

Jeeze. If that gets worse it could ruin ferrari's reputation.

Why, can you reprogram the keys with the obd port and a £300 quid machine now too .

[robinessex]

1 Micron is 1 millionth of a MTR, that is 0.001mm That is sufficient accuracy to make selctive fitting redundant. See this :- http://www.callies.com/crankshafts/

[br d]

When I first got the 430 there was a recall over the manifolds, they apologised profusely and offered a very nice Merc as a stand in. They said it was a problem that wouldn't manifest itself for many thousands of miles but they wanted it sorted now, I think it came to a few grand. After I'd had it back a couple of weeks they rang back and said they weren't happy with the redesign and wanted to do another refit, so they took it away and did it all again. I didn't notice any difference either before ar after.
They picked up and returned the car on each occasion fully valeted and with little Ferrari gifts left on the passenger seat.

Can't knock it really.

Edited by br d on Wednesday 9th May 19:10

[QUADratic]

Didn't stop them from doing donuts ontop of a Ming monument .. quality PR :/

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-1800629...

[RatBoy M3CSL]

robinessex said:

1 Micron is 1 millionth of a MTR, that is 0.001mm That is sufficient accuracy to make selctive fitting redundant. See this :- http://www.callies.com/crankshafts/

Correct, 1 micron is 0.001mm, however you can't actually grind, measure and hold those tight tolerances on main bearings, and moreso you can't hold the tolerance on the line boring and honing of the crank line bore to the micron either, so taking into account the tolerance on the shell bearings as well, this is exactly why selective fit is used on pretty much all race and high performance engines running tight clearances 20-30 microns, loose fit road engines you might be able to get away with it tho' granted, but the Fezza motors you would like to think are hand built and blueprinted on the line..!

[DasChin]

do you think this is a cunning marketing plan to get customers to service early?

I would be asking for full blet n braces change and service at their costs consdiering the enigne is out. do the clutch old boy while you are there. there's a good chap ;-)

[Captain Muppet]

br d said:

When I first got the 430 there was a recall over the manifolds, they apologised profusely and offered a very nice Merc as a stand in. They said it was a problem that wouldn't manifest itself for many thousands of miles but they wanted it sorted now, I think it came to a few grand. After I'd had it back a couple of weeks they rang back and said they weren't happy with the redesign and wanted to do another refit, so they took it away and did it all again. I didn't notice any difference either before ar after.
They picked up and returned the car on each occasion fully valeted and with little Ferrari gifts left on the passenger seat.

Can't knock it really.

Edited by br d on Wednesday 9th May 19:10

You can't knock it? They took your car away because they built it wrong twice.

[The Wookie]

br d said:

When I first got the 430 there was a recall over the manifolds, they apologised profusely and offered a very nice Merc as a stand in. They said it was a problem that wouldn't manifest itself for many thousands of miles but they wanted it sorted now, I think it came to a few grand. After I'd had it back a couple of weeks they rang back and said they weren't happy with the redesign and wanted to do another refit, so they took it away and did it all again. I didn't notice any difference either before ar after.
They picked up and returned the car on each occasion fully valeted and with little Ferrari gifts left on the passenger seat.

Can't knock it really.

Edited by br d on Wednesday 9th May 19:10

That's funny, my old man's last Spider the Manifolds disintegrated after 6,000 miles, no courtesy car was offered, and they had the car for 6 weeks while the dealer argued with Ferrari about how much of the engine they were going to rebuild as somehow bits of the Catalyst had been sucked back into the engine, damaging the valves and the crowns of the pistons.

They eventually offered us a new car and promptly stitched us up on the sale of the old one...

[Liokault]

Captain Muppet said:

br d said:

When I first got the 430 there was a recall over the manifolds, they apologised profusely and offered a very nice Merc as a stand in. They said it was a problem that wouldn't manifest itself for many thousands of miles but they wanted it sorted now, I think it came to a few grand. After I'd had it back a couple of weeks they rang back and said they weren't happy with the redesign and wanted to do another refit, so they took it away and did it all again. I didn't notice any difference either before ar after.
They picked up and returned the car on each occasion fully valeted and with little Ferrari gifts left on the passenger seat.

Can't knock it really.

Edited by br d on Wednesday 9th May 19:10

You can't knock it? They took your car away because they built it wrong twice.

No, they accepted that they made an error, in a field where it is more or less inevitable, and fixed it in a very efficient manner, maintaining a good relationship with the customer.

I can't help feel that if this was a German company, they would just let the car fail then tell the customer he was driving it wrong.

[bertie]

Captain Muppet said:

br d said:

When I first got the 430 there was a recall over the manifolds, they apologised profusely and offered a very nice Merc as a stand in. They said it was a problem that wouldn't manifest itself for many thousands of miles but they wanted it sorted now, I think it came to a few grand. After I'd had it back a couple of weeks they rang back and said they weren't happy with the redesign and wanted to do another refit, so they took it away and did it all again. I didn't notice any difference either before ar after.
They picked up and returned the car on each occasion fully valeted and with little Ferrari gifts left on the passenger seat.

Can't knock it really.

Edited by br d on Wednesday 9th May 19:10

You can't knock it? They took your car away because they built it wrong twice.

All manufacturers have issues, what differentiates them is how they deal with it and I think Ferrari deal with it well.

[Stubbs]

There's one to add to the PFMEA