Ferrari 400 APK / MOT- Carburettor adjustment - And other maintenance jobs

As mentioned, yesterday I have picked up the 400 from the garage. It did pass the MOT. It was about to expire only next month. But I figured to do everything in one go now. Meaning, fixing the airco and do the carb fine tuning. Especially because of the latter I did not want to have any trouble for the emission tests one month later, meaning it needs to be re-adjusted again. Besides this, I'm going to take the car on a long road trip to Italy next week. So I just want to be sure all is fine. By now I think I have driven roughly 2500 km's since it's large maintenance last year. So this would be a good check-up. Another thing that had to be done was renewing the oil with 10W60 - as per blog:

http://erwin400.blogspot.nl/2013/11/agip-10w60-racing-oil.html

This included a new pair of oil filters. Previously it was fitted with new FRAM filters. The garage strongly advised to get them replaced by UFI as these are apparently of better quality and originally fitted. With the used 10W40 oil I expect some small particles were now in the filters. Since a new pair isn't extremely expensive I agreed to go ahead to have them replaced

One more item I had on my list was to get the wiperblades replaced as they were dried out. On the last journey it was raining throughout the day. And there is nothing more disturbing than a pair of squeeking wiper blades. So this has now been fixed as well.

The airco was fixed as well, as per yesterdays blog:

http://erwin400.blogspot.nl/2014/06/ferrari-400-maintenance-ac-airco-part.html

For the MOT they discovered the brake hoses were in bad condition and required replacement. All four of them were replaced (front). Although not clearly visible on the picture I saw myself they had small spots, meaning signs of a bubble and potentially could burst soon or later. They were Original ATE hoses. They ordered them from the Ferrari importer Kroymans, thus very expensive and overpriced in my opinion.

Furthermore they discovered the dynamo was making a ticking noise. Something I noticed myself as well but it faded away during warming up. Not sure when this started to happen but it must have been very recently. It's good they spotted this as well and localized it to the alternator. Apparently it was causing Sparks. Just what we needed with a leaking carbed engine. In any case, this was looked into and caused by the voltage regulator (Bosch 0192052006). So this item got replaced. Also the bearrings required replacement. I'm very glad this is now all sorted as well.



 

And last but not least the carbs were finetuned. I knew already it was adjusted to rich since a lot of gas was afterburned in the exhaust (when releasing the gaspedal) And honestly, I do like that noise. The main issue for me was spitting gas, only occurring when running cold. It was happening randomly on all carbs. Some more 'severe' than others. For the MOT this would also be considered a fail. Another issue that was manifesting occurred when running idle/stationair. The engine became 'wobbly' or "shaky'. Likely this was also linked due to incorrect adjusted carbs. New gaskets were ordered and fitted. And everything was adjusted as good as possible. By doing so all issue's got cured;

 

- passing MOT emission test

- no more gas spitting

- steady engine when running idle

 

Also when driving it feels like it goes so much more smoother. Love it.

 

 

 



 

As far as I can Judge the car is now in a real good technical shape - at least in my desired state. Leaving only some cosmetics to be taken care off. So it's now only a matter of keeping it regular maintained and looked after. The credits for this piece of maintenance goes to garage PECO (I will add them to the sidebar on the company section). Highly recommended - especially for carburetors, airco systems or old skool cars.

 

PS I also unloaded my trunk today - it did had some old replaced stuff from the previous maintenance. I took some pictures and added these to older maintenance blogs.