Kerry's 308 GTS Project

Timing Belts

I put off changing the timing belts all winter (while the 308 sat on the lift).  Too cold and too much skiing.  Anyway, the day arrived to start that project.

First, I printed off an excellent primer written by Birdman of Ferrari Chat fame.  It has a step by step procedure that mostly worked for me.

The main problems I had were removal of the belt covers and getting the A/C compressor out of the way.  The rear had a wire ring used to position the flexible air hose to point it to the transmission.  This was welded to the frame and I couldn't get the cover off with it in the way.  As it was clearly a non-Ferrari item, I just removed it.  I'll probably weld on a bracket that lets a regular large hose clamp to slip through.  That way it'll be removable as needed.  After a long thread on FerrariChat, it turns out that this ring is stock, so I welded it back in.

I had a hard time getting the A/C compressor so it would hang over the gas tank out of the way (kind of).  I wasn't replacing the water pump as I did it a couple of years ago after a catastrophic pulley failure, so I ended up having to remove its pulley along with the crank pulley.  I also found it expedient to just remove the vapor canister rather than trying to slip each hose off one by one.

After finally getting everything out of the way, the actual belt change wasn't too difficult.  I set the engine on PM 1/4 and checked that the rear cam was on its timing marks.

   

Then I marked each pulley and belt with a red marker and proceeded to remove the rear belt.

Everything came off fine and I transferred the marks onto the new belt and installed it.  Then I went to work on the front belt.  I couldn't get the old tensioner bearing off, so I ended up just cutting the belt, removing the whole assembly and then got the old bearing off on the bench.  It looked like someone had gotten a new bearing on a little crooked and then forced it on.  A few minutes with emery paper cleaned up the shaft so a bearing would slide on and off without any forced being needed.  Once that was done, I re-installed the tensioner assembly after cleaning and lubricating it.  Then the front belt went on and I rotated the engine to see the maximum tension point for each bank before tightening the tensioner nut to the 41 ft-lbs specified.

As I am also installing a new oil sump baffle now, I stopped before putting anything else back together.  I'll need to get the oil dipstick removed and having more parts off the car won't hurt.

One other thing I noticed was the crank seal was leaking, so I replaced that.

Adjusting the A/C and accessory belts needs to be done using a tension gauge.  Ferrari specifies numbers for both belts in new and used condition.

The last thing I did was to drill the thermostat bleed screw to actually have it work as a bleeder.

So everything is back together and it runs!  Now just need to go for a drive to finish bleeding and topping off the cooling system.