What the Tech? In this episode, we dive deep into a 1977 Ferrari 308 GTB engine. This one is broken and out for repair so we get to check out carnage and all the cool technology of1970's Ferrari. This engine was oddly overbuilt and had a very low horsepower output but the retro features and creative ingenuity definitely make up for it. Enjoy this show!
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Hey guys welcome back to legit street cars today i have a very special video for you all something that i've wanted to film for a very long time and i might even make this a series and that would be mechanical car reviews. So, as you guys know, there are a ton of normal car reviews where they go over all the features take it out for a test drive and those are great but being a mechanic. I can appreciate the mechanical aspects of all cars from all eras and i can appreciate new technology and really old technology. So today we have a 1977 ferrari: 308 gtb.

It had a little bit of an engine mishap, so the engine is out it's fully disassembled and in this video i want to geek out with you guys on all of the old school technology in this ferrari, engine there's so much to show and then obviously we'll Show some carnage as well. Now, if you guys are wondering about my v12 project, do not worry, it is still moving along, but right now the cylinder heads are out they're getting ported. So if this was just a normal repair, i would have had it all done by now, but the v12 cylinder heads, i don't believe, have ever been ported, so the company is basically making their cnc program off of my head. So it's going to take a couple of weeks for those to come back in so in the meantime, i'm looking at some other cars to buy.

We have some awesome content coming up on the bmw, the caprice, a bunch of other stuff going on, but anyway, for now, let's get to this ferrari, so much cool stuff. I hope you guys really enjoyed this video and, if you do, let me know in the comments section and make sure to subscribe if you're new, all right, so to kick things off. We are at fluid motor union in naperville illinois. You guys have seen me over here, a bunch of times hanging out with oj and the guys working on projects and stuff, very, very cool shop.

If you guys need anything and you live in illinois. This is the place to be, but they have a 1977 308 gtb, so they also make a 308 gts, which is a target top version, and this is a u.s market car which has a few little different things on it, as well as a wet sump. Oiling system, some of the other markets, got a dry, sump, oiling system. So, as you can see here, the label is in english and it conforms to the u.s epa regulations which, unfortunately, at the time meant that this car had 230 horsepower and i think, like 177 foot-pounds of torque 0-60 in like 6.9 seconds.

So not the most impressive car on paper, but again it was 1977 performance was kind of in a recession if you will, but this is a beautiful car. Nonetheless, it's absolutely perfect inside and out, but the engine had a little bit of an issue and i'll show you that in a minute, but take a look at the interior just gorgeous guys just absolutely gorgeous manual transmission. Of course, look at the attention to detail. So beautiful so beautiful anyway, it's probably a review somewhere on the interior.

Let's check out this three liter v8 engine. So what the 308 means is a three liter, eight cylinder. So, as you can tell here, cylinders are not the largest very, very small displacement v8, but they do sound pretty cool. This one is carbureted, it has four weber, carbs i'll show you guys um, and this is a dual overhead cam engine and it has two separate timing belts.
So, unfortunately, one of the timing belts snapped and caused a valve to kiss the piston it bent the valve. So this car did run when it came into fluid, just not very well, as you could imagine, with one timing belt snapped, so it basically had a dead bank. Now you guys are probably wondering what is going on right here. This is pretty crazy to see an engine with a differential strapped to the side of it and because this engine sits all the way in the back.

The crank is actually on the passenger side, but the transmission is right here. So this is actually the input shaft for the transmission. So the way this works is we have a bell housing that would bolt onto the back of the engine and then this is a little transfer case, so these gears will transfer power from the crank all the way down to the input. Shaft it'll spin the input shaft, which then spins the differential, so so this is actually pretty compact very creative.

I love love the fact that this is the little transfer case on the back of this ferrari engine and if we go over here, we can see where the shifter linkage would connect and it actually goes right through the oil pan. So your shifter linkage goes through the oil pan and there is the linkage right there. It's actually a very beefy rod that goes all the way up to the shifter. So, under the hood here we have four mounts where the engine sits and we have the ac compressor still there.

I believe, that's still connected to keep the charge, and this ferrari has dual fuel tanks they're kind of smaller. So you have one right there, one right there, you have your sending unit on the very top. The fuel filter is right down there and then, if you see these pipes, these are coolant pipes that run all the way to the front, because, as you could imagine, we have a radiator all the way up here. So these coolant pipes are going to go all the way underneath the vehicle and connect to the engine back there, and this is a really neat guys.

This is the washer fluid tank. Look at this. It is a bag. It's got a little baby motor right there very, very neat and a spare tire sits here as well and it looks like we have a brake booster right there and the master cylinder for the brakes.

I believe so yeah. This is the master cylinder for the brakes. I believe the clutch system uh this is mechanical, so we don't have a separate master, cylinder and reservoir for that and here's our wee little battery in the front, so not too many electronics going on in this ferrari, so it doesn't require a battery about double the Size, like we see in most modern cars today, something else i found really cool on this engine very interesting is that even though it only has 230 horsepower, they have factory head studs. This isn't boosted, like normally you use head studs on a very high horsepower engine, especially if it's boosted, so they are running a graphite head gasket with head studs on a 230 horsepower engine, very cool, very weird, okay.
So the madness moves on from the head studs and the graphite head gaskets to the timing marks on the flywheel here. So there are marks all around the flywheel and normally, when you have the bell housing attached, there would be a cover. An inspection cover that you could take out to time the engine when you're doing your timing belt job under normal circumstances. Now this job still does require you to drop the engine, to do the timing belts and they are due every 15 000 miles or three years.

So a very short interval, but then again cars like this aren't really driven all that often so, what's really cool is the way you can check the timing without disassembling the entire engine, so they have these little lines here on the camshaft and those are going to Line up with these lines right here on the top caps for the cam, so you can take the oil cap off and kind of peek in there and then on this side. I believe you take out the spark plug wires and you can kind of like peek around in there, i'm not exactly sure on the other head, but one thing that they noticed when this vehicle came in because they didn't know right away that the timing belt had Snapped it was just running really bad, and these had an issue with water getting in here, as you can see, it's very corroded, so at first there was a possibility that maybe it was an ignition issue, but then, after you know, digging deeper into this project, they Found the snapped belt all right, so here's a little bit of carnage for you guys. This is the bent valve that they found. So when this timing belt snapped.

This is interference. It bent this valve right here. So luckily it doesn't seem like there was any real damage to the cylinder head. So, as you can see here, this is where the bent valve was, and the seat looks to be in good condition.

They're definitely still going to send the heads out to get checked, but it's very possible that you can get away with just replacing this one valve, obviously new belts and call it a day. So something else that i found to be really cool is these: have solid, lifters or buckets and they don't really wear out, but you can shim them, which is essentially like replacing them. So as long as there isn't any wear on the sides, you can shim the top of these. So you do need to adjust these periodically, especially after everything's disassembled, but you can actually snap out this top little insert and replace just the top parts of the lifter.

So this goes to show that back in the day, not everything was just replace it immediately. You could actually fix internal engine parts, so i find that to be very cool and a little bit more overkill for the low amount of horsepower. Dual valve springs pretty crazy. So we have cars, you know with 5 600 horsepower with single valve springs, but back then with half the power or a third of the power they had dual valve springs.
Now i assume this thing still probably revs out pretty high and i'm sure ferrari knew what they were doing, but it's very interesting to see a dual valve spring on such a low horsepower engine. So not only do you have to perform a valve adjustment and possible shimming about every 15 000 miles when you're doing your timing belt, but you have four little weber carburetors. That may need adjustment as well, so this engine was running pretty poorly when it came in so they're, not exactly sure the condition of the carburetors they could be totally fine, but that is just another piece of the puzzle of owning an older ferrari is that you Have four carburetors that need to work together to make this engine run smoothly and check out one of the two little baby intake manifolds. So this is where two of the carburetors would sit, and this is a balance tube right here for the vacuum port.

So there's tiny little holes, you can see one right there, one right there so that way, we know that this is getting the same amount of vacuum and it kind of bleeds it off between all of them. So remember, i showed you guys the little transfer case that would bring our power to the input shaft. This is the other parts of the transmission, and that is the gear that kind of kicks this party off right there, and here is the clutch. So the clutch seems to be in pretty good condition: it's not soaked in oil or anything and yeah.

This is mechanical, so there is no slave cylinder and master cylinder for the clutch system. Everything is very mechanical on this old ferrari. Here is the snapped timing belt right there, as you can see, let's take a look at the inside yeah, not horrible. I've seen way worse, i've seen intact timing belts that are all cracked up ready to snap, and what does it say here in italy, non piagate? So that means don't fold so no idea how old this is probably very old, i'm gon na guess it is a little hard kind of kind of a little brittle.

The new one's gon na be much softer, but yeah. This is a shame, so the quirks and features or characteristics and oddities sounds kind of good. Let me know in the comments section what i should call this stuff, but they don't end with the actual engine. They continue with the parts catalog.

So ferrari decided to translate this a little bit for you. They kind of gave up eventually, but you can see here spare parts, catalog, cool cool, they're, translating it right table here. They will give you some english word. So you sort of know where to go and then i think they fired the translator.
So we are back to italian for basically the entire thing, like they'll tell you spare assembly units cool, so you kind of know where you're at but then all the names of the actual parts and whatnot are all in italian. So past the very beginning of this, you just have to learn the language. You got to step up your ferrari game. This is cool, they give you part numbers and everything, but you don't know what you're working on di tenuta.

So i speak italian but i learned it as a child, so i don't speak like car italian um. So i don't really know what all this stuff means: rondella soporto de sula scottio, my mom's gon na kill me yeah. So i i can read as well, but just technical stuff - i just never learned it so anyway. I could go through this parts catalog forever and i probably will, after i'm done filming lots lots of cool pictures, lots of cool stuff going on here.

I want to show this to my mom, so she can kind of like teach me the way of the car italian language, but just another interesting tidbit in the world of old carbureted ferrari engines all right. So this wouldn't be a complete legit streetcars video without a breakdown of the financials. So i'm sure you guys are curious what something like this would cost and exactly how oj and the guys are going to go about this repair you're. Looking at about 60 hours, if not a little bit more just for labor and then as you can imagine, parts are very expensive.

So we have oj. So i'm pretty sure you probably understand ferrari. Maintenance is uh pretty expensive, but uh 308s are getting pretty affordable for a little while there and the kicker was always the baited schedule, usually you're talking for a timing belt service, i would say north of six grand. It is an engine out service.

The problem, though, is that you never know what you're going to find right until you have everything apart, you're, not sure where that's going to lead and where that's going to lead, where that's going to lead like, for instance, we see one of these head. Studs is rounded out or cracked, you know we're not just going to simply leave it alone, you know, but we're not going to quote it out before we get there. So that's, that's the i don't want to say the danger, but that's the issue you face when you're dealing with a customer. You don't want to quote everything at it because then they'll see they'll think that you're, oh they're, just throwing the book at it.

But you want to leave some wiggle room in there, so they don't think that when you're calling said hey, you know we did find a headset that you're just adding stuff on. So it's a delicate process. It takes a lot of care, but the nice thing about ferrari is that any money you're putting into it it's going to hold the value, so that is uh. That is key as opposed to some cars where they're depreciating.
On top of that, as you can see, this is a pretty big job 60 plus hours. It's pretty intense. You got to keep everything. The biggest hurdle, though, is that you're not getting parts next day when you have something wrong, it could take a week.

Some of the ferrari parts we've had, especially with the coronavirus, the shutdown it's been three months, we've waited for some parts. So that's the biggest difficulty. Is you get into this job? You find it all of a sudden. It becomes not just money, intense but also time intense, but something like this uh.

If you were to take it to the dealer and some of the ways that they have to approach things you're, probably talking thirty thousand dollars to get in this far. You know if you're checking the heads, if you have to do machining there, all the services everything we're going to replace and we're probably going to be about 40 less than that, so it's while the car might be affordable. You might see one of these. If you get into a situation where you've got to do a major service and then there's other work above and beyond that, it could get expensive, quick.

Here's a little v12 engine sneak peek for you oj and the guys here at fluid have been vapor blasting. My engine parts look at this intake, so cool and there you have it a somewhat broken yet still cool and interesting. 1977 ferrari, 308 gtb engine - that's all taken apart and if you guys have any suggestions for future videos like this definitely comment down below i'd love, to show you guys, some more cool carnage, but also if a car is disassembled we get to kind of peek inside. Take a look at the technology kind of geek out together.

I love this stuff. I hope you guys do too and if you did make sure to hit the thumbs up, button make sure to comment down below share the video subscribe if you're new and, most importantly, have an awesome day i'll catch. All of you in the next video you.

By Alex

11 thoughts on “Looking Inside A Broken Ferrari 308 Engine & Discovering Cool/Weird Ancient Tech! What The Tech?”
  1. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Jiří Staněk says:

    Ajoj Valve clearance is adjusted using these washers. There is a hook for which it is compressed, and special pliers come into those grooves and you remove the washer and choose the right diameter due to the clearance of the valves.

  2. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Dave M says:

    Timing belt service every 15,000 miles or 3 years?

    What kind of crap does Ferrari put in their engines?

    Every other car I have heard of that has timing belts the belts are good for around 90,000 miles.
    Sounds like a service scam. Most Ferrari service is a cash grab.

    $30,000 for this service at a dealership? No wonder they call them stealerships.

    As for dual valve springs, it is not about the revs or the horsepower. It is done because of engine harmonics.

  3. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars nicola miriano says:

    It's such a weird thing that normally all instructions are in english but this time, being italian, i know exactly what is written and it's the only language proposed 😂

  4. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars classic1981 says:

    It's easy to think that double or hard valve springs has to do with high hp engines, but as you mentioned, it has more to do with high revving engines. It's at high revvs valves start to float with to soft springs. High boost can also induce valve float at some installations

  5. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars jonathan preziose says:

    So iam halfway through the video, and I just wanted to say I like the mechanic review idea. Iam sold but it would be cool if u talk about the pros and cons of specific mechanical choices and maybe a little bit on how technology was used afterwards how it ended up changed over time

  6. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars TwoLotus2 says:

    Old Ferraris. 2nd or 3rd owners terrified of the price of the upcoming or overdue maintenance. So work doesn't get done.
    Rubber cam timing belts get old and hard just by doing nothing too …
    Bang!
    Its a shame. Beautiful cars.

  7. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Hola! Boris S. says:

    Alex and fans you could always look at Ian Tyrrell's Garage who takes the viewer through the Ferrari 308 engine etc.. He has more knowledge and the history behind the cars.

  8. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Nathan Benich says:

    Great video as I love Ferraris. I even went to the factory in Summer 2003. With respect to maintenance, I heard from other YouTube channels that once the 308 is up to par, it's very reliable. Cheers!;)

  9. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars ndg49 says:

    I like the sound of Ferrari engines, but that's about as far as it goes. Maint. costs on any Ferrari engine is outrageous. However, I once toyed with the idea of buying one of a matching set of gunmetal gray Ferrari Dinos. A little more reliable, but still definitely NOT a daily driver. The same guys also had a Maser 3500GT for sale, in cream with a white leather interior trimmed in red piping. Great sounding inline 6. Again, I had no place for something not a daily driver. Back to Ferrari… I once saw a GTO with both V-12 engines (3 liter and a 4 liter) here at our Concours (it was owned by the guy who owns Escort radar detectors) and it was worth in the many multi millions of dollars. Needless to say, it won a few top awards. Nice to look at, though. A neighbor once owned a Testosterosa (heh, heh, heh) and while it sounded great, he never ran it much.

  10. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Rod Romes says:

    Again this time you piss me off stupid b** it's a 3 liter V8 the put out more horsepower then some 5 American V8 back in the day the engine is longitudinally mounted not latitudinally mounting an engine latitude lie is a sin of course you look at the old Lamborghini it uses engine oil for transmission oil also at the same time go buy yourself a half ton Chevy pickup truck that's all you deserve you are not studying are reporting correctly

  11. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars LegitStreetCars says:

    What do you guys think of naming the series "What the Tech?" Give me some suggestions for other mechanically interesting cars. Cool old or new tech, weird designs, bad designs, good designs, crazy engineering, etc.

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