Sodium Valve Replacement

Jeff,

the short answer is most V8's had/have more miles on them and were genrally run harder because they had less power and were run more often because service costs were much less..so we hear about it more, and not every sodium valve breaks, but they all have the potential too.

This is not much different from the cars from the 60' & early 70's, once Ferrari engines become 20-25 yrs old they develop issues either from design, lack of service or just plain age.

Mostly we don't talk about it, but head problems have been a Ferrari nemisis from the earlisest days, with each model having some type of issue that required major head work (many at around 20K-30K Miles) and in many cases Modifications to keep the heads alive and well after repair. And this is even true with the 355's up until they changed guide material.

So anyone care to give a good guess as to what it would cost to change out all the valves and guides.
Just a parts only cost, for valves, guides, gaskets. And machine work to fit the guides and valves.
Labor costs for pulling the engine, etc, will vary by region, and/or if you do some of the work yourself.
My car has 22,000 miles on it, so I doubt it would need a full rebuild..... I hope!
I'm thinking it might be a good project to get to know my Boxer a little more intimately.

I can be more scientific and pull out my actual records, but for just the valves (machineshop sourced) and machine work, I think I paid around $3k. Add to the cost of the guides and seals, plus headgaskets, etc... and you are probably over $4k. I did mine along with a major service it already needed, so there was the belts, tensioner bearings, cam seals and water pump rebuild on top of it. My only regret was to not change the cam drive (inner/outer) bearings at the same time, not that it needed it, but as a precaution.

Ted, Thanks.

I was trying to decide how to answer the question because of all the extras involved with pulling the heads. Nobody (in their right mind) wants to pull a Ferrari Engine twice for the same job or because they overlooked some essentials and extras that go along with a quality finalized job.

Thanks Ted.

I was thinking of just pulling the engine out, then chucking it in the back of my jeep and taking it down to Bobileff's shop.
While he does the work, I could spend some time detailing the empty engineroom.
I intend to keep my baby for the foreseeable future, so $5/6K now is better than 20K down the road!
The major was just done 1500 miles ago, but put on new belts, cam drive bearings, maybe check out a few other things,,,, and I feel myself creeping up on a 10K bill! Gotta love these darn Boxers!

John as with other Boxer owners here the valves are a concern but as David suggested when they rebuilt this motor they reused and resufaced the valves which caused them to probably overheat and break,from the documentation on Sheehans site on this car it seemed a very thorough rebuild other than replacing the valves and looked pricey,

Not to say this can't happen though to any of our
cars but I think its much more rare on the BBs as JRV stated they are not run as hard as the 308s or at high rpm as much, I also think the
flat "Boxer" motor design is more in balance and smooth vs the V8s so less stress on the engine internals as well. So to make a long story short I wouldn't tear down the motor just to do the valves.

Davids comment about Ferrari liking the valve guides a bit loose explains also why we get the occasional puffs of blue smoke on start up, I even had it happen once
hitting it hard off idle in a tight turn.

Hello all, thanks for the conversation and suggestions. To set the record straight, Sheehan's site not withstanding, Tate at Carobu related a slightly different take where they were given 27001 with the motor in boxes and tasked with putting her back together. No options other than "obviousely necessary" items were included in the re-build. So the valves were re-surfaced and re-installed. My tough luck.

The heads are back at Carobu as we speak, they are installing stainless steel italian racing valves (the name escapes me). The cylinder head and sleeve came out without having to split the block and a borosope inspection has found no debris, but the valve stem was not recovered. FOW believes it to be in the Tubis or even discharged out. As for cost, FOW suggested I deal directly with Carobu to eliminate their markup, and I'm looking at somewhere around 3 grand for the work.

I'll keep you posted.

Dear Friends,

Can my 87 412 GT use unleaded fuel?
Are the cylinder heads, valve guides, prepared?

Many Thanks in advance.

Miguel

Portugal