FrankenFerrari - V12 Ferrari 308

oldeskewltoy said:

X2

Creation of abominations of this caliber and magnitude inspire me.

My project pales in this light.

I feel like I should've paid to read this. 

Impressive is an understatement. I am blown away by the hardcore fabrication and bonus points for super exotic status. 

The number of times you "ruined" the heads and then went back in and added metal until they were fixed is inspiring. More of us should ruin more stuff. 

In reply to Crowndog :

Hey!  how's your baby running? 

......I,m really jealous of people with running and driving project cars

Thanks guy....it's been a long long road.....

So someone asked about the trans. SO way back in the early 80s when I was living in the barracks in the AirForce I read an article, road and track? maybe about a guy who took a 365 engine he got at a salvage yard (notice I didn't say junk yard this time) and put it in a 308.  After that a couple copies were made, here's a couple pictures of one of them, so I knew this was possible and RELATIVELY straight forward...so yeah, that's not how I did it. 

This is one of the most astonishing builds I've seen on this forum. I'm not sure what it would take for Ferrari staff to say, "We should have built them that way to begin with" instead of "You shouldn't ruin the investment in one of our cars," but if any modified Ferrari could make them change their tune, it would be this.

On a 308 the trans casting and oil sump are 1 and the same, and clearly a V12 doesn't fit on a V8 oil pan., BUT, on the 308 the sides of the block extend down past the crank centerline by about 2", on the V12 they do not so this gave the original conversion guy a place to put an adapter.  The adapter had to be welded in place, but there was a place and then the bellhousing and drop gears lined up.

I went a different path thinking why the F'k would I want to RAISE the engine in a sports car on purpose?.no, no no,.... the engine goes as low as it can go. This "opportunity" to lower the engine presented a few problems:

1) The most obvious being a v12 clearly doesn't fit on a V8 oil pan. 

2)is the drop gears need to line up

3)the 308 already suffers from oil starvation in the corners as the oil is thrown to the sides so making the oil pan wider and shallower is not ok. 

hmmmmmmmm

1) I still have a welder....and a sawzall

2) The V8 is 90 degree, the V12 is 60 degree....so its narrower by a lot, if I drop the engine 2" and keep the crank to trans input constant  so the gears fit that moves the engine forward by about 3".....yup, that will work and as a bonus the engine will now slip past the shock/spring assembly on the right so I can get the engine a lot more centered right/left than past conversions could.

3) its going to have to be drysump....as God intended sports cars to be ;)

MadScientistMatt said:

This is one of the most astonishing builds I've seen on this forum. I'm not sure what it would take for Ferrari staff to say, "We should have built them that way to begin with" instead of "You shouldn't ruin the investment in one of our cars," but if any modified Ferrari could make them change their tune, it would be this.

I heard after the conversion article was published back in the 80s Enzo spent a really nice note to the to guy who built it, Enzo understood.....he once said something like "aerodynamics are for people who can't build engines".

Ok, the engine need to go on the trans and note I'm posting pics out of order at times all through this thread....I bounced a round a bit trying to figure out what would work and if I did this how do I deal with that kind of stuff but I'm posting pics in groups that make more sense than the chaos that is my brain.

for this the milling machined seemed like too much bother....sawzall.

One thing the the original conversion guy did that I liked was make a jig plate to try to hold the trans/sump casting straight, I followed that path and made a pretty solid plate that grabbed all the bolts on the bottom of the casting and big enough so I could bolt it to the welding table....which meant I had to counter sink all the holes.  I addeda plate to the end of the trans  and bolted the rest of the stuff like the diff coffer in place as well.....thinking every little bit helps.

A little more cutting

and time to weld on some billet parts.  I lightened where ever I thought I could and I copied the ribbing in the casting so it would look like it belonged as much as possible.  I also left it about 1/8" tall to give me something to finish machine after welding.

Then set the engine on and see how to connect it....while always remembering that the right side of the oil pan comes up so it can clear the chassis.

I hit sensory overload on the first page. Now I'm sitting here just staring. Incredible work! Ferrari and sawzall together- Only here on GRM.

NermalSnert said:

I hit sensory overload on the first page. Now I'm sitting here just staring. Incredible work! Ferrari and sawzall together- Only here on GRM.

I post the day to day boring stuff here these days...it helps me remember what I was thinking:

http://gemellocattivo.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=319

Day to day boring stuff. Bwahahaha KERPLUNK

So that was the easy part, the gear that are now pointing in the whole wrong direction with castings that don't come close to fitting are waiting on the left side.....but a little more "easy" stuff to finish out the top of the 308 trans to look like a 400 oil pan

This casing is now about where it needs to be, but now it needs to be machined so the engine sits exactly the correct distance from the trans input shaft so I at least have a hope of getting the drop gears to work.

Step 1 is get the trans case on the mill and location the trans input centerline making sure the stepup has enough machine travel to get from the trans centerline to where the engine centerline is going. Then cut a reference for the new engine centerline since that isn't a 5 axis mill and I can't indicate horizontal then cut vertical

Then I put the block on the mill table and located all the hole locations, then transferred them to the trans....and moved a couple that won't work and converted a few from tapped holes to though holes so I didn't end up needing to put nuts inside the trans where the gears are supposed to be. 

I also added a couple dowel pins for location.  The 400 oil pan didn't need that and the 308 used another end casting to control the crank to trans relationship.....but the 400 isn't designed to accept that casting and adding it would make the assembly too long. Dowel pins it is.

I mentioned the 308 uses a casting that is the end of the engine and also the end of the trans....that's not happening.

The 308 bellhousing and drop gear case and very end of the trans are all 1 casting.....that very much no longer fits and doesn't come close to touching the trans anymore

Oh come on, it's not that impressive.  He's just following the book. 

We're going to need the sawzall again it looks like......