OK, I went last night to check out the car. The body is perfect, looks like it just rollled off the line. The odo reads 98K miles, but the speedo has been out of commission for awhile (supposedly it needs a new impulse gear?), so it's actually higher.
The car is a 1981 308 GTSi, which I understand is a two-valve, but with the timing belts easily visible it's obvious that this is a DOHC engine. So either Ferrari put 4 cams in a two valve engine for some inexplicable reason, or one of the previous owners swapped a quattrovalvole into this thing. This is a possibility, since at one time this was a track car, it's had a bit of lightening done to it (A/C, spare tire and washer reservoir removed, lighter bumpers). It's also had the electronic ignition upgrade.
What happened was the owner was driving and it suddenly lost power, lost oil pressure, and started making knocking noises, which at first sounded like they were coming from the top end. He had it towed to a local high-end service shop, they diagnosed it, and he towed it home and it's sat in his garage ever since.
I have the paperwork from the last time it was in the shop after it died. They found a "significant amount" of metal in the oil filter, I have to call and see if I can talk to the tech who worked on it, and try and find out what kind of metal it was. The shop's diagnosis was, "Probable engine bearing damage causing the piston to hit the head"
So odds are this motor is gonna have to come out. I have a neighbor who is a diesel mechanic and has a heavy-duty work truck with a crane on the back, so that's covered, we'll just have to get an engine stand. We have a full two-car garage to work in, and as I said earlier, limited funds, but unlimited time. If it takes two years to get this thing running so what, it's still better off than it is now.
Has anybody on this board pulled the engine on a 308 before? Is it more feasible to crane it out from above or lift the car and lower it out?
Also, might the problem be a cam bearing, rather than a crank bearing? As I was looking at it I thought that, if it turned out that the problem was a cam bearing on the rear bank, I might be able to get the rear head off with the engine in the car. But I think that's a long shot. And if there's that much metal in the oil, the engine should come apart anyway.
Also it seems that when the car was running, one bank would run very rich. The result was that in order to pass the annual state emissions inspection, the tailpipe sample would have to be taken from the right-side exhaust outlet, if it was taken on the left it would fail.
Last, and least, the ventilation controls in the center console, the ones that open the vents, don't work. Supposedly you have to take out the plastic panel around the spare tire well and move some control arm to the center to get fresh air into the interior. (Or even better, just take off the targa roof :wink: )
So in short this appears to be one sick 308. But it's so gorgeous and generally cool, I'm determined to resurrect it if at all possible.