I had a bit of a scare when I hooked them up, turned the key and...no start. What? All I did was swap out the XR-700s and check the static timing. What did I screw up now? I went through and checked the basics. All the wire connections were tight. I had a good ground. The strangest thing was that I was getting spark out of the coil, but not at the plugs. Huh? I didn't mess with the wires or the distributors, other than to remove the rear one to verify nothing was broken. I made one final pass and then I saw what happened. Remember that this V8 is like two 4 cylinder engines. Each bank has it's own distributor, coil and ignition trigger. In the spaghetti of wires, I managed to cross connect the XR-700s to the coils. So, the front bank distributor was triggering spark on the rear bank and the rear distributor triggered the front bank. Duh! Once the switched the wires, the engine fired right up.
On to the CV joints. What a messy job! I went through almost an entire roll of paper towels to clean off all the old grease. Each joint is held on the shaft by an external snap ring. Once removed, the joint comes off the spined shaft pretty easily.
Each joint has the outer cage, inner cage, inner hub and six ball bearings. It's a bit of a puzzle to get it disassembled. However, complete disassembly is the only way to get all the old grease out. Once everything is apart, it's an easy but messy job. In addition to all the paper towels, I went through about 5 pairs of gloves on the two CV joints.
After cleaning and reassembly, I repacked both joints with grease. I bought a CV boot kit from Dennis McCann at allferrariparts.com . The kit came with four CV boots, grease and clamps. My old boots were intact, but really dirty and nasty so it was easiest to just replace them.
Other than the mess, I'd have to say CV joint service is one of the easier tasks on this car. Installation was as simple as removal. I cleaned up and reused all the nuts and bolts as they were in good shape. Everything was torqued and I dropped the car back down on the ground. Before putting the engine cover back on, I think I want to tinker with the carbs a little more. Months ago, I switched to larger idle jets because the engine seemed to be running rich. Now I'm thinking it's a little too rich and I'd like to lean it out just a little to see what happens.
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