Rear A-arm bushings

The lower outer mounting bolts of he rear A-arms were seized and needed to be cut off. Look at how trashed the original bushing is. The bolt is supposed to be centered in this hole!

Damaged rear suspension A-arm

Earlier David had to source a new rear swaybar link because the original was trashed. Turns out whatever took out the link also bent the swaybar mount on the lower A-arm. Rather than to take the chance with trying to fix this, we decided it was better to find a good used one.

Cam pulleys

 I had never been a big fan of the plastic cam pulleys on the early 308s. These have been known to come apart and having a cam pulley disintegrate will lead to a really bad day. Dinoparts makes these really nice adjustable aluminum pulleys. Not only are they amazing to look at, they are far superior to the OEM plastic ones and make timing the cams much easier.

 

Oh oh, scope screep...

 I was planning on getting a set of QA-1 coil overs and new springs at some point. In order to use the QA-1 on a 308,  they need a set of Verell's "paperweights" and shock adapter bushings. Verell is in MA, just a hop, skip and a jump from Ferrari Service of Bedford. Although I wasn't planning on spending the money to do this right now, it did make sense to do this all at once along with the other suspension work.

Heads installed

 Heads are installed. It's definitely looking like a whole engine again!

Rear suspension work

 In 2015, I replaced the worn out rubber A-arm bushings with polyurethane. The fronts are easy bit the rears are a little more complicated. I had talked to David about these bushings and since the car was already in pieces, I decided to have him do the work.

 

 

I had already replaced the bushings in the front swaybar links, and the rears needed to be replaced too. One of the links was trashed and it needed to be replaced.

Transaxle reassembly

 Some photos of the transaxle reassembly

Short block assembled

Pistons are all in and ready for head installation. These spacers are used to hold the cylinder liners in place as the crankshaft is rotated.

 

Fitting piston rings correctly is a very tedious process

Piston ring end gap, the distance between the ends of a ring when it's in the cylinder bore, needs to be very precise for proper engine operation. It involves inserting the ring into the bore, measuring the gap, removing the ring, carefully grinding a tiny bit off the end, then inserting the ring again to measure the gap. If you accidentally remove much material, you're basically screwed and need to get a new ring and start over. 

There are three rings, the top, bottom and oil rings. The ring gaps are ideally 60 degrees apart so that the gaps do not line up with each other.

Reassembly of camshaft drive

 

Engine assembly underway

 Engine assembly is underway. It's apparent just how much attention detail goes into this process.