Testarossa with 4,500 miles spewing black smoke after a lot of major work done

Hi everyone,

I am new to Ferrarichat and in need of help. I've been through these forums a lot and I can see that these forums are awesome and the community here is extremely helpful.

First let's start with this Ferrari's story (You don't have to read this part):

I absolutely love Ferraris (doesn't everyone?) and hope that I can always own one. This Testarossa belonged to my and he acquired it in the early 90s, he purchased it from the dealer in Bahrain and sent it over to Dubai where we live. It's a 1991 US Spec Testarossa with very low miles (not a good thing, I know) that has barely done 500 miles over the last ten years. When my father purchased the car he enjoyed it for a few years (Up till 1999), after that it just kept having problems along with escalating repair bills and constant trips to the garage that he just got fed up with it and left it in a garage for a few years, he was always very busy and as he got older never had the time to put into the car because of work. I have to add that the heat in Dubai during the day doesn't help when you are driving this car around.

During around 2007 the car was taken back to Bahrain so that it could be stored and serviced there. This is because the Ferrari dealers/agents in Bahrain are much more reasonable than the ones in Dubai, really it's actually quite a big difference (An engine out service in Bahrain would cost $7,500 while in Dubai it would cost a minimum of $12,500). It was then occasionally (~7 times a year) driven around before developing problems with the gearbox, it was still drivable but wouldn't shift properly because the clutch was old and the gearbox needed maintenance.

My father then got fed up with car and just wanted to sell it at any price. I didn't want him to because he used to drive my brother and I around in it when we were kids and the car just has so much sentimental value to the both of us, and it is a Ferrari that I absolutely love and just couldn't let it go. After months of persuasion my father gave me the car and left me with these words: You can have it, but it's going to be such a headache. Boy, was he right! (In the end, fathers are always right)

I received the car in the middle of 2016, at that point hadn't started in a year or two and the dealer in Bahrain got it running and in state in which it could be tested and registered for $1,500. The car was functional and I was able to drive the car around for 20 minutes over a short distance without any major problems, someone told me that I was very lucky and that was a dangerous thing to do because the timing belt could've snapped (It was changed ten years ago) and I would've had to replace the engine... I now know that they were right. I lucked out and nothing bad happened.

I shipped the car back to Dubai and took it to a garage over here that I trust and I decided that I wanted to get my hands dirty while getting this car back into shape because I wanted to learn about engines in general and be involved with this car as much as possible so that I could understand it and be an involved and responsible owner (I make daily trips to the garage).

What was done to the car (Please read this part):

When I received the car it was in a bad state physically and mechanically. It needed a lot of work done:

- The paint (the paint was shot and there were rust specks on the car and a blot of rust on the front hood, so it had to have the rust removed and was repainted)
- The gearbox (the clutch was so stiff you could barely depress it, so it was replaced and the other elements polished)
- The engine (It's been sitting for so long that almost all the gaskets,seals, and belts needed to be replaced. I replaced almost every single thing made out of rubber or plastic in the engine bay)
- Air Intake (All the rubber collars and clamps were very very stiff and the air intake chamber completely disintegrated... I'm serious I think I have a photo of that somewhere)
- All the vacuum hoses needed to be replaced
- The engine mounts were changed
- All the spark plugs were changed and tested
- All the HT cables/leads were replaced
- Almost all the filters in the car were replaced (Some such as the vacuum pump air filter I could not find)
- The suspension bearings and bushes were replaced (Anything rubber in the suspension was replaced)
- The fuel pumps/accumulators/filters were replaced (The fuel pumps failed after being pulled out and put back)
- The fuel injectors were all replaced
- The water pump seals were all replaced
- The fuel lines were cleaned
- The fuel distributors were cleaned
- Most of the cosmetic rubber inserts were replaced because the were worn out or cracking
- The brake discs were polished and the brake pads changed
- The rear left brake pad was stuck pressing on the disc and needed to be removed and rebuilt
- The car had compression tests performed and all was OK

I hope I'm not missing anything in this part. Please bear in mind that before I started working on this car I knew the very basics of how an engine worked and none of the details, but I am happy to say that I have learned a lot doing this and still have a very long way to go.

The issues I'm having along with the details:

1) After a few months of work and a lot of money spent we tried starting the car and it was misfiring with a lot of black smoke. The oil smelled like it had fuel in it, I hoped that it wasn't the piston rings or the valve seals/guides because then we would have to lower the engine again and open it up completely this time, and I'm sure everyone here knows how much that would cost. So we started our process of elimination. The first time they started it up I wasn't there. They told me that there was black smoke but that after the car heated up it was fine.

2) We suspected it might've been the injectors. Some of the injectors were leaking and so I decided to go ahead and replace them all.

3) The car was still misfiring so we cleaned the distributors and tested the injectors again and we were convinced we had good pressure. Still misfiring.

4) We were lucky that there was another Testarossa (1990 US Spec) in the garage at the same time, we tried switching parts between them such as the vacuum pump, ECU, and some other minor filters and lines. The other Testarossa would always run perfect and mine would just misfire.

5) We removed the vacuum air line from the left intake manifold and realized that there was backpressure in the intake manifold and so it must be a problem with the air intake. We thought this because we compared this to the other 1990 Testarossa that was in the garage at the same time. The other car would run with the vacuum line disconnected with no issues, mine would just shut down.

6) We removed the air intake manifold and saw that the throttle body wasn't opening, we removed it, examined it, cleaned and lubricated it, and it was now functioning well. The backpressure issue was solved, but the black smoke issue was not.

7) At this point we tried adjusting the fuel mixture but there was still a lot of black smoke and the problem was still there.

8) My mechanic informs me that when after they put the engine back (Before we started testing the car), he filled it up with ~12 liters of oil, he drained the oil today and there was only ~6 liters left. He suspects it could be the piston rings or the valve seals/guides and we would need to bring the engine down and open it up to solve this problem.

Now, my question to you guys is: Could it be anything else? Is there anything that I am missing? Or am I going to have to open up the engine?

Any suggestions or help would be very much appreciated, I have included all the information I remember, so please forgive me if it turns out that I forgot something. I understand that this post is very long but I wanted to include all the information that I had on the car that I love.

Any and all help would be greatly appreciated.

 

Thank you everyone for all your answers and support. It is very much appreciated.

In order for this to be helpful to others on the forum I am going to be documenting and uploading everything I can so that this thread can be useful to others in the future.

Now, to answer your questions and make a few corrections:

- The car didn't use up 6 quarts of oil, it used closer to 4 (still very bad I know)
- The oil pressure was fine but more on that below
- When the car was started up it used to spew out blue smoke which would turn to black, and yes it was quite bad and the smoke slightly stained the wall in the garage after it dissipated
- A compression test was performed but a leakdown test was not performed
- We had pulled out the spark plugs and checked the injector lines again. All was OK
- The fuel tank and fuel lines were all cleaned and the fuel was replaced prior to starting up the car the first time
- We checked the Oil before and after we started it up the first time and it was OK
- No Diesel Fuel it was petrol for sure
- The belts/cams were all lined up properly. We checked and double checked.
- I have to add that when we checked the oil it had the smell of fuel and discerned that the fuel was seeping into the oil from somewhere
- We didn't finish the brake rebuild yet, but I need help with that and will start another thread
- Something I need to add, this car was only ever serviced at Ferrari dealers/agents before I received it.

Sorry if there's anything I forgot to answer or add. After looking at all this information and knowing that the car was just sitting for many years, I decided that it was time to pull out the engine... this is where the good stuff (or really bad stuff) starts:

- We get to the camshaft and inspect it and realize the the caps had been opened before and been bolted back on in different places, the car would still work but it was a very unprofessional job
- The the right bank cam caps and the area where they should be bolted on all had numbers stamped/engraved on them (not from the factory as the left bank didn't have this)
- The area around both the left bank and right bank rockers looked as though they had some grinding done to them (Why would someone do that?)
- The was some grinding above some rockers (As I was looking at this there was only one thought on my mind: Why the hell would someone do this?!)
- We open up the left cylinder bank and it doesn't look too good, slight oil leak, the gasket had completely disintegrated, the only things left were the metal rings from the gaskets; it looks like it had been opened before with the same gasket reused (what a disaster)
- We open up the right cylinder bank which also had a disintegrated gasket, but this time we see that the cylinders are all badly leaking oil.

I am attaching photos of all this to this post. I asked my dad about the car and he confirmed he never asked for the internals (gaskets/rings/rockers/etc...) to be serviced and was never told that they needed to be. One thing to note that garages in Dubai in the 1990s were absolutely horrible, even if they were dealers. What we are seeing is a product of this (The car/garage culture has improved a lot since then)

What I am going to do now:

- Replace all the piston rings
- Have the valves tested to see if they were leaking
- Replace all the internal engine oil seals and gaskets
- Replace the valve seals

Should I do anything else while I'm in there?
Any recommendations or tips would be appreciated.

Thank you again for all your help.
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Do you think that a fuel management issue could've caused the right bank cylinders to leak so much?

Thanks for the help.

 

Yes I do. But I think it was taken from the inside of the car a year and a half ago. I'll try to find it and post it.

 

I found three short videos that I took of it running prior to this, I've uploaded them to google drive. Please use the link below to see.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B61vk4Z8RvQKd3VMS1R4ZU9XbUE