360 CAT Failure

WOW!! I have never heard of this before. Ferrari has had issues with cats and exahust components from the begining of the 355 run. I appears that they have fail to repaire these issues.

One thing you may want to check is the warrenty on the exahust/emissions components. The cats should be covered under this warrenty. After all you have done nothing wrong. You have filled your car with the recommned fuel that is available at any gas station across the county. I really can't see how mixing the fuel could really cause this type of failure with the cats. Unless there is a mechanical issue with the car as well that has not been determined like a stuck or leaking injector..AIR system faulty...etc. I would recommend that the dealer find out exactly what caused this to happen. The mixing of the gas sounds sorta fishy.

 

Can you post pictures of the failed cats? The three main failure modes are:

1. Plugged - bad fuel additives
2. Melted - Engine running way rich
3. Crushed - usually poor assembly

I kinda do this for a living.

 

Matt, his question is a good one. Get some pictures for your records before those pieces go anywhere.

 

Emissions parts should be under warranty per US law as i recall. If you have a problem with FNA warranty seek a lawyer.

 

I might add another one – antifreeze/oil/water leaks into the cat

Since all cats are gone in both banks as it seems that mechanical destruction is unlikely and since they have disintegrated my guess would be fuel in the cat

When I looked into octane general agreement I found was that more does not harm but also does not help, see http://www.faqs.org/faqs/autos/gasoline-faq/part1/ for example

However there is a catch – some of the racing fuel brands have a higher “volatility” and other properties that support racing engines independent of octane – it never became clear to me if that could theoretically harm an engine

I have used Unlocal 76 100 octane several times on the track in several mixtures up 10 100%. As far as I remember Sunoco (?sp) has a much higher volatility and I did not use it based on my unscientific fear of the unknown.

Most of the problems I have seen are caused by engines running to rich (e.g. vacuum leaks) so there might be another problem that caused the destruction of the cats (and the knock sensor fault)

The destruction pattern of the cats should give an expert a good read of what happened. It seems to be best to get hold of the old pieces and start a documentation trail.

 

You may want to check this link re the EPA requirements for emissions warranties.

http://www.epa.gov/otaq/consumer/warr95fs.txt

 

just take them out and go with straight pipes you wont regret it

 

Can you just clear up the 91/100 thing...are you talking RON or MON?

But I would say that you can mix any unleaded fuels any way you like and not cause the cat failures you've had.

Maybe you've got some lead substitute fuel mixed in there, or some other impurity as mentioned already?

The 360C has cats fitted. They are stock standard road ones and run at incredible temps (visibly glowing at least cherry red, almost transparent at times), without problems.

 

At the track we use 100- 110 octane. No problems.
As for the the cats. They could be effected by the timing(I.E. Knock sensor).
If valve timing is affected, you could be dumping fuel into the exhaust.

Just make sure they check the valve timing and even do a compression and leakdown. I would hate to see the new parts go bad again.

Good Luck to you.

 

No cat problem here. Yea, Heiko has straight pipes for $539 delivered I think If they won't warranty it might be an idea. Only problem is smog check.

 

"Most of the problems I have seen are caused by engines running to rich (e.g. vacuum leaks)"

A vacuum leak would cause the car to run lean. The AFM measures the air flow and adjust the fuel being delivered to the cylinders based upon that measurement. If there was a leak (extra air being sucked into the intake) the mixture would be too lean. There would be more air flowing into the cylinders than the AFM had calculated for. Thus too little fuel. Too little fuel (lean) creates hot spots on the cylinder walls and pistons. Having those hot spots will also lead to knock (predetonation). You can't burn a piston from having a rich fuel mix because not all the fuel would burn during combustion. It would actually cool the cylinder and help prevent knock. Most ECUs when detecting knock will pull timing and dump extra fuel to cool the cylinders down.

Good luck on the findings of FNA going your way.

 

The O2 sensors adjust the mixture to compensate for vacuum leaks. I have seen monsterous vacuum leaks in Ferrari's and the first and only symptom was a check engine light for "O2 sensor operating put of range". It's such a problem on 456's and 550's that I routinely spray carb cleaner around the intake gaskets with the SD2 hooked up and watching the O2's reaction. No that was not caused by a vacuum leak.

 

Used to hear the hotrod guys talk about how great their cars ran on Sunoco 260 when it was available--for anything less than about 12 to 1 compression it was a waste of money. It was probably true 102-105 motor octane. If I'm not mistaken, octane is just a measurement of resistance to detonation. The first determinant of octane requirement would be compression ratio, but that would be affected additionally by alot of things like combustion chamber shape, quench area, and camshaft overlap. To blame high-octane gas by itself for this kind of damage is pretty shaky-got to be something else going on like lead-additives or ???...

 

Take some of the fragments and see if they really are metal (bend them, if they bend, metal, if they snap, ceramic). If I remember correctly, the CC catalyst is a metallic part and the underfloor one is a ceramic.

Two main root causes for a substrate to fail. The first is improper winding on a metallic part or improper installation of a ceramic part (i.e. not lined up in the can properly). Based on the fact that it seems to have shredded, it doesn't look like this was the cause, but it could have rattled itself apart.

The second way is "the sumb!tch got hot", indicating that a lot of unburned fuel made it to the cat and ignited. From the pictures, it looks like you have the remains of a blow torch.

Without getting the part into my hands and really taking a look at it, my best bet is the engine was running way rich. Look upstream of the catalyst for the cause.

I'm not an expert on the engine management system for this one, so I can't comment on how the engine adjusts for increased octane, but this needs to go back to FNA and FSpA to review.