Building a Ferrari Engine Stand

Background

If you have to do any serious work on an engine, there's not much question a stand makes life easier, but what should it look like? Traditional V-8 stands attach at the rear of the engine, but the Ferrari V-12 is an awfully long engine, so I wasn't too comfortable hanging by the bellhousing end. On Tom Yang's site, he has pictures of his 330 engine sitting in a factory stand during its rebuild. This stand supports the engine from each side, simply bolting the existing engine mounts. Reasoning I'd have to fabricate something to attach the engine to the stand anyway, it seemed reasonable to just replicate the factory design.

Parts Shopping

I contacted Tom Yang, who graciously measured the stand his engine had been on, then posted pictures. Using those as the starting point, I was able to find some standard V8 type engine stands which were big enough (not too dificult). I started by getting two cheap stands that look like this:

These are the 1000lb units sold by Harbor Freight, on sale for $40 each. The important part is the horizontal bar which slides into a tube at the bottom of the upright, long enough to space the mount plates far enough apart. Any brand which assembles this way will work. The dual casters on the short wheel tube across from the mount were a bonus. The 750lb units were cheaper, but the usable length of the bottom bar was too short, and it only had one caster.

Making The Stand

As you can see, the finished stand used two of the uprights, with the second simply slipped onto the bottom bar all the way to the end. I bolted the four castors as far out on the longer wheel tubes as possible, and put the fixed wheels on only to save my ankles. The second long wheel tube was drilled/bolted in place where the short one was on the original stand.



Welding the Brackets

For the 330GT Type 209 engine, the template has the flywheel bolt holes 17 3/16" apart, the middle/forward mounts 14 1/8" apart, the for/aft bolt spacing 14 1/2", and the center of gravity marked at 12" from the flywheel bolts. The available space under each engine mount was easily measured from the engine in the car. The 1" steel rod and 1/2" brackets were scrap from work, made to fit the assembled stand and template. The slots and holes in the brackets were ground a bit over 1/2", and one side of each stand plate was cut off for better access. Combined with the loose fit of the stand parts, this gave plenty of wiggle room. For San Francisco area viewers, a local welding instructor Jonathan Hyman, did a great job of the welding.

The stand pivot tubes were not square when both uprights were assembled on the single cross tube, so putting the plates in one way or the other made a big difference to how far apart the flywheel support brackets would be. Also, we had to assemble the stand onto the engine while it was still on the hoist, as the center brackets are really longer than they need to be, but once assembled it works great.

Based on Tom Yang's dimensions, the height and placement of the pivot tubes worked out very well. The engine is not too top heavy, can be rotated without hitting the stand, and there is excellent access to all parts of the engine.

 
Revised: February 2, 2003 Copyright © 2003