Bianco Fuji CS Spider Project

I thought I'd start a thread about my new project car, one which you may have seen before. A couple of months ago I was offered the opportunity to buy the Bianco Fuji Spider that Hud had painted last year. Bianco Fuji is a colour that I've loved ever since seeing a Maserati Gransport in the colour - I've often dreamed about owning a Ferrari sporting the colour and when I saw Hud's thread I was very jealous. After inspecting it in the flesh I was smitten, despite identifying a fair few minor issues. The price was too attractive to turn down so the deal was done.

I have bought it very much as a project car - you will notice that it has been supplied with standard 360 wheels and mirrors so my immediate concern is to get the car to the standard and specification that it should be. From there who knows, but I'd like to source more Stradale parts to build on the conversion. I suspect this is going to become a long labour of love....
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The paint job is very, very good. I went over it with a fine tooth comb and only spotted one small imperfection at the bottom of the drivers door. If I can be bothered I might wet sand it out but you can only notice it if you know what you're looking for. One thing that has disappointed me a little was the fit of the parts that were removed to do the paint job. I suppose the paint shop can't spend forever putting things back together - it's a good job I've got some spare time though as I'm embarking on a program to remove everything and take my time re-fitting them to make sure that it's just right. Another annoyance is that I've come across a lot of cross threaded items and mis-matched bolts - my OCD is enough for me to want to replace the mis-matched bolts and I've been lucky to rescue the cross threaded stuff by running a tap & die over the affected parts. I've had this set for over 10 years and it barely been used until recently - now it is one of my most used tools!
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The first job that was done was to fit my new lightweight titanium exhaust (Timate). The pictures don't do it any justice - the blue tips go so well with the white paintwork. Whilst the back end was off we changed the gearbox oil but I'll write separately about the service stuff later.

The second job was to get the car over to Paintshield for some clear film. It already had the front end and sills done but I went a little further and had the mirrors and doors covered. I don't have any pics for this.
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It's the same car. The person who did that car sold it into the trade where some parts were removed and then it was sold onto me.

 

Thanks guys. One of the things I wanted to solve quickly was the poor fitment of the drivers window. In the first picture you can see the gigantic gap at the front of the window. This would easily let a lot of water in if the car was ever left out in the rain.

I started by stripping the door down, thinking that it would be a problem with the alignment of the glass but after spending almost an entire day I couldn't sort it out. I put it all back together again and left it for another day.

The next time I came round to looking at it I had the help of a friend. I actually picked him up from the station in the car and as it was sunny I had the roof down. When I went to show him the problem gap it had gone. We tried with the roof up and it came back. We traced the problem to a split seal at the front of the roof. The seal is a rubber outer with a foam inner - the rubber had split and the foam was expanding out. When the window touched the foam it stopped short of it's proper resting position.

The rubber was able to be repaired with superglue and is holding up well.

Whilst we were there we refitted the rubber seal down the A pillar as it hadn't been put on properly. Additonally the drivers side mirror glass had to be replaced - I think the mirrors were painted with the glass removed. It's so easy to crack the glass on refitting which is what I suspect happened and then overlooked as the car had Strad mirrors fitted.
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The car was only supplied with one key and one fob. The key had been painted red but was in poor condition. This was quickly sorted by stripping the red paint off and polishing the bare metal up with a felt wheel on the dremel and metal polish.

I was also given a couple of plastic Fiat key blanks to try out. My local locksmith cut these for free and I think we found the key blank in his book if anyone else wants to get some spares cut.

I had a spare red fob from another car which was coded up by Verdi so now I have a complete spare set.

Lastly, I managed to source a snazzy matching leather fob case.
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It's the same car and it has always had Daytona's although I have plans to change that.

 

Now as much as I like the standard 360 wheels they really don't go with the CS bodykit and silver looks a bit naff with the white. I loved the dark grey CS wheels that were put on the car by the previous owner so that was the route I went down. However, I really don't like how the 360 rides on 19" wheels so I've opted for a set of the superlight 18" wheels from the Challenge car. I had the wheels wet painted in the grey and then powder coated with a clear coat - the finish is something else. I bought some metal tyre valves in a matching colour and even used colour matched wheel weights. Of course, I couldn't use the chrome wheel bolts so a set of the titanium bolts were sourced. Lastly, the centre caps are different on these wheels so I had to get a new set in.

The front wheels weighed in at 8.6kg with the rears at 10.5kg (standard wheels 9.7kg & 11.4kg). The Ti bolts weigh 65g each, compared to 128g for the steel bolts.
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The actual keys were very easy to get cut once I had the blanks. If you want blanks PM me and I'll see if I can source any.

The fob was a little harder - I had a spare red fob to hand and got www.verdi-ferrari.com to program it for me.

 

Once I had got the wheels I took the car over to Tony at Wheels in Motion, Chesham. We used his Boss touchless tyre changing machines to get the tyres on the rims and then it was onto the ramp to check the settings.

I knew the car was low at the front, in fact for London it was almost un-useable. What I wasn’t prepared for was just how low it was – 85mm at the front and 130mm at the back. At first we thought we were measuring it wrong but no it really was 25mm lower than CS settings and a full 50mm lower than a regular 360. The back was bang on CS ride height though so at least we only had the two coilovers to contend with. In the second picture below I have tried to capture the lower wishbone which was pointing upwards quite a bit.

We also measured the geometry and got a bit of a shock. Coming from a 360 that had been set up correctly, I knew the car didn’t feel right when I first drove it and my suspicions about the geo were confirmed - almost every setting was out, some by quite a bit.
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Firstly we sorted the ride height. People say you can wind the coilovers with them still installed on the car but we found it impossible – so off they came. Once the springs were compressed the platform turned easily. The 360 has a motion ratio of 70% - so 7mm change in height of the coilover platform equates to a 10mm change in ride height of the car.
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Once the height was sorted we turned ourselves to the geometry. The 360 is adjusted by inserting or removing shims between the wishbone bushes and the chassis. It’s a very time consuming job to adjust the geometry but once it’s done – it’s done. Only a knock in the chassis or wear in the bushes can throw it out.

Tony handed the final job of setting the car to his protégé, Pete, who worked tirelessly to get the car just right. When we needed a thinner front shim than that was available he managed to fabricate one up from a pair of rear shims. Of particular note is the way he recovered the Caster. Ferrari say that the Caster is not adjustable but if you know what you’re doing it can be done. The whole front end was adjusted with the thought of bringing the Castor back into line foremost. The rear settings are almost perfect – with the fine degrees of tolerance I was astonished that he got it so bang on.

The car drives faultlessly now – it is an absolute joy and feels even better with the reduced unsprung weight I've achived with the wheels and bolts.
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And here she is sitting pretty...
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No problem in sidetracking the thread - one of the reasons I've posted all this stuff is so it can help others.

Verdi simply cloned my exisiting fob. They need the other fob in order to do this so I guess this is a no go for you as you wouldn't want to ship your only fob overseas.

However, I believe that a set of three new fobs (2x black, 1x red) is about £250 from Ferrari. I think these can then be easily programed to the car using the alarm PIN. You say you don't have the PIN but you should be able to get it from Ferrari if you can prove ownership (at least we can in the UK).

 

One of the things that bugged the hell out of me everytime I opened a door were the speaker grills, they just didn't seem to fit right. Once I had stripped the silver trim off it became clear why - they had been glued to the silver trim with a hot glue gun:

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And here's the reason why, aftermarket speakers.

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I managed to source a set of OEM grills together with frames.

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Due to the tweater in the speaker they didn't just fit right on...

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But a little attention with the dremel fitted with a resin cutting disc soon sorted them out...

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