Testarossa has no reverse

I let my friend use my testarossa and when he came back I could not engage reverse. The shifter moves through the gate normally and the shift rod moves in and out and rotates normally in the trans. It seems to be stuck in 2nd (?) gear. My feeling is the shift gates in the trans are goofed up. Anybody ever have a problem like this before?

 

Tmobileguy let someone use his 348, too

 

Who is your "friend"???

 

Must be a common notion.........dont let your 'friends' drive your Ferraris!!

I left my 348 with a friend for 1 week back in November 2005. He lives in another City around 1000km away. My 2nd drive a week after I got the car back into town, I couldnt get any gears. Shifter was hard to move. I knew something was up!! Upon removal of the clutch pumpkin, I found 6 broken fingers on the pressure plate.
Not a happy chappy I can tell you........NEVER AGAIN!!

 

PAP, I'm with ya 100%. NEVER gonna lend my car to a friend again. So, your "friend" fried your clutch too?? The person I let borrow my TR (for 2 weeks, no less), graciously fried my clutch too!! $3500 repair bill , and the car had just had a $9600 full major service!! That was an expensive lesson, and I will never make that mistake again. Live and learn.

 

I dug this up, hope it helps. Here is to hopeing your fix is both simple and inexpensive.
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He broke it, he pays to fix it!

Never let someone drive your Ferrari (or any other prised item) un-educated or un-supervised.

Hope your freindship weathers the storm.

Best of luck

 

Yeah mate, sucks ass!!
The only reason I had to leave the car with him was that, the transport company could not transport the car back the same day I returned home, so the 348 had to stay there an extra week. So instead of leaving the car in the sun, in the their loading yard, I asked my close friend, whom I went to visit/show car/stayed with, let drive my car when I was there for the week anyways (with me in the passenger seat), if he could lock my 348 up in his garage.

He happily agreed to lock it up and drive it back to the loading yard a week later for me. When I returned home later that day (9 hour drive home) he calls me up and asks if he can drive the car around a friends place to show him the Ferrari. I agree, as he was responsible driving the 348 when I was with him, but I told him to be careful none the less.

A week later car arrives home safely, but then I have clutch issues.
Of course didnt accuse my friend of abusing my Ferarri, as I have known him all my life and I trusted him. I just put it down to sh*t happens. But..................later on I heard from a few friends that live there also, tell me that they saw him 'thrashing' my 348, which is probably what led to premautre clutch failure. He thrashed the car EVERYDAY!! Must have go the better of him, as I would expect. I never bothered telling him this asI though it is best to not ruin a friendship like this, over a 'car'. Car can be and was fixed at my expense, of course. Sometimes friendships cannot repaired and I have known him to long to end it now.

But, as you just said mate. Live and learn! NEVER AGAIN will I let friends drive my car without me in it. I have since let over 10 people drive my Ferrari, but I ride shotgun beside them and they always behave.

 

I doubt it will be either simple or inexpensive.

 

Probably not, but we can hope. AFAIK the gearbox in the TR is pretty tough, its the diff and input shaft that seem a tad weak, or at least they get weaker as power climbs above 700 HP. It is very possible that if senor' friend tried to speed shift (why do people think everything is a Chevy) its highly possible a rod joint or fork slipped.

I had mine (308) get out of adjustment, and it was amazing how such a small malajustment could mess it up. I too only had second gear, but luckily I was only a few blocks from home so no big deal. And while we have all done our best to blame your friend, its just as possible that its a coincidence the shift got out of sorts after he drove it. Cars are funny things, sometimes you would swear they have emotions. Jealousy, rage, anger, joy. You let someone drive it that dont do it all just so-so and the car might have a fit. They may be more like a sassy horse than we might imagine.

 

It sounds like the shifter is out of adjustment with the transaxle. The adjustment is under the car, requires jacking it up and removal of the belly pan, but is fairly straight forward. Does the transmission shift normally into any of the other gears, or it it out of sync with all of them?

Brian B.

 

Come on you guys, get a grip. We need to have a simple conversation with anybody that borrows the car to make sure they know how to drive a clutch; that it is either on or off and don't ride it. Don't assume. It is very easy to replace the clutch and probably something every owner should do at least once. It could be that the clutch was about to fail anyway. So back to the problem. My 86 tr had shifting problems and wouldn't go into reverse when I got it back from my brother. There is a rubber bushing on the shifting shaft on the trany, it isolates the shaft from the gated shifter from the shaft going into the trany. Oil from the shaft seal had saturated the rubber and it had rotted to the point where I couldn't get into reverse. A new one cured the problem (#106814). Of course, I found this out after pulling the engine and trany and sending it to Calif for repair. On the bright side, they replaced the syncros and installed a one piece diff for 10k! In the bigger scheme of owning one of these things, 3k for clutch parts is nothing. Ymmv.

Jeff Pintler
89 348tb, 86tr
At least 30 people have test blasted my cars.