360 Frame cracking...

I personally would buy later cars, 2001 spec and beyond. There was known weak spot (corrected by Ferrari) where the sand casted engine mounting points on the chassis could crack on the early 1999 cars. This was beefed up with extra metal support on the later editions, dont know exactly from when (in terms of chassis numbers) but its a real problem and its VERY expensive to correct - requiring big chunks of welded chassis to be done. If the car is driven hard on a track it can lead to a lot of stress on these parts and so as a result many early challenge cars suffered the problem.

Those same cars also had a problem with a thin metal bracket that holds the pipes that pass close by to the black metal engine coolant pipework under the engine - if that very THIN flimsy bracket fatigues those pipes rub (metal to metal) all the time on on the coolant pipe - resulting in failure of the coolant pipe and TOTAL LOSS of all coolant - possibly a disaster waiting to happen to munch your engine). You can cable tie those pipes to stop it happening but without this fix cars can eat their coolant pipe). You can only inspectg for this if you take the engine undertray off.

Regards,

Trev

 

SO a model year 2001 and newer should have no problems related to this?

 

Here is a picture of mine, notice they applied an extra plate of steel to the frame rail, pretty simple! Mine was fixed thru Lake Forest Ferrari.

Really, every Ferrari has issues!! As long as you make a visual of the area and its ok or has been repaired get the car!



Robert
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+1

Never buy the very first year of any model, the early adopters are the guinea pigs! Ferrari capture the problems, fix them and quietly release the new and improved cars...

 

The car was fixed with the original owner, I am the second owner. As I understand it was a campaign issue. This was one of the first things I checked when making my selection. There have been a couple of very comprehensive threads on the issue here, just do a search. One of the threads had some detailed pics and explanations, I think Rifledriver made the thread. its good one.

Just check the car, if the work was done, no worries!!!! I have tracked my car several times and not one problem!


Robert

 

10 years later...how have these been holding up?

 

20 years later - my '99 has no problems.
In fact, of the 10 F-cars I have owned, it has been the most reliable and trouble free of all.

 

I have a 99, and had a “scare” when I found a crack in my motor mount bracket. Sanded it down and found it was only in the paint. Before buying the car, I asked the shop that did my PPI (a shop in Pa started by 2 Algar guys) and they said they never even heard of such a thing, one of the guys even said “you must have read that on the internet”, I said yup! I also asked the guys at Ferrari of Atlanta, and they were just as dismissive. In fact in years of searching I have never found anyone that have actually experienced the issue.

 

I’d like to see a photograph of said failure and cracks.

 

Let me guess.. its been seen on 4 very early models without the rain channel and ANY updates to the chassis and in challenge cars that get beaten to **** every race. Shocking.

None here on my 99' euro with 66624 miles as of today.

If anyone wants to find a reason NOT to buy a Ferrari I can make something up for them. Kind of like shopping for $1 mil. paintings. Don't have the money to actually buy one but you want to impress the girl that you're with so at the last minute you find a "reason" not to buy it. It becomes a rush until one is actually bought...

 

I know this is a long shot, but do you have/know the assembly numbers for these four cars? I ask because I have a very early, non rain channel (albeit non challenge) car. I have had my frame reinforced so I ask out of curiosity more than anything else.

 

I was totally being facetious. I've heard of it occurring in like 4 cars over the past 9-10 years. No idea what their VIN was. At this point 20 years out, if the frame needed reinforcing it should have been done by now via campaign.

 

The VINS would be nice. I have a couple pics of the repairs in my archives because it interested me. A dismantler could be a useful source of info but that's not really their thing.

 

Do a search of my threads.

 

I have repaired several and it was the subject of Ferrari service bulletins. Kind of scary people working on these things never heard of it. Ferrari worked hard to get the word out.

 

There was no campaign. Only a TSB to watch for it and instructions on how to fix on an as needed basis.

 

Look up the factory TSB.

 

I saw several examples with my own eyes, all early cars with this damage and I remember the ball ache they had trying to remedy it once it had happened. Its not a myth or Internet thing, it really was a real thing.

 

How can you say that when the internet experts say otherwise?

 

If anyone has the TSB, maybe we can remove all doubt by kindly posting it. I have been wildly unsuccessful in locating the "official" fix, in fact upon a conversation with another well-known Ferrari technician, I had to show him pictures of the fix from this site as he was also unaware of the issue or the TSB. It would be nice to know the actual Ferrari-mandated process. Apparently the issue is not quite as widely known as it should be.

 

Remember seeing this photo from a early 360 owner when I was looking. 2 close friends and Ferrari Techs both stated the problem was something to have checked on 1999 and early 2000 360s.

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Looked through all my TSB's from ferraridatabase back in the day and didn't see anything on it.