Looking for history of a 348 challenge racecar

Hello and welcome to FerrariChat!

You'd be surprised what people can uncover on here. Perhaps if you could post the VIN/chassis number of the car you're looking to buy, then that'd give people a starting point for doing some digging.

What information has the seller provided for you so far?

All the best,
Andrew.

 

This car was discussed not too long ago, and experts agreed this car needed a lot of money to get back into shape. I couldn´t find the thread right now, but if you do a search you´ll find it, and see what it needs, and how much to fix it.

edit: I found the thread: http://www.ferrarichat.com/forum/showthread.php?t=276584

 

Mike-
I watched this car on ebay. Congrats on the purchase, as this car has had some very nice work done to it. I saw a lot of criticism from guys who think it should be changed back to a street car, but I can't understand why anyone would do that. Judging from the work done on it, it should be a track screamer and maybe with good history to boot!

 

Have fun with it, Mike! And keep us posted on your progress as you sort through the history.

 

It was a local car that we maintained for a while being used as a club event car. No chance of this going back to street use easily.

Seems to have had many parts swapped along its ownership trail from when I last saw it. At one time it was quite a forward race car but many hands have been on it since that time. Fairly fresh engine in it now, I installed it some 5-6 years ago and to my knowledge am the last one to run it. The engine came in a crate and I have no knowledge of who built it but it felt stock on a shake out session at PPIR a number of years ago using the computers out of my car. I would advise against turning the key until the belt is replaced.

I might have the Motronic parts to convert the car and own a "sister" car that uses that engine management system and would be interested in obtaining the engine harness..... I assure you that you do not want to go back to using the system the car is set up for! I was never able to find a computer for it and had to swap computers between cars.

The SuperTrapp flanges on the exhaust pipes were literally a last minute addition as the car was being winched into the trailer to enable it to run at Laguna for the National meet years ago.

 

was this a standard tb made into a race car?

 

Original Challenge car as I remember. I ran the numbers at one time when I was first acquainted with the car.

The 355 rear body work was installed in an effort for better Aero as I was told. Quite a nice job done on that.

 

Mike,

When I was looking to race my 348 in SCCA they were not real helpful in finding a place for it. Well now I race SCCA regularly in T1 in a vette. I have learned much more about how great an organization scca is. Anyway you can run that car in ITE. ITE is the minimum trashcan where any car that does not fit into a class can run there. So you could have some stiff competition or no competition depending on who shows up to race that day. There are several things that I can instatly see need to get done before you race it like no wood steering wheel, updated seats, belts, fire system and personally I do not like challenge cages. I think they are pretty unsafe. I would at least gusset the cage feet and support the driver nascar bar to the sill plate. In the old days I could not even confirm if OMP made the cage from DOM steel or ERW. Since they would not tell me I suspect the lesser tubing. So in my case I welded my own cage in DOM. One day I got punted by a p-bug into a wall at 100mph flipped over and skidded on my lid. I was glad to have a good cage. I walked away to problems except I lost a perfectly good ferrari. Somewhere on Fchat there are some pictures of the carnage.

 

Well Rob...as an organization you are right I was not impressed. But I've had 10 races with them this year and a hell of a lot of fun. Its the people who make the organization and my local SCCA chapter is very fun with some great people. If we had some ferraris to race around here I would still be racing a ferrari. Sadly socal ferrari owners are waxers mostly saving their cars for future resale value! It makes no sense to me.

 

Here is our last weekend's race. We had 7 T1 cars. It was fun.

http://vimeo.com/11298617

 

Wow, what a vid!

 

Whoever owns this car now feel free to reach out to me.

The car was striped because it made no sense to run it in SCCA with all of that weight. Recall the 348 Challenge was retired by the 355 Challenge, so there was no place for it other than boring Ferrari track days that you were never allowed to really drive the car at. So SCCA ITE was the place to be. Do you know how much that center console weighed? It was like taking a body out of the car. So significant.

It was raced for about 3 years in SCCA on the east coast, won multiple races and was especially good in the endurance races. Usually was in the top three. Corvettes gave us a run for the money. There were 3 former challenge 348’s that were converted by Ferrari of Washington, for mine I did most of the work myself, because how fun was it to tear apart a Ferrari? Think about it.

As for the roll cage the Challenge cage would not pass muster at SCCA, so that was a custom built cage, I forget what race shop did that for us, but it’s a real solid cage. I took that car into a wall at Watkins Glen at about 140 and walked away. Car wasn’t in great shape, but it got fixed up at FOW to race again.

I did not do the 355 thing to this beast, I doubt you could have saved much time with the aero…. Doesn’t make to me much sense. Plus it would have cost a ton to mate that all together. I do wonder who did that. I don’t recall who I sold it to, and unfortunately FOW records were paper and are gone. They didn’t see a reason to keep them after 10 years.

Anyway the car spent a lot of time on the track with me, between testing and racing it got well taken care of. Never put away wet while I had it.

I ran into this while trying to find an old friend, so this was kind of a trip to the past for me. Whoever has it now I can share more stories and will see if I can dig up pictures of it on the track and in the pits. This car is special to me since it lead me to more racing, more cars and time on the track with some really great drivers. I hope they are enjoying the car and it’s still out there giving the crowd the fun of hearing a full throated Ferrari raced in anger.

Oh “grouppo gardiniere" is Italian for Gardening Group. We would kid each other anytime we went off track that we were out mowing the grass. Hence the name. Other two Drivers were Ally Ashe, and Dave Browning. I forget their car numbers.

Enjoy!

 

I know what that's like...


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