Euro 360 experiment

Beautiful car and congratulations. Search my threads for 'euro in California' and you will find a lot of details on the process. Let me say that at $7500 you are getting ripped. I tested my car through the process for (as I recall) ~$2K.

 

Nice. Congratulations. The all black works here.

Look into some CF for the interior.

 

Congrats......agree with the CF

 

My thread covering the process can be found here:
http://www.ferrarichat.com/forum/sho...d.php?t=119479

If it has passed CA emissions cert then there is nothing to do. It would have a BAR sticker. You take the certification test results to the referee and you are good to go.

Remember that the certification test is not a smog test at the local smog place. It is MUCH more rigorous. You will find that you fly through the local test place (360's run clean) but will marginally make the certification test.

How many miles are on the car? Remember that there is a minimum mileage for a gray market car to be imported to CA.

 

very nice car!!

 

Nice look, I always like a stealth looking 360 or 430! 6-speed... smart choice! If your shifting is funky between 1st & 2nd- its a easy fix (most of the time)!

Good Luck with her!
Chris

 

ANXPERT: Nice car and color combo. Very tough to keep clean but looks very very nice when it is cleaned.

I live a few miles from you. We should get together sometimes.

 

Since you are doing this please document the steps that GK takes and what papers you actually end up with in hand in 2010. Most just buy pre-californiaized cars not actually get the work done. Your thread on this subject will be very unique and now up to date for 2010 so i encourage you to post. George at GK is awesome by the way. There are not many guys doing this kind of legal hoop jumping but their business is second to none by all reports. I happen to own a GK car and it is perfect. I've had 2 usa ferraris and 2 euro ferraris and my euro cars ran better, stronger, faster, and with less problems. I do not know why that is. But I also suspect that the difference between usa and euro cars these days is nothing like the stark differences in the 80's which gave euro cars the bad name. I mean come on...how could a 80's german market mercedes be cr@p vs. the modified USA version? Who thinks the germans are going to sell themselves cr@p before they sell us cr@p?

 

I dont have high praise for the people at GK. I have a 03 spider that was done at GK. Before I bought the car and was told (by them) they use only Ferrari oem parts on their conversions. After I bought the car, i was looking thru the paperwork and found that they used a mercedes smog pump and modified the computer to accept it. I asked my local Ferrari dealer , to look the car over and see if there was a problem with the way the system worked. He did not know how they got the pump to work , but it does work fine.. I called GK up to get more info. After I told them what I wanted they would not talk to me and told me to call the person I bought it from (like he would know what they did).
I told them, that i did not have a problem with the car, i just wanted to know how they got the part to work (in case it went out, i would be able to tell the shop what to do).
they will not call me back.
I would not recommend them to anyone, because when you catch them in a lie, they will not return phone calls or emails.

 

I'm a pretty advanced diy'er and have had my 550 apart down to the heads during maintenance and studied the wsm and parts book extensively. My car is totally OEM and is a GK car. These days the differences between euro and usa are almost nil. What GK does now I think is much more on the side of "one off" certification with the government on the minor euro difference on parts that really work the same way. For example my euro has the charchol canisters up front like all euro cars and the usa version has the same canister over the fuel tank area. They do the same thing but the euro design just was not certified for our market. I think GK is more of a hoop jumper than a part replacer like they had to do in the old days when euro cars had no cats and usa cars did then the whole car had to be retuned etc... From what I can tell very little "conversion" is being done and a lot more "certification" is being done. I don't know abut your case but if your euro is certified with a benz pump and you change it to a ferrari pump I think by law you have to recert again even if that pump is used on usa 360's because a euro car is an "individual" in the usa certified at that point in time with those parts. I now race a SCCA T1 corvette since I crashed my 348 racecar. I had every intention of making my 550 my next racecar like in my signatures below. I bought the euro because I did not care about smog and euros I have driven seem to have more pep and they are cheaper because people don't know any better that's good for me. Well my 550 turned out to drive so well I just started to use it as a daily driver. Then for the heck of it I got some secret stuff from SRI inovations and the dang car is so awesome and burns so clean it is now staying my streetcar. I posted my smog report somewhere on fchat about 2 months ago in a thread about degreeing cams. The OBD2 functions flawlessly I don't know how much of this is just euro ferrari and how much is GK. Oh and my other euro ferrari done by the famous amerispec was not nearly as well done as my 550 but that was a mid 80's car. I swear the cam on that car was different because it was faster than any QV I ever ran across. Well that's my story and I'm sticking to it!

 

I agree, the car runs great with no problems. Very good conversion. 5 parts had to be changed, not many to go to US specs. The only major item was the smog pump. The dealer said that the Ferrari pump will " heat or do something unique for a few mins." That makes it pass emmisions. And he did not know how they got the Benz pump to do it. Other than that, he said a good job. I did not think that was a hard question to get answered by GK...... But they totally blew me off.... will not return any emails. I even told them I was very happy with the car and just want some info on their conversion, but no luck.

I agree that the car does seem faster, and that may be becuase of the "ture" Ferrari specs, not loaded down with US specs.

Also I keep seeing something about a bar code for 50 states, the car has tags all over it, where would I find the Bar code?

 

I had not even bought my car yet and spoke to George directly about the car I currently own. Staff went out to get him to take my call from the main shop floor. He was right on top of things and answered all my questions no problem. I found him very helpful. That was just my experience.

 

I have a photo but not here at the office. I will post a photo for you to see. Basically it is a silver/black metallic sticker that has a bar code on it. It says California Air Resource Board and something about it being approved. The sticker will generally be in the engine compartment next to the sticker that has a sketch of the air injection system.

Oh yea, BAR is bureau of automotive repair part of the ARB Air Resources Board.

 

Nice thread and beautiful car, love the wheels!

 

The BAR label (bureau of automotive repair a california enity) sometimes have bar codes on them with the data that is written on the bar label. The bar label comes from the manfacturer or the converter. The GK cars will have a GK bar label that will have the spec line of equipment that is certified and the ferrari label is removed because it maynot be "as certified" because it wasn't even if there is not change of equipment. Does that make sense? Ferrari bar labels for the usa market say ferrari on them in the ferrari script and all because this is the label "as certified" for the us market. I guess that is a requirement to prevent confusion and make sure the smog guy looks at the right label for the right equipment "as certified".

If the car in question is already in california with a claimed CA. title then you job as a buyer is much easier. If this is the case you have zero worries and need to keep no paperwork because to get the car titled in cali it must be legal. They will not issue title to the first guy if the car is not legal. Your second safetynet is the smog website where you can type in the VIN and get a printout of the smog history. Once you got a smog history of passing in the state you must have a legal car because no car can pass smog unless it is legal on that smogtest date.

In fact if one is buying any used car I would always look up the smog history. They list aborted attempts, fails, and passes. If you see aborted attemps and fails over years of history or big gaps between years tested those are redflags. If you see passes from different smog places every two years that good and it is even better if those places are testonly stations. It is hardest to past the smog referee. Then the "testonly" station. Then the snog and repair places.

If you are really scared about a euro car before purchase set up part of your ppi to be passing smog at the smogref in the area of the seller. The smogrefs are brutal and will make sure every piece of equipment is unmolested and functional. If a euro passes those guys you are golden. In fact one day when I sell my eurocar I will take it to the smog ref for it's smogcert just to prove how good my car is and I'll probably get a premium for it. Also, the smog ref does the test and certification cheaper than anyone else in the state.

Finally, if you have problems with any car that will not set drivecycles as part of obd2 the smog ref is the only one who can give you a pass if everything else is good but drivecycles will not set. If you do a search on drivecycles you will see there are many cars with known DC problems even Nissans and Toyotas.

 

Congrats!