PART ONE: DIY SERVICE 360 MODENA

My 360 Modena, year model 2000, had a partial maintenance history when I bought it. I’m trying to gradually improve the condition of a pretty nice car and fill in the blanks in the maintenance history. Recently I made a list of things I wanted to check and/or change. This account is not intended to be a step-by-step guide to any of the procedures mentioned here. Nor is a guide to a “complete service”. There are many very good narratives, most of them right here on this forum. You should do a search on each procedure, read what other owners have to say, study the digital work shop manual and owner’s manual, and come up with a good plan of attack. Use this account as a supplement to what others have already written.

JACKING UP THE CAR. This is not as simple as it sounds since the under-tray is trapped by the jacking points. I drove the back wheels up on a couple of pieces of 30mm plywood to get more clearance for the jack since my car is was lowered by the previous owner. If your open engine hatch will contact the ceiling, protect it with a soft cloth. I jacked up one side using a small floor jack on the jack point just forward of the rear wheel. I positioned a jack stand under the extreme outboard edge of the cross-brace housing the rear anti-sway bar where it passes through the rear diffuser. The center portion is thin and will dent, but the outboard part where it’s welded is much more robust. I also positioned a jack stand near the front suspension pick-up points. I jacked up the other side and positioned two more jack stands. While removing the wheels I was surprised to feel the car rock! It turns out that the chassis is so stiff that it was resting on the left rear and right front jack stand so it would rock back and forth depending on where I leaned on the car. The danger is that I could possibly drag a light cord or air compressor hose under the car and inadvertently dislodge one of those loose jack stands. Not good. So I spent a few minutes adjusting the jack stands so that the weight of the car was distributed on all four stands. Be careful. You don’t want to screw up on step one.

REMOVING THE UNDER-TRAY. This is pretty clear-cut. In addition to removing the many 10mm bolts, you will want to remove the two aft-most bolts on the narrow center panel just forward of the rear most under-tray. I’m overly cautious so anytime I get far enough under the car to die if a (Chinese?) stand fails, I prefer to have my floor jack positioned near where I’m working as a safety back up whenever possible.

Use your floor jack to ease the under-tray down and pull it clear. Chances are you will want to degrease and wash it. Mine had some cracks and tears, so I cut some thin sheet aluminum doublers and repaired the tears using a series of pop rivets. In the future I’ll either do a proper fiberglass repair or replace the entire part.

DRAINING MOTOR OIL AND TRANSMISSION OIL. Again, follow the several good, step-by-step guides posted on this forum. The torque values for the drain plugs are listed in the Ferrari documentation as 98nm which is too high in most people’s opinion, including mine, but apparently not in the opinion of whoever put them in last time. It was a struggle to get them free and for a moment I was worried about the possibility of tipping the car off the jack stands. I decided to use 50NM when I put the plugs back in. Make sure your drain pan is large enough because a lot of oil comes out. The oil pump screen on the right side of the transmission is easy to access, but it’s plastic and on my car it’s old, so I was very careful not to break off either of the ears. Take your time and tease it out cautiously. My screen was nice and clean.

TRANSMISSION SCREEN ACCESS. The screen for the transmission and differential pump is further aft on the left side. Unlike the motor oil screen, this screen can only be removed after removing the rear bumper. This is a time consuming job and it should come as no surprise that the “full service” you pay a lot of money for at your local Ferrari dealership may or may not involve cleaning this screen. That’s why owners curious enough to ask their mechanic about this screen will sometimes post stories of mechanics saying: “Oh, we never check that screen anymore. It’s always completely clean”. Yet, you can see plenty of photos of these screens full of metal and stories of transmission failures caused by completely clogged screens.

This link: http://www.ferrarichat.com/forum/360-430/407554-gearbox-filter-182100-a-3.html has a great narrative on cutting a hole in the side of the diffuser so you can extract the screen without removing the bumper. I did just that and found my screen quite contaminated with steel particles; though none of them were very big. I’m guessing it hasn’t been cleaned in nearly 14 years. I highly recommend this mod so that the screen gets checked more often. The magnetic plug in my transmission had only the slightest hint of very fine black metallic “fuzz”, so I hope my transmission is OK and the screen had simply been neglected for a long time. I used a funnel and a piece of garden hose to refill the transmission oil.

Continued in part TWO.

 

INSIDE THE WHEEL WELLS: I had several tasks to perform including changing the brake fluid. Starting at the right rear, I used a cheap vacuum bleeder to drain about 90ML at a time after which I stopped and topped off the fluid reservoir. I kept going until I could see the new fluid appear. To avoid sucking in air around the bleeder screw, I used a big blob of thick grease to seal the base of the bleed screw. The extra air won’t hurt anything since it goes into the bleeder, not the caliper, but it makes it impossible to see how much air was inside the calipers. In my case, not much but there was a little bit of air in each of the eight total bleed points.

When it comes to bleeding brakes, I wonder how many “full services” involve just topping off the fluid or simply bleeding the brakes rather than actually flushing fresh fluid all the way through the lines. How many Ferrari owners crack their brake bleeders to check for old fluid in the calipers and lines after paying for a full fluid change?

I recently bled my clutch (manual transmission) when I replaced the clutch pump (master cylinder), but if yours hasn’t been bled for a while, now is the time to do it. Don’t over torque the bleeder screw.

I inspected the A arm bushings, anti roll bar links, and ball joints. I could detect no free play or deterioration. I’m guessing someone replaced them sometime in the past. I also took a look at the CV joint boots, and anything else I could see. I wiggled the appropriate parts trying to detect wear but everything looked good, which was nice
A previous owner decided to lower my car and even though it looks great, it’s actually too low and it scrapes on normal streets, at least here in Italy. I doubt if you want to tackle this job without the special kind of spanner required for coil-over shocks. They’re not expensive, so get one if you want to change the ride height. I used the same wrench I use on my Ducati motorcycle. Mark the adjusting nut with a dab of white paint so you can keep track of your progress. I increased the pre-load by four turns. It takes quite a bit of muscle and a significant amount of time. I could only turn the large nut one notch at a time, risking a knuckle buster throughout the process. A dose of spray lube helps.

A couple of times I have seen a “suspension” caution light on the multi function display for no apparent reason. So I unplugged and reseated the suspension electrical connection a couple of times figuring it couldn’t hurt.

I measured the brake disk wear using a vernier caliper and a coin on each side of the disk to compensate for the ridge on the edge of the disk. The reading minus the thickness of the two coins is the disk thickness. Ferrari says 26mm is the minimum. The fronts are near minimum and the rears not far behind, so brakes are on my next “to do” list. This is also a good time to inspect your brake pads for wear.

MOTOR MOUNTS. Motor mounts are known to deteriorate so I decided to change them while I had the car up on stands with the under-tray removed. The job would be dead simple on a lift where you can work with a 90 degree bend in your arm/hand. But working on stands, you have to bend your hand/arm 180 degrees to get to the top of the bolts, so things go more slowly, but it isn’t particularly difficult, just fiddly. I don’t know if I should be happy or angry that the motor mounts I removed were seemingly brand new. They were hardly even dirty. Perhaps they were changed when the previous owner replaced the clutch and throwout bearing. That happened a year before I bought the car but it was hardly driven after that. For some reason, the obviously recent motor mount replacement wasn’t documented ……………. Sigh.

BACK ON THE GROUND. I didn’t want to put the car up on stands twice but I still had the transmission bushing to replace. I decided to install the under-tray now but not install any fasteners aft of the rear axle. One person can do this with the help of a floor jack to lift the middle of the under-tray. Don’t forget to feed the coolant overflow tube through the appropriate hole. If you forget it, like I did, you’ll be leaning over the engine for 15 minutes fishing around with a long pole while cursing your stupidity.

Continued in part THREE

 

TRANSMISSION BUSHING. This job requires you to support the transmission. Because the aft most fasteners were not yet installed, I was able to pull down the back part of the under-tray a little bit and slide in a block of wood between the fiberglass under-tray and the gear box. Then I put a soft pad on my floor jack to protect the under-tray so I could take the weight of the transmission without harming anything. This little trick avoided jacking the car up twice. I used this very good link as a guide:

http://www.ferrarichat.com/forum/technical-q/331587-360-diy-gearbox-mount-bushing-replacement.html

I purchased the rather robust Hill Engineering tool to remove the bushing. I can’t imagine doing the job without it. The fact that “FerrariDublin” managed to change his bushing using a pair of old brake pads, a couple of big washers, and a hack saw blade is amazing and he is now my new hero. Access is just barely acceptable once the “X” frame is unfastened and moved partly out of the way. Take a close look at how far the old bushing shell sticks out on each side so you’ll know when to stop when you install the new bushing. Unfortunately, the long threaded rod of the puller hits the exhaust system and you discover you can’t get your beautiful new tool in place. Rather than remove the exhaust components, I cut 7 or 8 cm off the threaded rod.

Once I had the Hill tool in place and configured to pull the old bushing from right to left, I put my biggest breaker bar and 22 mm socket on the nut and gave it my best heave-ho; NOTHING.

I pulled until I thought I might break something or tip the car off the stands; still no movement. After heating the aluminum transmission “ear” for 15 minutes using a powerful heat gun, I tried again. I was using a LOT of force when I heard a loud “POW”. I thought I had broken the threaded rod, but thank goodness it was only the old bushing breaking loose. By using an ordinary ½ inch drive ratchet handle and a lot of heat I was able to remove the bushing but it took a terrific amount of cranking. It got easier as it came out, but it required significantly more effort than I imagined. Without the Hill tool, I doubt if I could have managed it.

My bushing was not torn nevertheless it had sagged quite a bit indicating to me that it was old and apparently was not replaced at the same time someone changed the motor mounts. Because of the distortion of the rubber bushing the bolt hole was off center; consequently, the “pusher” disk of the bushing tool wouldn’t center-up on the bushing shell. The shell sticks out about 2mm on each side. So after moving 2mm, the pusher disk contacted the transmission mount on the lower edge and would go no further. It was necessary to use a big screw driver to lever the tool into a centered position so the “pusher” disk could follow the bushing into the transmission mount and drive it into the cup part of the tool.

I put my well greased new bushing in the freezer overnight. I didn’t modify the chamfered edge (as some others have) but I did mark it with ink for easy identification. You don’t want to install it backwards because it won’t enter the hole properly. I carefully cleaned up the transmission mount and carefully polished the bushing hole using a Scotch Bright pad. After greasing the gear box mount, I heated it up for about 20 minutes. It took a long time because the aluminum part is so massive. Up until now, the jobs have been a little tedious but not difficult. However, at this point I was in uncharted waters. I was concerned because the old bushing was so hard to remove. Is the new one a tiny bit larger? Would I get it started crooked and ruin my transmission mount? Would the bushing get stuck half way and leave my car un-drivable and stranded in the garage? I wasn’t sure at this point.

If, like me, you’ve shortened the threaded rod on the bushing tool, you will notice that the rod isn’t long enough to go through the nut, the cup part, the transmission, the new bushing, the driver disk, and the other nut. Don’t worry, all you have to do is invert the “cup” part of the tool and use a short extension on your ratchet wrench to reach the nut which is now inside the cup.

After taking a deep breath, I got the new bushing out of the freezer and installed it and the tool as quickly as I could. The bushing was easier to line up squarely than I thought and as soon as I tightened the slack out of the tool, I could see that the cold bushing was starting into the hot transmission mounting “ear” perfectly square and was moving easily at first. Immediately a little voice in my head started saying: “Hurry up!! The bushing shell is rapidly warming up and the transmission is quickly cooling off. The bushing is moving slowly but steadily, so KEEP GOING! DON’T LET IT STICK HALF WAY! Work that ratchet wrench like a MANIAC. Crank you fool, crank, crank, CRANK”.

It doesn’t really take ten thousand strokes of the ratchet handle but it certainly seems like it. The effort is considerable and continues to increase as the bushing goes further in and warms up. I was ratcheting as hard and as fast as I could. It really did take all my strength. While my brain was talking to itself about not letting the bushing get stuck half way a second voice in my head interrupted.

That new voice said. “WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU THINKING??? You’re an old, fat, out-of-shape-fool, huffing and puffing as though you’re going to pass out any second now. You can barely breathe, your arm muscles are burning, TAKE A REST BEFORE YOU DROP DEAD FROM A HEART ATTACK!!! Why didn’t you hire a professional mechanic to do this job? You’re an IDIOT.”

Unlike the removal procedure, this was getting more difficult as it went along, not easier. I elected to pay attention to the engineering voice in my head and ignore the medical voice, so I kept going. I confess the effort nearly killed me, but the operative word is “nearly”. If your brain works like what’s left of my brain, you can decide for yourself how to respond to the voices in your head.

Before the new bushing is fully in place, it will bottom out on the flat face of the puller if you’ve shortened the threaded rod because you will temporarily be using the cup “backwards”. So you need to remove the tool, turn the cup over into the correct orientation, reassemble the puller, and finish off the last few mm of travel.

I was exhausted but I was relieved and proud that I got the bushing properly seated without dropping dead or bursting into tears. It can be done even by old farts like me, but it isn’t a piece of cake, that’s for sure. If you can do this with a pair of old brake shoes, you’re a better man than I. Putting everything back in place is time consuming but easy.

OIL FILTER AND OIL PRESSURE SENDER. When I bought by Hill bushing tool I also bought their filter wrench, thinking it was a luxury. But it wasn’t. Someone either over torqued my oil filter or failed to lubricate the O ring. It took a good deal of force and my longest breaker bar to get it off. The oil pressure sender is a little fiddly to get an open end wrench on, but it can be done. Unfortunately, you can’t get a good grip or a good pull on the wrench and my sender was obviously put on by some really strong guy. So I connected a ratchet binder strap (the kind you use to strap things down on a trailer) between the end of the wrench and part of the car’s structure and tightened the strap until the pressure sender broke free. Then it spun off by hand. Installing the new sender and filter is straightforward. Don’t forget the crush washer because the threads aren’t tapered and don’t forget to connect the sender wire to the terminal marked ground using a 7mm wrench.

FINISHING UP. Make sure everything you took apart is put back together properly. You should have already put the wheels on and torqued them to 40NM while on the stands. Then, once back on the ground, torque them to 100NM; ….. Don’t forget!! And don’t forget to put in the fresh oil before you start the engine.

I hope these tips prove useful to other DIY Ferrari owners who intend to tackle one or all of these tasks.

 

Large piece of wood under the sump. Don't lift the engine too far or you could damage some of the hoses on the front.

 

I'm guessing someone in the past cut part of your undertray. On my car the undertray has a hole exposing the jacking points. That means you can jack it up without the jack or lift pad ever touching the undertray. And you can remove all the bolts too. But what you can't do is completely free the undertray and get it out of the way because it is trapped by the jack(s); i.e. the jack points are touching the chassis through the holes in the undertray.

At this point you can either put the car on stands and remove the jack(s) to free the undertray or, if you're using a lift, lower the car back onto the wheels, remove the undertray, and then raise the car again.

However, it is not unknown to cut away part of the underetray so it can be removed without these extra steps.

I wonder if that's the case with your car.

 

We're talking about the aft part. The front panel doesn't get trapped by the jack points, only the aft panel. You can see the jack points just ahead of the rear tires. You should see two (one on each side) round holes in the plastic undertray roughly 5 inches in diameter. You can see and/or feel them without putting the car on a lift and you should be able to see or feel if the outer portion has been cut away so that the undertray can be removed without repositioning the jack.