Ferrari 360 ride height. Errors revealed.

A previous owner of my 360 Modena must have been a pimp, a pimply faced kid, or perhaps a Premier League footballer. It was lowered way below factory specifications and had wheel spacers installed in a futile attempt to make a very nice car ………….. um……… more appealing …… I suppose………. I really don’t get it. I quickly grew tired of scraping bottom on every tiny road undulation like some sort of East LA low rider. So, after purchasing a set of standard wheel bolts, I set out to put things back to factory specifications.

Boy-racers know that you can adjust the ride height simply by changing the preload on the standard coil-over damper/spring assembly. It’s not good for your suspension geometry, but who cares? Appearance is everything, right?

You simply loosen the big (lower) lock nut and move the adjusting nut upward (to raise the car) or downward (to lower the car).

Eliminating the spacers is a no brainer and setting the ride height isn’t difficult either. But I always look around this forum for hints and tips before tackling a job on my Ferrari. In doing so, I unearthed two errors related to the ride height of a 360.

The spring preload measurement is made from the upper surface of the adjusting nut to the center of the lower mounting bolt. That is depicted as dimension “L” in the drawing below. Note that the top measurement point is between the rubber pad and upper surface of the nut. The factory adjustment depends on the markings on the springs, white, red, or yellow. The dimensions are listed in the digital workshop manual under “Shock Absorbers”. My targets (white markings) are 154.2mm front and 171.1mm rear.

Unfortunately, someone in another thread (incorrectly) recommended measuring from the underside of this nut. Don’t be led astray or your car will be higher than intended.

You’ll need a special (but inexpensive) spanner designed for adjusting these types of coil-over dampers. I used one I bought for my Ducati motorcycle. Note that this job is a LOT easier if you partially compress the spring, but you may have do to some fiddling to get a spring compressor properly positioned and tightened. Be careful because spring compressors store a lot of energy and have the potential to be dangerous.

Once the car was back on the ground, I wanted to check the ride height by measuring the distance from the chassis to the ground. There is what appears to be a simple way to measure the actual height of the chassis outlined in the workshop manual. The factory specifications are shown in a drawing found in the Wheel Alignment section; 125.2mm in the front and 146.8mm in the rear.

Sad to say, someone offering advice in an earlier forum thread misinterpreted the drawing and incorrectly stated that the dimensions are taken from the chassis to the ground inboard of the place on the drawing where the dimension lines are located. Those familiar with technical drawings will know that dimension lines are usually offset from the drawing by what are called “extension lines” in order to reduce clutter. Note that the forward and rear measurement points are NOT ahead of the wheels as suggested in that earlier post. That is simply where the dimensions are placed on the drawing. The actual measurement points are as shown in the photos in the workshop manual. These points are inboard of the wheels marked by spot facings on the lower surfaces of the big cast suspension mounting frames.

It’s easy to find the forward measuring point. However, in the rear, I was disappointed to learn that I could see the side of the big aluminum casting shown in the drawing but I could not access the measuring point on the bottom of this casting because it’s covered by the aft under-tray, or at least it is on my car.

I was pleased to see that after resetting the spring preload back to the correct position, the front ride height measurement met the factory specifications and the rear looks about correct, just as Mr. Ferrari would have intended had he still been around when the 360 was designed.

Some will say, “Oh, the wheels don’t extend out beyond the body anymore and the gap between the tire and wheel arch is too large. It just isn’t cool.” But I say, “My car no longer looks like a Japanese compact owned by a boy-racer making his living as a pimp. It looks like a Ferrari”.
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Sorry, no.