I have been meaning to document this for quote a while and am finally getting around to it. Some of you may know that I bought @niftyfivefifty 's old car on BAT this winter. I want to start by saying that he has been an absolute class act in communicating with me, answering questions about what was done at what time, etc. He spent a lot of time, money, and effort making this car better and more reliable and I am glad to be able to continue that. A Grigio Titanio 550 has always been on my bucket list and after a few 355s and a 599, I'm thrilled to be realizing this dream. There were a few immediate needs I had to address before I could register the car in GA. It came with Fabio's headers, no cats, no secondary air, a supersprint X-pipe, and stock 550 mufflers (Tubis included as well). With no cats, and the associated CELs for that and the secondary air delete, it would not pass emissions here in GA. The car also smelled quite bad to the point that it wasn't enjoyable to drive with the windows down. I had already worked with Fabio before, buying/installing his headers for my 599, so I was able to remove these from the 550 and send to him to retrofit the secondary air tubes into the flanges, as well as purchase his cats and H-pipe. Headers removed: Image Unavailable, Please Login Headers back from Fabio, freshly sand-blasted, along with his cats and H-pipe. Image Unavailable, Please Login Since excess heat in the engine bay is always a concern, and given that the OEM headers are heat-shielded, I decided to have them ceramic coated by a local powder coater who is authorized for Cerakote. I went with the Glacier series (designed to keep heat down) in a titanium finish. Image Unavailable, Please Login The car already had the 575 motor mounts, but they had around 20k miles on them, and even though they were still not completely at the failure point, it seemed silly not to go ahead and replace those with the headers out because of the easy access. As others have noted, the driver side isn't fun, but also not the end of the world. I just had to lower the steering rack a bit (didn't even fully remove from the car). Old and new mounts side by side: Image Unavailable, Please Login In process: Image Unavailable, Please Login I also noticed that the throttle pedal was pretty difficult to push, so while I was waiting for the headers to come back, I removed the throttle bodies and cable and cleaned/lubricated everything. Image Unavailable, Please Login It's interesting, because every individual component seemed to move freely and be OK (each throttle body, and the cabling itself once removed), but by going through this process it somehow fixed the issue and when I put it back together it was beautifully smooth and easy to operate. Thankfully, he included all of the secondary air parts in a box, so it was just a matter of piecing it back together to get that system working. One of the pipes had a hole, so I had that taken care of by an aluminum welder locally. Not the prettiest result but it's not at all noticeable when installed. Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login I also took the time upon reassembly to address a few other minor things in the engine bay. I spent a lot of time cleaning everything (unfortunately no pics that really do it justice) and doing some tidying. As with pretty much all 550s eventually, the plastic spark plug wire holders have cracked and were just dangling there. I noticed that they were mostly complete, so I ordered the correct hardware and reattached them to the valve covers. This will do the job for now, and the wires themselves have been replaced, so I should be good to go from a mechanical standpoint. Image Unavailable, Please Login With everything installed (I swapped the X-pipe for Fabio's H-pipe and also installed the Tubis that came with the car and removed the stock valved mufflers), I am very pleased with the sound, and equally pleased that everything was functioning properly and there were no codes. Smell was gone too! Another little cosmetic touch...replaced some torn mesh by the muffler tips Image Unavailable, Please Login
I also had a DTC for cam position sensor, and upon investigation it was very obvious why! Image Unavailable, Please Login Took a look at the crank sensors, and noticed they were both cracking as well. Image Unavailable, Please Login Naturally, I replaced all of these, along with all new O2 sensors during the install. As expected with heat and age, some of the wiring boots had cracked or torn, so replaced a number of these as well. Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login The low oil pressure warning message would also flash on the dash at idle when hot. As has been well documented here on fchat (though usually it's the other way around with the gauge itself reading high), the culprit was the oil pressure sender, which I replaced. No issues since. Image Unavailable, Please Login At some point during its life, the car was used as a show-car for a large audio company, and had a TON of aftermarket stereo wiring left over, which I removed. My assumption is that there was some type of speaker box in the trunk at some point, because the car came to me with an exposed fuel tank. Image Unavailable, Please Login Luckily, I found the cover panel used from Eurospares, and the carpeting piece used from exotic auto recycling. New gasket and hardware and it turned out really nicely. Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login Now the only piece I am missing is the cover for the bottom that goes over the well with the little pull strap. This is NLA from Ferrari and I haven't found any used, so please let me know if anyone has a line on one!
Amazing job. One thing: the cover for the trunk is very fragile and not very sturdy, so mine broke. I just took the old carpet off and glued them onto a thin playwood plate. It works perfect. Cheap and a better solution.
On to the interior. Removed all of this wiring along with the custom enclosures which occupied the parcel shelf. Image Unavailable, Please Login The car also had custom speaker enclosures in the kick panels and unfortunately didn't come with the OEM pieces to cover the ECU. I sourced some NOS ones through Eurospares, though the only color available was black, so I will need to have these re-carpeted at some point. Image Unavailable, Please Login I am not a big "audio guy", and prefer to just listen to the engine/exhaust sound (especially with Fabio's headers!), but you can't have a GT car with a hole in the console, so I copied @AVIMAX 's solution for speakers and a head unit. If you have any question about the OEM speaker quality/materials, check this out. These were NOS (came attached to my kick panels). Ripped right out of the box with 0 usage. The material was totally deteriorated and just disintegrated as soon as I touched it. Image Unavailable, Please Login Fitting the new Polk speakers required some light massaging/modification on the rear panels, but nothing that can be seen since they are covered with carpet, so I wasn't overly concerned with making it perfect cosmetically. Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login Really pleased with the Continental head unit as it looks very period-correct, but offers bluetooth functionality. I didn't want anything with a flip-out screen or flashing lights, etc. Getting everything wired up: Image Unavailable, Please Login Replaced deteriorated shifter plate gasket Image Unavailable, Please Login Very happy with the result. Image Unavailable, Please Login Now all I am left with interior-wise is to have an upholstery shop make the carpet panel (with leather border) to match what would have come from factory. Image Unavailable, Please Login I was lucky enough to find these luggage straps in Blu Scuro, which is the same color as the piping on my seats and other interior trim. They arrived very hard and dirty, but after 2 weeks of Leatherique, they came out beautifully. Soaking in rejuvenator oil (I reapplied every few hours for days at a time) Image Unavailable, Please Login
Despite relatively new (and all upgraded) coolant hoses, and a recent radiator flush by the previous owner, the car was running on the hot side while sitting in traffic. It never got to the second hash-mark, but frequently nudged past the 190 mark. I have these pics in the cooling thread as well, but for the sake of having everything in one place, I'll post here as well. As a number of others have found, running the power through the fuse board for the cooling fans is simply not a good design, despite my car having an aftermarket fuseboard solution which is very robust. I did some testing with an anemometer with the car running on my lift, and found that when wired as factory, i was getting numbers in the 700-750ft/min range, whereas when I hooked some test leads directly to my test battery, the fans were putting out over 1,000ft/min. In going through this process, I found one of the fan connectors was melted. Image Unavailable, Please Login Figuring that a possible cause was excessive resistance in the fan motor, I decided to go ahead and replace both fans as part of this project. Image Unavailable, Please Login As documented in the cooling thread, the best solution is to make a plug & play wiring harness to run power directly from the battery to the fans, triggered by the stock relay signal at the fuse board. Wiring runs from the battery to circuit breakers, new 70A relays, and then metripack 280 connectors so it can plug directly into the factory harness and the fan connectors. This is completely reversible and can be put back to factory in the matter of a few minutes. Everything laid out (wire itself not pictured) Image Unavailable, Please Login In process: Image Unavailable, Please Login Breakers mounted near the battery Image Unavailable, Please Login Wiring run under the cover panel for the AC lines, and then out to the relays which I mounted behind/below the headlights Image Unavailable, Please Login Output is much stronger with the new fans and it seems to have fixed the issue (though admittedly I haven't had the opportunity to run it in traffic with the AC on when it's 90 degrees outside yet). That's all I've got for now. Next on the list is the rear parcel shelf carpeting as mentioned above, and maybe/probably a belt service this winter. I'll continue to update the thread as I check more things off the list! Happy to be a part of the 550 community and certainly grateful for the resources that we have here on fchat.
I absolutely LOVE this thread and am so excited and grateful for the updates. Thanks so much. p.s. someday I'll drool over a video with audio.... ;-)
Ask and ye shall receive... Ferrari 550 Fiammenghi 6-1 headers 2nd gear pull - YouTube That's all I have right now, but at some point I'll get some better ones with exterior also. And yes, before someone says it, this was on my way to the gas station.
Looking good, and I like your idea of using circuit breakers for the fan circuits. I think I will change out my fuse holders for the same this winter.
I am VERY impressed by the progress you make and that you have found the way into Fchat and actually "studied" the threads to learn from us who is not satisfied with the Ferrari workshops' solutions to things... Can you send me a picture of the build aftermarket front speaker boxes? I might be interested in them. The cooling modification is the most important thing to get right. These cars overheat like crazy in real heat and the feeling is terrible. It also fry the plastic and electronics inside the engine compartment. The air going through the radiator has simply no were to escape as the hood is 99% tight for hot air to come up and out. The hot air blows back onto the engine and under the car because of the angle of the fan and radiator. At speed it is no problem, but at standstil.... If you look at the LaFerrari, you can see that they did the radiator and fans the opposite angle facing downwards with the fans on top making the hot air escape right up through the big air escape vent. 10x better solution. But of course a bit more easy to do when there is no engine in the front of the car! How would you say the difference is in sound going from the no cats to catalyzed? I know that car have had much "development" to make the sound right and I have discussed with the previous owner a lot during this peocess. The tubi factory in Italy said that you can just disconnect the last two O2 lambda sensors when taking the catalyzers off, when I called them to ask what is needed to avoid problems and SLOW DOWN or even the diagnostic warning light. (Two different warning lights). I am not sure if that answer is correct or not...?! But they have sold de-cat pipes for about twenty years and is locaded a stone throw from the Ferrari factory, so they should know what they are talking about... Erik
Thanks for the kind words, Erik! I don't have any good pictures of the enclosure.....this is the best I could find from the BAT ad. I actually told @niftyfivefifty that he could keep them because I was going to trash them anyway as they are not my style/taste, so I have never seen them in person. Image Unavailable, Please Login You're definitely correct about the air flow and hot air in the engine bay, which is exactly why I have hood vents on my E36 race car. Dramatic cooling improvement. As for the sound, I talked to Fabio at length about this, and I wanted as smooth and high-pitched tone as possible. I never heard the car with Tubis with no cats (I'd imagine it would be very loud), and never with stock mufflers and cats, so it's a bit hard to say, but I can say that I do much prefer the sound now to when I first got the car with no cats and the X-pipe and stock mufflers. The tone is indeed higher-pitched and smoother, with just the right amount of pops and burbles on the overrun. Even without emissions concerns, I would advise running with cats for the sake of the smell alone! Regarding the CEL, I'm not sure about unplugging the post-cat lambda sensors. Obviously the Motronic computer is looking for a value from pre-cat and post-cat sensors to fall within a certain range or delta, with values falling outside of that range triggering a CEL. Given that a defective lambda sensor causes a CEL, I can't imagine that simply unplugging the post-cat ones wouldn't also trigger one. The SLOW DOWN light is different, and I believe tied to the thermocouples. They make emulators for these that you can plug in at the factory connection points to get around the light. I know they work because the car came with them and I had no slow down light even with no cats. The one caveat here is that I know some European-spec models came without cats from factory, and I know it's possible to flash the ECU to delete the CEL (there's a shop in CA that can do the tune). Not sure if there are other methods or not, but I had already decided to buy Fabio's cats for a number of reasons, so I didn't look into it too deeply.
Beautiful, Chris! I am so glad the car went to you and that you are continuing the updates I always wanted to perform. Enjoy!
Great thread Chris & I really like the way you’ve clearly documented each problem/fix with text & pics. I don’t mean to self promote but after replacing your oil pressure sender you really ought to pickup one of the MSW boots from Ricambi to weatherproof the connections. The location of that sender is just an invitation for moisture & road crud to coat the terminals & generate spurious readings. It’ll be the best $15 you’ll spend on that car, lol.
Yes, I do need to grab one of those. Great solution you developed. I also have my eye on one of your steering relays....
Hi Erik, I still have the front speaker kickpanels along with the very cool fiberglass trunk subwoofer enclosure upholstered in black Alcantara with red stitching. I'll try taking photos tomorrow. Any of it is yours for free as long as you can cover shipping. I would love to see them go to a good home.
Chris the kia crank sensors that we use on the 348s also fit the 550 with minor wire path change. The Kia ones never break or wear out like Bosch. I bought 12 about 20 years ago because so cheap still have about 6.
Oh man, that would have been great to know! I bought OEM Bosch (not from Ferrari) for the cam sensor, crank sensors, and O2 sensors.
Heat kills the plastic and it crumbs. I have had Kia sensors on 2 different 550s. One still going strong +10 years. The other I sold suspect still going...
Chris, I would also have a look at the fuel injection harnesses under the intake manifold. That’s a real hotspot and the connectors there are known to disintegrate at the injectors. Additionally, have a look at those funky six or seven way connectors coming from the injection harnesses that plug into the car harness. I’ve seen corrosion on the contacts there and it doesn’t take much to reduce the signal to the injectors. Those connectors BTW are NLA and could stand to be replaced with something more contemporary and better construction. They’re buried under the intake manifold so changing them to something better isn’t going to affect an OEM appearance.
Exactly my thoughts too! I apprechiate both the previous and the current owner's efforts and dedication.
