In search of a sub 5 second 0-60

If you want great 0-60 times buy a used drag car off ebay,
or one of the newer super bikes out there.

I'd just enjoy the 348 for what it is, a great old Ferrari!

After all, does 9 tenths of a second really mean that much to you,
that you would spend another $40k to drop your 0-60 time from 5.5 to 4.6 by buying a 355?

 

Well actually there is a way to do it. You must use a very high gear ratio, and get more power out of the engine. You could have the heads ported polished and flowed, the throttle bodies ported, custom exhaust header, free flow cats and muffler, higher flow injectors, the plenum ported and polished, and get a more agressive cam. Also for every 100-lbs of weight you loose you gain about a 1/10 of a second. So knock off 500-lbs and you loose half a second.

 

The easiest way is surely to use nitrous oxide, if that's important to you. There is a F348 on FChat (Andy) with nitrous.

Jas

 

F=ma, or a=F/m

So if you want more a, you need more F (torque at the wheels) or less m


More power
If all you want is a good 0-60, nitrous is you answer. If you do a search there are a couple threads I remember seeing about installing nitrous, at least one of the installs was a 348.

A turbo will help some, but they are not the best for launching. I supercharged my 308 and it launches quite well, to the point that I need to use 2nd gear and still can't floor it with excessive wheel spin. I haven't timed the 0-60, but it's fast, much faster than a 355.


Less weight.
The other option is less weight. you could go nuts making the car light, no spare or tool kit, lose the AC, Race seats, lose the carpet, Carbon hood/ decklid/bumpers/dash/door panels, aftermarket exhaust, lose the cats. You might get enough weight out to hit your number.....it's probably easier and cheaper to add power though.

 

Yes, both easier and cheaper to use nitrous..... but reducing weight will give lots of other benefits in terms of better handling, cornering grip, and braking, as well as the acceleration you are aiming for. Witness the 360 challenge stradale (or any Lotus).

Jas

 

Want fast?
Then what you need is a Hayabusa!

It will gobble up the fastest Ferrari you can afford,
and only set you back around $11k.

 

He didn't ask "what bike is quicker than any Ferrari". He asked how to get a 348 sub 5 second 0-60mph.

If you wanna do it cheap, and have it done in one day, I totally agree with the others, put it on the laughing gas. Plus it will only set you back a few hundred bucks.

 

No your right Ernie, he didn't ask which bike is quicker than any Ferrari.
Hell, I could make my lawnmower run under 5.0 if I through enough money at it. So sure, you could get a 348 under 5.0...

I suppose if you make your living with 0-60 times then it makes a whole lot of sense.
But in my little world, how fast my Ferraris get to 60-mph is meaningless.
I'm just happy to be along to enjoy the ride.

 

Norwood's can do Twin Turbo conversions. There are at least 2 of these on Fchat - a guy in the Texas forum just bought one...

 

A round my house the police are horrible and everywhere, brisk acceleration is about the only fun I can have without fearing for my lisense. So the important numbers are 0-40, 0-45, ect., not where Ferraris generally shine, but really the only fun I can have with it on the street.

 

I understand what you mean. For me 60-120mph is were the fun is.

 

Maybe he'd like his car to be a little faster, what's wrong with that? If you don't like it fine, but what's the big deal? Yes, Ferraris aren't all about 0-60, but some of the fun does come from being fast.

Anyways, NOS is definitely the easiest and cheapest way to go about it, but I assume you would want this increased quickness all the time, and not just when the bottle is full, plus we can all imagine what NOS would do to resale value, etc.

So I'd stick with engine mods such as new cats, exhaust, etc

 

Get an F430 motor

 

Does your 348SS have the heavy stock seats, the carbon fiber seats, or the kevlar seats? The stock seats are bizarrely heavy; you can quickly lose weight by replacing them (it's just four bolts).

There are also lighter weight wheels available; our stock 348 rims are needlessly heavy.

Upgrade your shift gate to a slickshift (or just grind your stock gate down with a dremmel - wear eye protection and ear protection - takes 7 minutes).

Obviously you want to replace your cats. The cheap way is to use high flow "universal" cats (requires welding; insure that your a/f ECU's and exhaust ECU's are disconnected before Joe welder applies the torch); the prime way is to bolt on Hyper-Flow direct fits cats (no welding).

Unbolt your MAF's and remove the four protection screens (hey, no one said that more power was risk free). You also want a good air filter such as K&N.

You'll want to gap your NGK or splitfire spark plugs to .0285 inches (more if you can get away with it without causing knocking or detonation).

Add octane booster.

A lighter engine oil and transmission oil will put more horsepower to the ground (increases torque by reducing friction; the tradeoff is reduced protection during long hot races). I like Red Line's 5w30 syntheitc engine oil and 70w90 superlight shockproof gear oil (which also makes it easier to shift into 2nd gear when cold). Of course, these sorts of changes are quite dependent on how hard you drive your car, for how long, etc.

A 348 SS, pushed hard, is already hitting a 5.3 second 0 to 60, so the above changes will help get you close to 5.0. Once the above is done, you'll need access to an exhaust gas analyzer.

Use the EGA to set your air to fuel ratio to 12.7 to 1 at wide open throttle at high RPM's (max power), but keep in mind that your RPMs will rev up faster if your a/f ratio is closer to 13.1 to 1 (especially for Ferrari's). So getting your a/f to start at 13.1 and then richen up to 12.7 to 1 as you get above 5500 RPMs *may* require custom ECU chip tuning (but a lot of 348's have a good a/f fuel mapping curve, so chipping isn't always required).

With a good fuel mapping curve at this point you'll be running below 5.0 seconds to 60mph if you are willing to push your 348 to redline in both 1st and 2nd.

The next step is to cool your intake air and fuel rails with CO2. Kits for cold carbon dioxide "external" cooling typically cost $450.

You can have your two throttle bodies bored out to slightly larger than stock to further increase airflow.

More radically, you can inject NO2. Nitrous kits start above $500. Repeat your a/f ega tests.

If you want to cheat, then there are some semi-street "near-slick" rear tires that will help your launches. Likewise, you'll want to fill your tires with nitrogen to help reduce their over-pressure when hot. You can cheat even more for your 0-60mph times by slightly over-filling your front tires, too (hurts handling, though it helps our 348's at slow speeds since we don't have power steering).

All of the above *can* be done for less than $2,500 if you are careful and shop around.

If you don't want to cheat and don't mind spending more $$, then the twin turbo is one way to go.

 

Install lower lower gears (aka drop gears). You'll lose some top speed but who cares.

 

i got a mustang cobra that will do zero to 60 in somewhere around 2.5 seconds if you want to trade.

 

JATO rocket on roof. The true story:
(Very long but worth the read!)

http://www.rocketcarstory.com

 

That my friends says it all.

Here is a guy that has a car that is way quicker than a 348. Yet he is willing to trade his car, that has superior performance, for one that does not.

You still own a FERRARI. Sure you could go out a buy a $20,000 car put another $3,500 into it, but it still is not a Ferrari.

 

On a related note, I just had the opportunity to demonstrate for a young gentleman that a old 308 ferrari (with the propper mods) can out 0-60 a C6 vette, much to his apparent dismay

 

Hahahaaa!

Mark your a baaaaad man. Picking on brand new Vetts like that. Tisk, tisk, tisk.

Now if we could just figuire out a way to strap a blower on a 348. I think the biggest problem is that the water pump also runs off of the cam belt. However Novitec did do a setup on a 348 similar to the one they did for the 360. So maybe that would be the way to go.

 

I know...I try to behave......

You just need room for the belt. I separate 1 inch belt is best . If the room isn't there, you can use the stock serpentine belt, of if it's just too thin, put wider pulleys on everything or drive a large dia idler that drive the wider belt. I've never seen a car where it can't be done.