My 348.....i think....

...its rubbish!!!!..Looks awesome...sounds fantastic..but thats it!!!!For me that is why i got it...but lets be realistic..very poor build quality,very poor interior,no "real" woman could drive one......and we say its better than a 355..your all having a giraffe!!!(laugh for outside UK..lol)

I spent all my life dreaming of one thinking they had to be the complete article...far from it!

A very nieve Ferrari 348 owner..LOL!


Would i sell it for a 355?..Fook off would i!

 

Can't drive it in the rain coz it may flood the engine or the body will rust.
Can't put it in second gear for the first 10 minutes.
The gearbox is a pain in the arse.
It's so ****ing loud even at idle, that you can't hear the radio.
The ride feels like it's it's dragging you over concrete.
There's no power steering so I virtually strain my upper body just trying to park the bloody thing.
Every where I do park it, I have to keep my eyes on it in case it gets scrathced or vandalised.
Can't drive it in certain areas as it's so low it scrapes "speed bumps" in the roads.

In summary, I have to plan every journey by looking at the type of roads, car parking availability, security and the weather for the day.

But..............

Would i sell it for a 355?..Fook off would I!

 

You've got to make a couple of "fixes" before any 348 is golden.

Drain the tranny. Replace the tranny filter and add Redline's synthetic Superlite Shock Proof 70w90 gear oil. Do *not* overfill. Now you can actually shift into 2nd gear when the engine is still cold.

Flush the radiators with a powerflush, Prestone chemflush, and the heater running (very important). Re-fill with 50/50 pre-mixed Prestone, adding one small bottle of Redline's Water Wetter. Now your car doesn't overheat and instead stays at mid-range temp even idling in traffic.

Add a magnesium anode into your radiator fill tank to prevent electrolysis. Now the 5 ECUs (air/fuel, ABS, exhaust, and A/C) on your 348 won't get false computer signals.

Insure that your spark plug wires are completely sealed at both ends. Now you can drive in the rain.

Add Z-Max tranny fluid to your tranny. Now your shifts are butter smooth (if you haven't overfilled).

Drain your oil and re-fill with Redline's 5W30 synthetic. Add Z-Max oil fluid. Now your oil pressure is perfect at startup, idle, and redline, hot and cold.

Gap your sparkplugs to .028 inches each. If desired, upgrade to NGK Iridium or Splitfire plugs. Now you don't get misses or "pinging" and do get smooth revs.

Pop the blue caps off of your MAFs. Remove the data cables to your MAFs. The outermost pins on the MAF interface to the cable, pins #1 and #6, will report to your ohm-meter a resistance value. Ferrari sets it initially to 383 Ohms. You may need a different value. Your MAFs may be mis-set to different values.

Your two MAFs should each have the *same* resistance value, regardless of your setting. Turn the screw beneath the blue caps counter-clockwise to richen your mixture, clockwise lean it.

For faster revving of your engine, lean your mixture.

For quicker starts and max power, richen your mixture. You can adjust until you get a resistance value that suits you (just make sure both MAFs are set to the same level).

Too rich and your engine will be slow to rev, your cats will get too hot, and they will trip a Check Engine light. No big deal, just lean back your mixtures.

Too lean and your 348 will take forever to start. 5 "urr, urr" cycles at start is typical. More than that and you're probably too lean. Also, too lean means that your engine, rather than your cats, will be hot, and your power will not be up to full potential.

Get the right mixture adjustment and then your 348 will make beautiful music for you. You can do all of this *without* resetting your ECU's, too. Adjust, measure resistance, then start her up. Repeat as needed. Even better if you have a fuel to air ratio meter to more precisely report on your progress.

Add Oxitane (0.5 ounce) in the U.S. to your full tank of gas; or Speed Tec to your tank in Europe and Asia. You don't need much. This bumps up your horsepower by about 6% by essentially making your gas more combustible *without* changing the octane rating (a seemingly contradictory feat). Famous NASCAR tuner Lee Hurley turned me on to these products in his tuning shop; he uses Oxitane to give his customers a free HP boost on his dyno...makes for many, many happy customers.

Replace your air filter with a K&N or other cloth brand.

If you are doing a lot of urban street driving, consider raising your front shocks half of an inch.

You'll thank me later.

 

Take all of the weight that you can out from under the front bonnet. Toolcase, odds and ends, everything. The lighter the front, the easier the steering.

Increase the front tires' air pressure to 35 pounds (if possible, use Nitrogen instead of air). This too will ease the low-speed steering effort.

If you have spacers on the front wheels, try steering with them removed, too.

I've got my steering surprisingly light; it can be done.

 

No Doubt,
don't ANY companies make their products properly out of the box?
It seems that everything needs SOMETHING added to it.

 

Warts and all, ya gotta love it

 

No doubt, that's lots of extras to be added. Will lifting the front by 1/2'' affect the setup? I wanted to do that but all my Ferrari mechanics advised not to & I have my front lip cracked so many times. I do drive in the rain only when I'm caught in it & my weather here changes almost like traffic light!

 

You just don't get it do you!

 

How/what/where/why do you do with a magnesium anode?

 

No Doubt,

A lot of what I wrote was just a bit of joking.

But thanks for the info. I'm definetly going to try some of that stuff, or should I say get the local garage to do it for me. Especially the gearbox stuff.

Only real problem i have at the moment though is the struts that keep up the engine lid. For some reason they've stopped working properly.

Any fix for that?

 

Yep, a new pair from Hill Engineering. About £20 each.

 

Sacrificial anodes are used to prevent corrosion in your cooling system. Through a quirk of physics, corrosion occurs *only* in the most likely place, first...rather than proportionally throughout components.

So the sacrificial anode corrodes first, saving your radiator and engine and heat exchanger. It's like a body guard.

For 348's, which have aluminum components (e.g. radiators, engine, etc.) you have to use a magnesium anode (iron engine blocks and iron or brass radiators can use zinc anodes). They cost about $15 (find them at marine shops and even some high-end salt-water fish stores). You drop it into your radiator overfill tank, typically attached to a ring (so that it doesn't fall into your hoses) or a large washer.

Pull the anode out of your overfill tank each time you check your anti-freeze level. Examine it for corrosion. Replace when necessary and flush/fill your coolant system at that time.

 

Have you switched them so that they are upside down (reversed)? Do you have the metal side of the struts facing down or up at present?

 

I'm having 2nd thoughts about the magnesium anode. I've pulled mine out of my overfill tank and am bolting it to a ground *outside* the tank now.

 

Oh Fine. Now that I ordered one for my car, why are you having second thoughts about leaving it in the tank?

 

i have a few problems with your post. it sounds like 80% of what you are reccomending is snake oil like z max. I'll go through and add my comments in bold.

 

if all else fails, you dont like your 348 , they have a kit that will turn it into a fiero ......

 

Brilliant!

 

Sorry, that kit is only available for 355`s (LOL)!!

Regards,
Phil.

 

I pulled mine out during a normal fluid check and the magnesium anode was pretty corroded after only a short amount of time...and I don't want that corosion flaking off into my coolant.

So now I'm seeing if I get the same benefit with the magnesium anode grounded to the exterior of the overfill tank. This way, if it still works, no corosion will flak off into the coolant.

 

It's all snake oil. Redline. Oxytane. Magnesium anode. Proper Air to Fuel mixture. Z-Max. K&N air filters. Factory set .028 inch spark gap. Don't use any of that!

Snake oil, all of it!

Just kidding. I use all of that personally in my 348, and I've done before-and-after comparisons.

 

Hmm...I don't drive my car in the rain, the linkage is a PITA, it's so loud I can't hear anything, the ride is tight, no power steering, I worry when I park it, and it's so low I worry about leaves and twigs.

It's my Lotus Europa. But unlike you guys, I love all those things because it's what makes for the driving experience! My car is a real sports car. Maybe a 348 just isn't the right car for you?

Ken

 

you haven't answered my questions. like for instance how you know what the proper a/f is without the wideband. and why redline oil is better then mobil one, et al. or how a car with less power revs faster.

if you want to put zmax in, thats your call, but i've never heard of those things working. if this one does, id like to know what its benefits are.

Thanks

 

You *don't* know if you have a proper A/F curve without a dyno test and an Air-Fuel analyzer.

However, you can tell when you are *close* to a proper A/F curve on a 348 with simple tweaking. As your A/F ratio gets closer to 12.7 to 1, your 348 revs slower. Makes more power overall, mind you, but revs slower.

Make your 348's A/F mixture too lean, and your 348 takes forever to start (hot or cold), and your combustion chmbers run hot. Been there, done that.

Your 348 has two MAFs. Each MAF will give you a resistance value between pins #1 & #6 that changes as you adjust the base A/F micture ratio with the screw beneath each blue cap. The factory baseline is 383 Ohms.

So knowing the factory baseline, how long it takes to start your 348, and how peppy it feels as you rev it up, you can get your 348 to a pretty decent A/F ratio "by the seat of your pants."

Not everyone can spend a day at a dyno, after all. Naturally, it's better if you can, though.

Now, why is Redline better than Mobile 1? From the Aehass threads on this board, you already know that some oils protect better at high temperatures and high RPMs than do others. Further, you know that the thinner your oil, the more horsepower you put to the ground (less parasitic friction).

So even though many oils have the same AEI ratings and weights (e.g. 5W30), different brands perform entirely differently.

I'd refer you to Aehass's oil charts on Ferrarichat.com so that you can judge for yourself which oil is right for your application.

As for Z-Max, what I noticed when I added it to my oil was that my average driving oil temperature decreased 5 degrees, and my average oil pressure stayed in between the first and 2nd Veglia marks mroe consistently, hot or cold, for low and high RPMs.

Now for my transmission, I switched to Red Line's synthetic "superlight shockproof 70W90" gear oil at the same time that I added Z-Max's transmission product. That combination took my 348's transmission from previously being locked out of 2nd gear for as much as the first 10 minutes of driving...to a transmission that shifts butter-smooth from the moment my car is started; something that I was able to demonstrate at the Barber Track last weekend (Porsche 250 race in Alabama).

So I get all of the above from Z-Max, plus their $1,500 transmission warranty and their $1,500 engine warranty. Life could be worse.

Frankly, these simple "fixes" take away the most common gripes about the 348. Hard shifting when cold, for instance, is a common 348 gripe.

I don't have that complaint.

The K&N airfilter, a decent A/F curve, properly gapped spark plugs, and a good, but thin, oil will put more power to the ground...the lack of which is probably one of the 348's other main complaints.

These things are easy to do. They don't cost much, either. They are also reversable. If you don't like Redline or Z-Max or K&N, then put the factory fluids back in.

No big deal.

Same for Oxytane or Speed Tec.

 

6 and a half years later, my 348 is still running strong with the above enhancements in place.

How many 348's get tracked daily, daily driven, and drifted as much as mine?

I don't know, maybe Z-Max is snake oil and I'm just lucky, but my tranny has helped me do a lot of burn-outs, power-slides, and donuts in my 348 for more than half a dozen years and it hasn't crapped out on me like the tranny on others.

Maybe Superlite Shockproof isn't the best gear oil but my 2nd gear shifts when cold are still butter-smooth. How many 348 owners can say that?!

I probably won't do the K&N filter again, though (just because of my experiences with a completely different car, a Porsche 928S4).