My 348GTS refresh

Oh, I forgot to mention that I had a stowaway on board when I brought the car to France. Martens are very common in Germany and they eat just about everything rubber on the car in an attempt to keep their teeth sharp.

They go for plug leads, coolant hoses, steering gaiters, driveshaft bellows etc., and cause millions worth of damage. I noticed some droppings and bird feathers in front of my garage in Germany and, after arriving in France, some alien in the garage started eating the Ferrari. No such animal is known in the south of France, so a German Marten must have hitched a lift.

The only damage I've discovered so far (apart from droppings and urine) was the air line for the compressor horn which it had chewed through. So I had to disassemble the front bumper and co. to be able to replace the tubing. Just used clear plastic tubing from D-I-Y store which somehow bugs me as it's not original. Have now got a roll of Ferrari tubing in case the bumper ever comes off again.

Set traps and all sorts (no poison - they're a protected species!) to no avail. Anyway, it seems to have disappeared now - probably on the beach.

Darned critters!
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Also thought it was time to start patching up the cracks on the front trunk liner with some glassfibre repair patches before it falls apart. I didn't even bother to look at the price of a new one as it's probably equivalent to upgrading to a 355.

It was really covered in cracks and, although the repairs weren't the prettiest, it ended up pretty stable.
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Yeah, I can bear it. This was last December
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That picture of your 348 has just the right angle to it or something like that....... it looks awesome !!

 

Tackled the targa roof as it had a lot of ingrained dirt from over the years.

I'd tried bumper cleaner, plastic cleaner, cockpit spray, leather cleaner, vinyl cleaner and just about everything else but it always went patchy after the oily stuff wore off as it wasn't really cleaned - just glossed over.

Just stumbled on the perfect solution: Household carpet/upholstery foam. The type that sprays put the upside down can, leaving a foam. Just work this in with a softish bristle brush and wipe clean. I could not believe the colour of the cloth I was using to wipe. It literally went from white to dark grey in one wipe. Roof is now jet black and perfectly uniform in colour and I haven't even done any finishing wipe over with vinyl protect or whatever.

 

I've now managed to get a few building sites going at the same time...

Seat refresh is in progress and a good interior clean. In looking to install some security devices, getting access to the looms, fitting some receiver/transmitters, I ended up removing the entire dash. Once you know how it doesn't take too long and there were no expensive clips to break.

Here are some pics of the dash from a view not normally seen - may help anyone fumbling behind looking for a screw or bolt!

I just love the dummy self tapping screws (2 each side)!
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Seats being started off, and interior
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Photo was taken in front of a castle down south in Sweden.
Part of the "Cap deal"

//B//

 

I´ll show you some winter photos in a few months.............real winter photos that is.

Guess you can just drive for an hour or two and you will end up in the French Alps???

But not with tha F-car of course?????

//B//

 

The car looks great! Its good to see all the enthusiasm for the 348.

 

Wow, thanks for the photos! You are great.

Is the dash easy to remove? Looks like four bolts to remove?

 

hly cow, the amount of paint you listed is crazy , 5.5 ltr of color ? thats about 6 quarts ,yes? catalyzed and reduced to hvlp viscosity.. you are probably looking at enough paint to spray 5 cars .

 

Some pics of the actual dash securing screws and nuts. Of course, you have to remove a few peripherals and disconnect a few cable looms first. Everything went astoundingly easy - candellara's tip to definitely remove the steering wheel is a definite must. I needed a 2-legged puller to get my wheel off though!
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the rest of the pics..
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Now that you come to mention it, you're right! Considering also that it is only the metallic base coat! (although I think 1 litre may be pinching things a bit!) I'll drop a hint next time I go past them. To be honest, after getting the car back following 6 months in the shop I was just so glad to drive away and forget the affair. Never looked at the bill in detail.

 

Drew,

You are looking at 3-4 lts tops for the basecoat allowing for any future repairs and 3lts of clearcoat not the 7 lts that you have been charged for. Also noticed they used 3 kg of bodyfiller??

Regards,
Phil.

 

Like I said, I'll drop a mention next time I pass by the shop. Apart from that, I'm putting the awful painting saga behind me. €200 here or there is not worth me mentally re-opening this particular Pandora's box.

The clear lacquer was colour sanded several times and some areas had up to 4 coats in the end. Body filler was some overkill on the Scuderia shields. Most of it ended up engrained in the leather and the dashboard I think!

I'll ask for a corrected bill as all that filler etc., might look strange to a new purchaser! As I saw the car in its bare metal state, I know there isn't any damage to panels.

Come to think of that, that argument would be a good excuse to revisit the subject with the paintshop.

 

I've been buried in the electrics of the car over the past couple of weeks. Decided to install a couple of hi-tech alarm systems and some decent HiFi.

For HiFi, I've gone the JVC system route for the head unit. A really neat piece of kit - basically a hard disc drive which does everything but make coffee. Takes a bit of connecting though, as it needs a handbrake signal, a reverse gear signal and a speedo signal amongst other things.

A smallish sub-woofer is on its way too for the centre console. Unfortunately, the door speakers will need me to remove some metal. In any case, surely it's not ideal to have the speakers enclosed in a tight metal "box"? (which the door recess is, acoustically speaking)
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In terms of plumbing in the electrics, I decided to do it rather unconventionally and actually removed the footwell realy box and plumbed in all wires to the connectors. I soldered the wires on piggy-back, but it certainly took some days of studying the circuit diagrams to find out what goes where!

I ended up having to fit a further fuse-box due to the number of different systems being installed.
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A previous owner had used those darned 3M connectors (which I hate!) so I undid the damage, using shrink sleeving, to put things back to nominal condition.
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and on some of the more fiddly connectors...
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Rather starngely, I also found that the red wire which is the power supply to the screen antenna amplifier had never been connected, so I think that might explain the rather poor radio reception I was having!
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All harnesses are back in place and nothing went "pow!" when I switched power back on. Unfortunately, as the pics would show where three of the security systems are installed, I don't think it wise to post. Carried on with the HiFi installation. The Infinity tweeters fit very nicely when the tweeter plate hole is enlarged to a circle. I swapped over the original connectors, so the dash top remains removable.
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I found a rather elegant way of mounting the amp in the front trunk in an unobtrusive corner. It took a while to figure out what I needed to do, but the pics might help others. The constraints were not to mess about with the upper trunk liner, to not intrude too much (as I often do longer trips with lots of luggage on board!), minimum "damage" to trunk liner lower, no clash with the trunk liner retaining strips etc., etc.
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Just in case anyone wants to know what the 348 trunk looks like behind the scenes, I took some "reference" photos whilst all was stripped out.
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