Finally pulled the trigger - I now own my first Ferrari ..PART 2 - with Pics

I picked up and drove home my first Ferrari on Friday. Before I begin I have to again repeat how great Tim Stanford is. Tim was doing a major on my car and he knew I was anxious to get it back so, as I described before, he called someone that dropped their car off before me, but who was out of town, to see if they would mind if he serviced my car first, they didn’t. Not only did he do that, but he and his brother stayed late Thursday and came in early Friday so I could have the car by the weekend (A+ service)

Day 1 – Friday

I arrived at Tim’s shop at 3:30pm Friday, the car had just gotten washed and it looked terrific. Tim walked me through the service he did (a major + anything he thought needed fixing and a replacement of all fuel hoses). You will see from the last picture below it was the right thing to do. While I am not a Ferrari mechanic, I can feel the difference between a new hose and old brittle hose – Tim showed me the hoses they took out of the car and they were definitely 25 years old – a problem waiting to happen.

Then Tim and I went for a drive: Tim drove first to show me the basics (I had never driven a Ferrari before), then I drove and he gave me some good pointers (1- let the shifter come back to center on its own, then put it in gear- that is a quick way to learn the gears; 2 – let the clutch up a bit till you get a little momentum, then push on the gas – this extends the clutch life a bit, etc)

By 4:00pm I was out of the shop and on the way (feeling much more confident after Tim took the time to get me comfortable with the car). The whole drive home I had tunnel vision I was anxious/excited/not knowing what to expect. I recall someone else’s thread about envisioning fire spewing from the engine compartment as they drove home for the first time – I would be lying if I didn’t admit checking the rearview mirror once or twice to make sure there were no flames

The drive home was terrific and uneventful – it was better than I had imagined it. Surprisingly, it is a very easy car to drive; amazingly few rattles and squeaks for a 25 year old car. The clutch was a bit heavier than I had imagined, but the steering was precise and the engine noise, while definitely ever-present, was not annoying or tiring.

Several times Friday evening I went into the garage to look at it

Day 2- Saturday.

I woke up at 6am and told my wife that she needed to be prepared that I was going to be an absent husband and father that day. And with that, I was off to the garage.

She started up perfectly and I ended up driving without a destination for about 40 minutes. The buyer had warned me that the radio did not work and he was correct. I had planned on replacing the radio and speakers later (I had already bought them), but somehow I felt the drive was not perfect without some background music to the engine; so I decided I would replace them today

I had a deadline – we were going to dinner at the Ritz on Key Biscayne at 7pm so I needed to replace the speakers and the stereo in 9 hours – piece of cake……well, not really. I will be posting a separate thread later about the stereo and speaker replacement, but needless to say it was much easier and much harder than I thought.

By 5pm I had a new amp, a new head unit, new tweeters and one new door speaker (I ran out of time for the driver’s door speaker) and good sound emanating from all the speakers.

The drive to Key Biscayne that evening was perfect – we had good music play harmonized by a well tuned Ferrari engine. The AC blew cold and we crossed over the bridge to the key as the sun was going behind a set of clouds – it was a picture.

We parked in the front and after dinner, as we were walking out, there was a group of 8 people standing around looking at the car. Now the pressure was on – I had driven a manual transmission all of 3 hours in my life, and a Ferrari for about 2 hours – I was sure I would stall it or somehow blow a graceful exit. But it started up perfectly and we pulled away smoothly.

Anyway – enough of the ramble – enjoy the pics.
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Guys,

Thanks for the kind words - to answer your question it is Nero metallic - which I absolutely love. It is not as deep of a black and at some angles it almost appears as a very dark grey. The thing that took me a while to figure out is that this color, unlike most of the other 328's in 1988, is a clear coat paint - which has some implications on what polish/wax to use.

Thanks again

Lewis