I´ve just bought a "rare" 550 Maranello, I´ve many questions!!!!!

Taz will chime in soon with a wealth of information. I think the color looks like Tour de France blue or blu pozzi. The interior looks like sabia. The seats are sport seats and the plaque is a personalization plaque, which is simply a factory option. It does indeed look like a beautiful car. 550s/575s are so nice.

Cheers.
Ray

 

Looks to have the factory rollbar too. Was that an optioned package rollbar and sport seat like FHP? Taz I'm sure will be here shortly. I like the euro cars. So clean looking. In amerika we have to have all these sidemarker lights that just dirty up the lines. But you got giant license plates that are so ugly.

 

A lovely car, which could be improved with the simple swap over of the hideous red wheel to black, then it would be truly lovely!
Koenig in Germany used to produce a six exit exhaust for the 550, I would guess that it was added after leaving the factory

 

FASS- Just as a guess, I would imagine the car was ordered with the Fiorano Handling Package (FHP), which comes with red calipers (other colors optional) and Pagid racing pads, but the brakes are actually no larger than stock Maranello brakes. They do offer increased fade resistance over the stock 550 brakes, but tend to squeal at low speeds if not properly bedded.

Ray may be right on the color of the interior, but it actually looks like Crema to me. You can find the paint color on your car on the paint code sticker, D in the image below. Or you can compare it to all these blues in this web site.

http://www.ferrari-collection.net/color/ferrari_colors.htm

The sports seats and roll bar are actually fairly rare options on the 550 and 575M.

No problem getting the steering wheel recovered in black. You can probably find a used one to mount until yours is completed.

If you want a workshop manual or some owner's manuals, let us know and we can give you a website where you can download them for free.

Neil is correct on the exhaust. They seemed to be going for the Boxer look. You should be able to find and OEM or aftermarket exhaust for the car very easily at a reasonable cost.

Taz
Terry Phillips
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Love it. Agree with recovering the wheel. congrats!

 

welcome to the club ! you are going to love your 550 !

You just have to get the steering wheel recovered in black.

cheers,

Bill

 

Bill- As promised.

Taz
Terry Phillips

http://www.ferrarichat.com/forum/showpost.php?p=139500679&postcount=77

 

That's funny Terry I was just looking thru your posts for more pics.
saw the picture of your dad man that was cool !

 

They truly are beautiful wheels .

 

Welcome to F-Chat.....!!

The interior is called CREMA.........Sabbia is a dark tan that looks like a baseball glove......

Get rid the red steering wheel......

And finally, it pains me to say this as a Brasilian fan, but, congratulations on winning the World Cup. Barcelona is quite the team !!!!

(It's an inside joke as 8 of the winning Spanish team are from Barcelona)

 

Not so sure of that. Hard to tell from the pic if its crema or sabbia. Cuoio is the color that looks like a baseball glove. The progression of light to dark is crema, sabbia, beige, cuoio.

 

Dave, KDS- I believe sabbia is actually a very light gray, often paired with Argento Nurburgring cars, and sometimes difficult to tell from crema in photos.

FASS- I am only speculating the car has the FHP package, but it is easy to check. If you or your mechanic measure the diameter of the rear anti-roll bar, the FHP bar is 21 mm and the stock bar is 17 mm. FHP for the 550 includes red calipers with Pagid 4-4 Orange racing pads, the thicker rear anti-roll bar, stiffer springs front and rear, a more responsive hydraulic steering ECU, and a stiffer acting shock absorber ECU. Quite a package for eu4000.

Redying the steering wheel black is definitely an option if a pro does it. The crema interior is actually very attractive and if you can keep it clean I would not change it. Contrasts beautifully with the black leather and will not absorb sunlight so always cool to sit in.

The Maranellos are not noted for using oil and hold 12 liters of oil, unlike what the owner's manual says (10). The difference between the max and min marks is ~2 liters, so you usually do not need to carry any extra oil. Ferrari recommends two years for transaxle oil changes, but one of our pros says it should be changed annually because the pump lubricated transmission tends to be very tough on oil because of high temperatures reached, even with the oil cooler.

It is impossible to judge how long a clutch will last because nobody knows how you drive a car. Some people have gotten very long lives out of 550 clutches and it is not one of the big gripes we hear about here. I have been driving manual transmission cars for nearly 50 years and have never worn out a clutch, so clutch life varies with driving style.

If you go to this web site, you can download an owner's manual for free and read up on the car before you pick it. The OM also has the maintenance schedule.

http://www.ferraridatabase.com/The_Downloads/Downloads.htm

Taz
Terry Phillips

 

Yeah you're right, hard to tell Crema from Sabbia in pics..............I got confused with Cuoio.

 

That's 113179; I love the red steering wheel. I think it looks awesome contrasted against the cream interior.


Also, that bronze car in the last picture isn't a 365 GTC, but rather a Queen Mother (a 365 GT 2+2).

 

I've done about 25,000kms in my 550 throughout Europe. I'm a bit more relaxed about leaving it in public places now during the day, but I will still always find a hotel with private parking and preferably no parking which is on top of the road (ie. in plain sight). If you are paranoid about scratches, I would not do trips like these - you're bound to scrape it here and there. European streets are narrow, let alone parking spaces. I've scraped my car a couple of times, which has irritated me immensely, but I get it fixed immediately and now I'm starting to accept it as par for the course. My 550 still looks stunning, it's just that every year or two I have a $1k bill for touching it up.

Leaving a 550 in the sun IS a problem. I know many that have had their dash leather shrink. I would suggest cutting 2 pieces of card board to size and storing them behind the seats. Another thing that is annoying: the gear stick gets VERY HOT when left in the sun! I suggest you put a piece of cloth or something over it.

BTW - driving Europe in a 550 is a fantastic experience, can really recommend it. Do some Alpine passes!

Pozzi is non-metallic. It looks too dark for TdF for me, which is quite a medium, not dark blue, but it's always difficult to say from pictures as the exposure might not be correct. Blu Nart or Blu Sebring are options but it looks most like Blu Sera Metallizzato to me which is a rare colour on a 550. Ferrari really has too many blues! Anyway, my car has a sticker under the bonnet with the original colour, I assume yours has too. But whatever it is, it is stunning.

Absolutely, crema. Sabbia is has a very distinct grey tinge.

+1 x3

My experience too - 550 clutches are easy to give a long life. My 365BB is a different matter!

Here's a tip, though: for about EUR400 I have had my seats cleaned and detailed by a Swissvax expert. Your crema seats show the same kind of grubbiness. I really recommend you do something similar too - it gives the car a whole new sparkle! See here a couple of pics of what it has done for my car.

Enjoy her in good health!


Onno
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HI Fass,

Goodluck to you, we did a similar trip in 2008 from the UK and it was superb.

We put our 550 onto the train at Calais to do the overnight down to Nice,
then round to Monaco (actually won in the casino, and the whole concierge bit outside the casino or hotels - like the Hotel de Paris or Hermitage etc, is such a fun exprience for dinner...or to stay if budget allows,) we stayed in the slightly quieter beach area Menton, about 8kms down the coast,
then drove down to Pisa stopping for lunch at Portofino (nice tight and twisty spiral ramp to parking lot, expensive lunch but well worth it),
then from Pisa over to Firenze,
then on the way up to Bergamo stopped at Maranello to visit the Galleria Ferrari (museum, not very well signed so best to try to pin point on sat nav etc before leaving)
then up to Bergamo/Milan and Monza (for the F1 race),
left after race driving for maybe an hour or two up to Lake Como,
then mine deviated from your trip as we headed up through Switzerland, into Germany, round the Nurburgring and a rest in Arras before heading home.

SUPERB, and what life memories are made of. Weather was very kind to us, September time and South of France and Italy in the 25-32c range. Entirely your preference, but i didn't mind the occassional 4 hour drive etc as long as we broke the journey in two with a nce lunch etc and by doing this it meant we often had 2-4 days in places rather than packing and unpacking every other day.

Gladly give you some info re hotels if you like, just pm me, but in answer to your query re parking and sun etc, we had no issues at all. That said we did plan carefully ahead, most hotels were very helpful indeed and organised safe parking etc. Sometimes this was on the road, but in areas like Monaco and Menton Ferrari's are not exactly uncommon. For the sun, I just used two large silver foil sun reflectors, fairly cheap to buy in most places, and made sure the front one wedged well down inbetween the dashboard leather and the windscreen. Front and rear this really reduces the heat in the car, which is amajor issue otherwise, and stops the sun on the dash.

So 2500miles, twisty parking, cobbled streets through historic districts, mountain passes, 180mph/300km+ on autobahns and laps round the Ring, with ferry and train crossings to boot....no issues at all. Maybe we were lucky, definitely worth ringing ahead to the hotels to explain, as the car is wider than most etc, but all we found was folks being really helpful and had no issues at all.

Luggage capacity with a couple of large canvas bags in the boot is great, and for me a sat nav (used tomtom) is a must, 2500 stress free miles findng each doorstep with no issues and letting me know about speed cameras etc.

Hope you have a blast!!

Jon

ps the internet michelin route planner was quite handy at offering up what was scenic roads etc, so we did a mix of fast and scenic.

 

My car's interior is sabbia/cuoio. I believe sabbia translates into English as "sand" (at least on Google, it does), to me, it's a very light beige, rather than gray. Your new 550's interior is almost surely crema.

 

$100 says your car is TDF/crema. Good taste.

I used to have a 575 with the same colors.....this one looks much different than yours in pictures because it was taken in sunlight with a polarizer.
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+1

(custom orders are subjective) it was done by the factory so you've got yourself a rare 550, what's the point of redoing the wheel and turning it into a plain old 550

also - i dunno about ferrari but a while ago i saw pictures from someone who went on a mercedes factory tour and they visited their INDIVIDUAL/CUSTOM area - and there was a similarly colored CL-Class (blue exterior + cream/blue interior) w/ custom ordered 6 tip exhaust done by mercedes

 

FASS- I believe the paint for the wheels is PPG 36520 Argento Metallic, Glasurit FER 101/C.

If you take both keys to a locksmith, he may be able to make your inoperative key work. If not, he can cut a new one for you. Over here, the rubber keys with the small Cavallino are no longer available. Not sure about in Europe.

The permanent red light probably means the alarm siren is shot and needs to be replaced. If your car no longer beeps at you when you arm and disarm the system, that is the most likely cause.

http://www.ricambiamerica.com/product_info.php?products_id=207296

Allan- Light tan instead of gray sounds good to me.

Taz
Terry Phillips

 

I'd take that bet if you gave 10:1. The interior's crema, but I don't think it's TDF OR Pozzi (which is really dark, IIRC). I think it's a lot rarer: Blu chiaro, Blu serra or Blu Nart. It would go along with the individuality in the taste of the guy who originally spec'd it. I hope he checks his sticker and lets us know.