After a bit of track time, I am thinking of upgrading. Option 1: Get a challenge car. Its already done. Downside, only some are street legal (I still want to drive on the street; I know the risks...) Option 2: Upgrade many things to challenge spec or similar. What is the cost of adding a half or full cage? Can you even ad a half cage? Part of me would like to do a full cage for the rigidity. Seat options? I hate sloshing around in the stock seats on track. Suspension is pretty easy, budget 5k for a good set of springs and shocks, and I already have the brakes. I think I would want to do all the bushings too. Probably bearings while I am at it. Not sure how much these other bits would ad... Thoughts?
Salom, What is your current Spec for your 355F1? You mentioned brakes, what kind? Challenge, Brembo, Stop Tech? 99 Challenge Sway Bars Front & Rear + Springs (H&R), revalve shocks to Challege Spec or get the OEM Challenge ones. Challenge Suspension ECU. Challenge wheels with good rubber compound, Pirelli Slick for Track Day or P-Zero, I'm sure you got something good if your already tracking your car, maybe PS2? Seats will be the big winner as I agree with you, if your turning fast laps you will move around in the seat and nothing is better then racing seats. I don't have any yet installed but, its on my short list. Sparco just released some nice one last year. Sparco EVO Type. + OMP Harness. PS. I agree with the 360 Challenge Stradale vs. spending money for F355 Challenge go fast part. It's a lot still for the 360CS when you consider the value of a 355. Ciao, SRR
First off, Daniel is an evil, evil, evil man. He knows full well that my wife would kill me real slow like if I got a CS. Plus, last I tried, the roof was really hard to remove... I have Brembo BBK, adequate. At the time the brakes were put on the cage was investigated but never done. I already have challenge wheels with Pilot Super Sports. They are road tires. Good road tires, but still. The cage, seats, and suspension would be the big items.
I have gone down this road many times ending up with racecars. Once I raced a 348 that was a streetcar and I ruined a perfectly good ferrari evolving it into a racecar. I have a habit of doing that with perfectly good cars. Anyway, I think the oem ferrari cage just sucks. It is not SCCA or NASA legal but would be OK for trackdays. If you want more safety then be safe don't look safe. Safety is a system not the best seat or the best harnesses etc. You safety system starts at your seat. You buy that first and build the rest of your system around it. Dual use cars are the hardest to build because everything is a compromise including your safety system. Most race shops are lame when it comes to safety. They know the componants but rarely build a well integrated package. If you are serious do your own homework to see what safety systems are out there and cherry pick what you like. Discuss this with your builder and then sort through the compromises. In the end the safest is a full racecar. Reality is you drive it on the street. Therefore, you compromise and the compromise might come back to bite you. For starters I would consider an FIA legal "in date" seat. Take a long hard look at Consider halo seats and full containment seats. There are all kinds of reasons to have them and all kinds of reasons why they just might not work for you. Make sure to consider HANS use which makes your shoulders 1" higher and sometimes the seat holes are in the wrong place. Consider the value of a proper 4 point cage (aka half cage) vs. 6-8+ point full cage. Always make your cage from DOM tubing in mild steel or chromoly. Neither is a best material. Consider the future when you make cages like maybe racing in more serious clubracing like SCCA. So look at SCCA cage building rules for example to make sure you choose cage materials that are thick enough etc. so you can add to a half cage instead of spending twice to cut an old cage out and retrofit. Most bolt in cages are worthless. Consider properly plating the chassis for proper rollcage footings to weld your cage to. here is a classic picture of a bolt in cage supported to the thin sheetmetal floor with backing plates. Can you see the cage feet poking through the floor. That is a fail! Do use left and right sidenets if you go with an FIA standard seat. Honestly until you are on DOT race rubber I would not waste any money on suspension or more horsepower. Image Unavailable, Please Login
OK, so some of that is very helpful (especially the part about me not getting sqarshed). But are you saying get a race car (which to me is a challenge car...) or not? Maybe I am mistaken, but I thought the 355 challenge cars were converted, either by the dealers or the factory? So an OEM Ferrari cage would be exactly what the challenge car has. Do you see my confusion? Also, right now I have nada. It's hard to imagine my car with an OEM cage is not safer than my car with no cage... especially in a rollover.... in a GTS... People often say you shouldn't be on the road in a car with a cage because you might hit your head on the bar and die. It's a legitimate concern, but I'll take that chance in a fight with a suburban. I think I do agree with you on the seats. My biggest problems were (1) I couldn't stay in my dern seat. (2) the suspension was ridiculously soft, even in "sport" mode. There were times I felt like I should hang out the window like ballast on a catamaran. Obviously, a cage, seat, and harnesses are all a package deal. You could do seats and harnesses but you sure don't do a cage without the others. And it's hard to mount harnesses without a cage...
Best answer ^^^^^ Like they say its hard to turn a hooker into a housewife Seriously my therapy is working, feeling much better
You are only confused because you have just started your journey. In time you will learn that a 355C is not a very good racecar today and you will learn what you want and what is available. The newest one is over 10 years old. Only the actively raced ones are likely to be up to date safety wise. Firebottles and seats expire in 5 years (1500 bucks easy) . Harnesses expire in as early as 2 years (100-800). None came with rightsidenets part of what is considered a minimum today. All have seats mounted to stock thin sheetmetal. Shocks need to be rebuilt annually at $250/shock. OEM challenge bushings are super expensive so plan on custom making delrin for about $1500 or going with monoballs for 2500. Challenge cages leave lots to be desired and need to be severely modified to be SCCA/NASSA legal or stripped out altogether and started over. Then how has crash damage been addressed? We have not got to the drivetrain yet. Any idea what happens to engine wear and tear when it lives near redline? Those are a few things to start.
Well one thing is, you are assuming I want to go SCCA racing, which is just not the case. I am talking about making the car more fun and safe for track events while keeping it fun on the road, or using a street legal challenge car for both. There is no way I am doing serious racing with an old Ferrari. If I decide to SCCA race I would go Formula Mazda (for a lot of reasons that are probably not obvious here) but as far as racing I'll stick to my super fun and super inexpensive vintage Lola FF.
Let's start looking at this through 2013 eyes, things aren't what they were just a few years ago. why not take a street 355 which is dirt cheap these days (and most likely run a bunch unlike a 355 Challenge) and build it out the way you want? who wants the old bolt in cage anyway? have a custom cage built to 2013 specs and technology along with fitting the way you want. Maybe they would even custom make bolt-in bars in places your soft head would hit hard bars? easier to keep a street car with mods on the street than take a race car and make it legal for the street? Cheap 355. Custom cage. Strip it and trim out with cool CF. Over time make it faster brakes, suspension (adjustable to flip between street and race), spoilers. ****, I think this is now a better idea than our old buy a street 355 for the street and a 355 challenge for the track. look at my custom cage that is now 5 years outdated, think what they can do today. even 5 years ago we ran the crossbar through the dash out of the way and gave us more space than the old bolt-in cage. Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login
No I don't assume that. I read your first post and understand you just want a bit more safety on track and not sacrifice the streetness of your car. I get that. It is a hard goal to achieve. I talking at you from the perspective of someone who has been there done that. Read Rob's post below, he and I are on the same page. He races a 355C among other cars in a competative series. What happens is we all think we are going to keep these cars forever. Ferraris just don't jump out of your garage when you want to sell them. Ferraris with track mods are like lepers. So think about the future when you modify. If you make the rollover hoop or 4 point documented to SCCA legal standards the next guy who buys your car can just add to the cage makes your car more sellable. The number of people who want a car that has been on track is very small. Also, SCCA and NASA standard safety protocols are tested every weekend. Every weekend someones car does not go home in the condition it came to the track. We are talking battle tested. Building your parts to those levels are as close as you are going to get to testing at the amateur level. When you really get into this stuff and examine closely modern streetcar safety with airbags and balistic seatbelt retractors etc. you will really begin to understand the complex engineering that is involved. And while a 355 has few of the modern features the minute you do something simple like change your seat you have changed the dynamics of the OEM safety system. The question is did you make it better or worse? The answers are not always obvious. I'm sorry but dual use streetcar/trackcar is not as easy as installing race seats and harnesses. Remember that a 355 is still a pretty fast car. It can make 150mph on a simple trackday and you can crash just as bad in HPDE as you can wheel to wheel.
As someone who just barely avoided hitting the ARMCO with my F355 at 100+ MPH sideways, I advise you listen to FBB. {Lots of luck and a bit a driving skill prevented utter disaster. The first though that went through my mind after the car was no longer out of control was: "If you are going to drive like that; the car needs a roll cage and fire supression equiptment." Consequently, I dialed it back towards 95%.}
