bad flaming This thread is awesome.Thats why we keep checking it. Its entertaining. How many of you are sitting in a restaurant , right now , your wife is blabbing something about curtains , blah blah blah . and your're snickering reading this thread ? Image Unavailable, Please Login
Hi all Been away for a while but thought I'd pop back to see how everyone was doing. 'Interesting' thread. Interesting in a "what the ****?!?!?!?" sort of way. Someone else wrote a historical summary a few posts back, here's mine. The 348 and the 355 are mark 1 and mark 2 of the same car but they also marked a significant cross over. Where the 348 was the last V8 built to a certain formula (commissioned by Enzo and designed by probably the most eminent Ferrari designer of the time) the 355 was the first V8 under LdM and had to do everything the earlier cars did while being more useable and (dare I say) more sensible. As well as that the 355 had to push the envelope in terms or performance. Any time you do that you sacrifice reliability. Have a higher revving engine, thinner headers, state of the art valves guides etc and you get one hell of a machine (for its day) but you're taking engineering closer to the edge of what you can ensure works reliably. This is in no way slating the 355 or saying it's badly engineered or anything else. They pushed the envelope and that has engineering consequences. Not major and all are manageable but they are there. Buy any older really high performance car and you accept that. If you can't then perhaps you should set your sights a tad lower. You could buy a 348 for example (I'm clearly just kidding...) I spent the first few years as a 348 owner being slated for having a 'cheap' car (partially by 355 owners). Please don't tell me I'm now going to have to endure years watching 355 owners being slated by fellow 348 owners for having fragile, expensive to run motors. Each standpoint is equally daft. As I said, mark 1 and mark 2 of the same car, you'd have thought we could perhaps find some common ground
LOL. Only I've just been picking out blinds for my new garage for my 348 - stone floor, cinema screen, bar and pool table upstairs - you know, a 'proper' garage. And it's my wife who has the bored look on her face
Hi Pete. Good to see you back. You make some fair points, but you can ignore 99% of this thread as you live in a part of the world where the 355 is valued properly. Actually you're probably aware that 355 values have gone up considerably in the UK in the last few years (as have 348s). PS. I haven't forgotten you owe me a lunch. I'll be there end of August to collect! PPS. Nice work mods. Good to see even the "heroes" are not above the rules
No point in deleting it. It will just reappear and be rewritten all over again. The main thing I take from this thread is that finally some 355 owners are fighting back against the endless crap that keeps being written and, until now, has barely been challenged. In the same way that 348 owners have been fighting against a bad reputation with some success, the 355 owners are now beginning to do the same thing. I don't see the problem.
I had no idea this thread would go this long when I started it so it only seems fit that I close it (hopefully). I stand by what I said and still hold the 355 in high regard. I sold my 355 to a fellow FChatter but will likely have another before it is all over. I think my next 355 will be a Challenge car to go with the CS. There is simply no better sounding Ferrari...ever. Go 355!
I disagree. It has taken me about a week to get through this entire thread. It has helped give me enough knowledge (I hope) to make an offer that has been accepted. Despite all the schoolyard talk, there is a lot of good stuff here. And it is not just going around in circles - there has been some new & different info in the last couple of pages regarding something near and dear to my heart. California emissions. I didn't realize what a problem it can become for these cars. While this may have been thoroughly covered elsewhere, this is the first time I have been alerted to it. Of course, I may have slept through a page or two while reading the thread.
Thank you for bestowing me with such power. I will do my best to use my powers for good not evil. The reality is that I was fixing my first Ferrari as a 308 carb car and was a regular contributor of how to fix these cars when the most advanced communication was a “list-serve”. I was an early adopter of the 348 in 1991 when the model was 2 years old and continued my interest in the hobby fixing the 348 before many of the new fine 348 owners who now carry the torch. While I anointed nothing on many levels did get the ball rolling in the diy circles and with the help of many similar thinking diy’ers the 348 is now as bullet proof as a 328 or 550. I did not do it alone. 355’s don’t need anointment with billybob oil. What they need are owners who will put away the microfiber cloths and pick up a wrench, then spread their knowledge.
VR, This is a serious issue but with any car where a manufacturer is unwilling or incapable of making a better replacement part or no legal aftermarket part exists, the owner is stuck buying poor oem part over and over again to be smog legal. Most here are not 19 y/o boys who "know a guy." It has been a long time since I knew a guy who could pass my souped up Z car under the table if I slipped him some jeffersons. The guberment is shutting loopholes and monitoring smog shops with computer efficiency even monitoring things like how many hot cars seem to go through a shop relative to averages state wide. To get an EO number from the state (CARB) is not an easy task and any manufacturer would look at a total market of 12,000 355 buyers vs. 12,000 hondas in the costco parking lot and just laugh. Only a very few would try to manufacture for such a limited market like SRI has done and then some Fchaters bash them for overpriced hoses and overpriced connector kits as snake-oil salesmen. Nope...just like "have we destroyed the 355" some Fchaters have not helped the marketability for the aftermarket very much either. So, I would be very surprised if you ever see a legal aftermarket EO numbered 355 header or cats.
Only 99%? I'd have put it a tad higher I think the 355 is a great motor. If anything is 'killing' it it's not the fact that they sometimes break - any car can break - it's the astronomical prices that are charged to fix them in some corners of the globe. For the 348 this has had the opposite effect to killing the car, it's resulted in a nucleus of DIYers all over the world and we help each other out. If anything this has 'stregthened' the appeal of the car and pulled it out of the doldrums it was in. I wouldn't be trading insults with the likes of FBB, I'd be looking at how what he and others have done for the 348 has had a positive impact on how the car is perceived and emulating it. P.S. If you can make it Monday 1st September I'll 'pay up' with a day's free entry to a closed doors (ie not open to the general public) airshow at the home of the Red Arrows. I used to work with them and I'm organising a Ferrari display - 288, F40,F50, Enzo, La Ferrari (if it's in the country by then) Daytonas, 250 Lusso, Testarossa, F12, 458s, 599GTO amongst others....... and some 348s obviously - a display of every UK variant to mark the 25th anniversary. Lots of attractions and things to do, no crowds, give it some thought, if you'd like to come you can attend as my guest in lieu of lunch
fbb, You bring up a point about needing oem parts to pass Calif. smog. The guy sticking the probe up your exhaust doesn't know Tubi from fabspeed from oem. While technically you're supposed to have approved CARB parts, I would think that as long as your gas smelled sweet to the machine, you'd be OK. Am I wrong?
Yes in theory that sounds good. When i tried to contribute and add to a new thread i started, regarding a very rarly seen subject on the 355 thread. I very quickly had a sarcastic/negative quip from ..........well you can see for your self. http://www.ferrarichat.com/forum/348-355-sponsored-bradan/423511-355-engine-striped-downt-empty-block.html Being a long time enthusiastic 355 owner, i was going to make that thread into a detailed Engine rebuild thread for other like minded owners. However i could see were it was heading fast, and i understood clearly how things were. So now i dont bother, however i try to join in and help were i can if i see i can answer a question and help fellow owners. The way i see it is like this. Only a few of the consultants on the 355 section acualy give how to advice on how to do things to the cars, however they will quip and give sarcastic coments as an answer and then leave. In the mean time members like Ernie and maddog to name only two are valuable members of the forum who give constructive help to members. I dont want to cause bother or arguments with any one, its just what i have seen.
Dino, you should have kept going with that other thread. I don't know if I would get that involved with it myself, but still find it very interesting. To the OP original question, I don't think that we have killed the F355. I still feel that its a great car. Pantera's were once thought of very poorly, and now they are starting to come into their own. It was over years of owner updates and good aftermarket support. It is far more reliable now than it ever was.
Yes you are incorrect. If your aftermarket products lack a CARB EO# they are illegal. The smog tech may be ignorant of you having aftermarket parts and if you pass the sniff may pass you. High incidence offender cars are being directed to "STAR" smog stations where those tech are trained to a higher level and supposed to be able to spot fraudulent activity and will not only fail a car but document it so you get more scrutiny the next time. There are STAR idiots who do not know something but they are getting fewer and fewer. Also, smog is cali is getting more and more dependent on what the OBD is telling the smog machine and the protocols for obd are constantly being revised to output more data and cause us more grief to try and bypass. OBD2 for example has had numerous revisions which is the reason some of the track toys like the AIM solo can only data log after 2008.
I think he thought you were implying something with the hatchet. I don't, I just thought you wanted to know about the hatchet. Now if you saw a hatchet on my tool bench it's entirely possible I'd be using it in a manner for which it was not intended, it'd probably be because I'd lost my hammer - my no 1 tool of choice Re the smog stuff we have a similar debate over here about decatting a car. It's now illegal regardless of age. Many say, but how are they going to know if a car was originally catted? It's on Ferrari's computers though so it is theoretically possible to check. And if the car has been decatted that's now an illegal modification and so you are no longer insurred. Find yourself in an accident and you have a massive bill, huge fine, driving ban etc. You probably wouldn't get caught. But is it worth it?
I think it's pretty simple. You and a few others have rubbed a lot of people the wrong way to where it becomes borderline antagonistic.
Maybe? I'm waiting for DinoChang to tell me what's on his mind. Who does he have a beef with me or mitchel or?
