Buying 360 Which Years to Avoid

https://www.ferrarichat.com/forum/threads/faq-shopping-for-a-used-360.191837/

 

They're all fine as soon as you replace the garbage headers

 

Not the 99's or Euro! It's not the headers, but the precats that are garbage.

 

The welds break too. You can see the hot spot from the broken welds. ALL stock headers are garbage.
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I think it's a little harsh to say "all stock headers are garbage". Plenty of folks, myself included, have stock headers. And my car currently having about 27K miles on it has the stock headers without issue. Are there some great options for an aftermarket replacements? Sure. But there are also plenty of aftermarket headers that are squarely in the category of "garbage" when compared to the OEM ones that were installed on your 360 when new. And frankly, with a 20+ year old exotic, I would not feel like any failures were due to the part being "garbage". Things wear out. A 20 year old car needs maintenance.

Now the issue of the pre-cats, that's a problem for some 360's. But if you research here and other places, as I have, you fine little evidence that a pre-cat failure has cause the dreaded catastrophic damage that many fear. Appears to be pretty rare considering what I read.

 

If you’re buying an F1 car 2002+ have a significantly upgraded tcu. The newer you go the better it is but the largest improvement was in 2002


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The driver side header (pictured) had the broken welds, the passenger side had the broken pre-cat. It was coming apart and banging around inside the header. Debris was blown through the exhaust and pieces of the pre-cat were melted into the main cat. They're all garbage.

 

What mileage were you at? Did you have any symptoms/indicators that they were bad? Trying to see what to look out for. It seems this is more of a when and not if issue.


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Ugh.. more the of header BS.. 67k miles on mine. 99 euro. Original ,no issues, no bad welds.. blah blah blah

I suspect.. and dealing with Ferrari owners who don't know a main bearing from a muffler bearing that the issue is malfunctioning coil packs that allow unburnt fuel to escape downstream that trashes the precat. Coil packs being of course a replacement item on these cars every X years. More of a hypothesis than a fact..

 

^^^^ This
absolutely

 

28k and they were broken when I bought it, looked like they had been broken for a while.

 

Cars nowadays dump fuel into the exhaust from the factory to get the popping noise all the kids want, some even throw flames from it with the mufflers deleted. They don't have any issues with headers or cats, its a Ferrari quality issue, and a solid exhaust mount issue, that's why the capristo brackets exist now. Luigi was likely drunk when he welded these things and mounted them solid.

 

Point being... not all of them are junk and need to be replaced or presumed faulty from day 1.

But.. I see enough Ferrari owners spending money needlessly all the time so have at it.. like how all intercoolers need to be replaced immediately as well (mines been in as well with no issues). Ain't my pocketbook.

 

No late model car dumps fuel into the system to get popping. Could not pass emissions if it did.

 

Every bmw with sport mode, I've had 2. My 04 srt-4. New mopars. I believe vw now too. The list gets longer every year.

Here's an example:

 

Had my '99 for 5 years now. Totally trouble free. Original headers and muffler.
Other than maintenance, only one repair..... leaking steering rack seals. That's it.
Unlike the 9 other Ferraris I've owned since my first in 1987, this one's been the best in terms of reliability.

 

Are you sure it's not piped in exhaust music to the cabin

I can see that maybe you're just miffed that you have to spend the money to repair your Ferrari. But frankly ragging on Ferrari and suggesting that a BMW is a better car/better exhaust set up suggests that maybe Ferrari ownership isn't for you.

 

Everything I own gets a new exhaust no matter what, it was all getting thrown away whether or not it was broken. It's just a real shame that the "best" and expensive manufacturer has such dumb problems.

 

Jb- Baloney, none of them do. The popping sound comes when the throttle is lifted and a partial vacuum is generated in an open exhaust system. Cold air flows in and mixes with the relatively rich mixture and ignites. No extra fuel is dumped to make this happen. In cars with bypass valves, the valves slam shut when the throttle is lifted, so no popping sound because no extra cold air.

 

Welcome to exotic car ownership. These are not unexpected problems with any exotic that is over 20 years old-- mileage doesn't really mitigate such things.

 

They fire the injectors on the exhaust stroke. My tuning software even let's you adjust it. You can change the length of time and intensity to suit your needs. Turning it up too much will melt the cat (from the extra fuel it's dumping in) if you get too crazy. All of this is on Google.
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JB- Sounds like I was wrong. Still hard to believe.

 

Back on topic no 20 year old ferrari won't need something. If you think buy a lower mileage one will make it better not true. Every car is different.

 

From the research I did when I bought mine, 2004 was a very good year for the 360