360 DIY 360 Modena manual swap + "while I'm in there"

Thanks! I just want to add that the guy who makes these kits (George from Dr S / Cambio Manuale) has been amazingly helpful and responsive.

He is sending me a heat shield for the clutch line that has been added to the later kits

 

Next step: Installing the pedals. I was dreading this as I never liked working under the dash of cars with the limited space and awkward positions you have to contort yourself into. I also realized that if the pivot rod was this difficult to remove it would be harder to install correctly.

Here we were, the rod slides in the left bushing fine, but it will not go into the right one without a LOT of force.

It feels like the bushing is machined too small or the line boring that drilled the part was off and the rod is cocked slightly causing it to bind.



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The first thing I tried was to clean up the bushing with scotch brite and sand paper but that was getting me nowhere.

Even with a screw in the clutch switch hole and some pliers twisting the rod back and forth, I could NOT get the rod into the bushing more than a mm.

I realized I'd have to just press the rod in from the left side. To do that I had to bust out the welder and modify my ghetto press tool to work better.

So I greased up and set up the pedals and clutch switch bracket and spacer bushings.

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I welded up the tool to not be so janky, and cut down the sides to fit in the tight space better.

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One of the keys is to line up the set screw hole before you start pressing the rod in because once it is in there, it is NOT budging a bit to line to hole up if it's off.
I realize this is probably just my car being stupid and not by design, but it is annoying as ****.

So I lined it up as good as i could and hoped for the best

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It lined up almost perfect, and I got the clutch bracket installed with the set screw, but the main pivot shaft set screw was just a hair off. The screw would not start no matter what.

And I couldn't move the shaft at this point because the clutch switch bracket was holding it laterally in place. Ferrari should have made this set screw hole a mm larger.

Anyhow to get around this I ground a screw to a point to better align in the hole and then filed the threads down slightly, NPT-style lol
I knew this was not a perfect solution as it would bind up as it threaded in, but once it's in there it will hold the rod solid if the insanely tight interference fit ever gave up for some reason. I loctited the
threads just in case.
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And viola! 6 hours later, I have 3 pedals!

Just need to hook up the master cylinders and set the travel tomorrow and I will be done under there.

 

Oh I also had a local shop (RPM muffler Oceanside) weld up the cracks in the Tubi exhaust and add reinforcement brackets. $150, not bad.

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Wish I could TIG like that!

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Can't wait to drive this thing again!!

 

Did a lot of the simple stuff yesterday, removed the TCU, installed jumper to bypass it, removed flappy paddles, etc

Then last I had to finish the cables and the clutch line.

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Feeding the cables through the bulkhead is a huge pain. My friend came over and helped, but they still wouldn't go, and I was tearing up the protective boots trying to jam them through.
To make it easy I got out a small round file and ground a few mm in the side of the hole for a spot for the first cable to rest in and give the 2nd cable metal end enough room to slide through. It felt bad filing on the car, but it was ~1mm and it worked great. It will also still be totally sealed by the cable grommet.

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Ran the line clutch line as well through the center tunnel. I found drilling holes for it's own support worked best and was pretty easy and looks factory and clean.

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Also ran the shifter cables

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My friend helped adjust the 2 cables. It's a pretty big pain, and I have no idea how it will actually drive. I feel like after the car is running it will take a lot of fiddling to make it shift perfect.

At least it looks cool

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One thing went super easy and took a lot less effort than I thought it would. Bleeding the clutch was super simple. Used Pentosin CHF11S and hooked this vacuum bleeder up to the clutch bleed. It uses compressed air to run a vacuum and it's super easy to use and well made. Best $40 ever spent.

It sucked all of the air out and fresh fluid through in about 90 seconds. WOW. So much easier than pumping for an hour.

I just used a bit of teflon tape to seal the bleeder threads so the vacuum would pull perfect. I wish I had bought this tool years ago.

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I'm just about ready to put everything back together and test it out!

Just need to
1. Get the ECU flasher tool in the mail
2. Flash the cluster to manual.
3. Put the exhaust back
4. Fabricate a brackets for the F1 heat shield to cover the new manual shifter stuff
4.5. Install new lower gearbox mount bushing I just got
5. Oil+Filter change
6. Coolant fill and bleed
7. Reinstall interior
8. Put bodywork and engine panels in


Hobbes wants a ride when it's put back together..

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@collegeboy Thanks for all the useful advice!

Luckily the boot came on the cables and with my friend, the boot went it fairly easily. I was very surprised.

Re: clutch line hole, I didnt even see the hole in the top rubber, I looked and I see it now and yes that would be a pain. I'm kind glad I drilled the holes in the bottom rubber

Re: Teflon tape, I don't normally use teflon tape, but I just used a small amount at the top of the threads away from the fluid and bleeder sealing surface. The idea is to not suck air through the bleeder threads when I put a lot of vacuum on it and it works well. As long as you are careful with it and it doesn't get in the system it's not goign to hurt anything.

So I adjusted the cables to the middle of 3rd geat like you say, but you're saying after I drive it, everything will move around and settle, and I'll have to re-adjust back to the middle of 3rd?

I put the heat shield back on over the manual actuator just to keep cat heat away from everything. I don't think it could hurt anything right?

 

I've gotten a lot of stuff done the last few days and I'm starting to button everything up.

I ziptied the F1 electricals out of the way. There's no way to easily remove them from the harness so I just hide them away.

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Added some gold heatshield to the homemade shield above the right side exhaust. The car was missing this shield when I got it. I'll make a matching one for the drivers side eventually.

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You can see the differences in the shields here: I Iike my more robust metal one better

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The old lower gearbox mount. I'm sure it's original but they both look fine. The mount in the dogbone and the mount in the trans.

Oh well I have a new dogbone mount so I'll replace it.

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The aluminum in the mounting ears looks terrible though. That's because of the horrible OE mounting system. Luckily Ferrari upgraded later and I have the upgraded parts.

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You can see the old style on the right, it's just a sleeve that get torqued between the ears with a small surface area and eats them up. .

The new style on the left is 2 sleeves with flanges to distribute the load on the soft aluminum. however....

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It is too wide for my early style mounting ears.

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So I grinded one of the ears down until it fit perfect

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Old sleeve fits:

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Now new sleeves do too:

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Then I press out old rubber bushing, easy stuff

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And press in the new one and install it! (sorry no pic of that)

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So with all that and tons more little things done I'm here:

1. Get the ECU flasher tool in the mail
2. Flash the cluster to manual.
3. DONE Put the exhaust back
4. DONE Fabricate a brackets for the F1 heat shield to cover the new manual shifter stuff
4.5. DONE Install new lower gearbox mount bushing I just got
5. Oil+Filter change
6. Coolant fill and bleed
7. Reinstall interior
8. Put bodywork and engine panels in

This weekend I'm going to a trackday at Buttonwillow though so will be doing less Ferrari work.

 

Thanks for the comments and help!

The conversion work is complete except the ECU and dash computer flashing. I ran into issues, probably because my ECUs are super early and weird is my guess. We're troubleshooting it now.

In the meantime I've been working on slowly putting everything else back together. I'm taking my time, cleaning everything, properly zip-tying wires and hoses up, fabricating bits needed where stuff had been broken or neglected.

I did an oil change as it's been 2800 miles and 2.5 years since the PO had a shop change the oil.

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At first I thought the drainplug had a magnet, but it's this wierd rubber thing. Any idea why this is like this?

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Oil pickup screen had a few tiny bits of metal, but nothing alarming. I used compressed air and tweezers to clean it out. No brake cleaner as it's plastic and has o-rings and I didn't want the brake cleaner to damage either

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ahhh better
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Tried to change the filter, and none of my oil filter strap wrenches were big enough, so I went to buy the real oil filter tool.

Hill engineering has a beefy oil filter wrench for like $100 after tax+shipping. I didn't want to pay $100 for an simple filter tool so I found this one on Ebay for $40

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That shop that did the oil last must've used an impact to tighten the damn filter because trying to remove it just started to damage the tool! The filter still wasn't budging.

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So I busted out the big guns...

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Welded an old socket to the tool, and success!

It seriously took about 60 ft-lbs on my 1/2 inch breaker bar to get the old filter off.

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For the new filter, I lubed up the o-ring and torqued it to 25 Nm

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Then I started assembling the rest of everything, cleaning it up all nice first.

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I'll pick up the repaired and re-painted rear bumper tomorrow, install that and then we're getting really close!


Last weekend went to the Petersen Auto Museum in LA and did the "Vault tour", highly recommened! Right now they have the first Ferrari ever made down there

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If you made it this far, Hobbes says hi
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I want to replace the airbox mounts--the rubber isolators, because mine are starting to shift and crack and fail.

They are part #142202 and the cheapest I can find is $15 each! And the airbox needs 6. Hmm not really looking to spend $100+ on this after tax and shipping so I looked on Mcmaster carr and found identical size mounts for $4 each

https://www.mcmaster.com/9225K65/

I ordered 6 and it's $35 to my door. They dont look as nice without the metal end caps, but I am sure they will work just fine. I researched the neoprene material properties and it should be fine in the engine bay environment.

I bet they last longer with the beefier rubber section too

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I love how fast mcmaster carr is, 8 hours to my doorstep

These look absolutely perfect

 

While I had the bumper off I decided it was time to get it fixed.

There was a previous repair done very poorly and the idiots who did the work declined to reinstall the stock heatshielding on the diffusor part of the bump that's right next to the cat.

So over time of course the paint blistered and cracked and was damaged. I decided to take it to the local high-end body shop and have them repaint it and also repair the damaged fiberglass itself so it's done right. It was $2k uughhhhh

I could've done it myself, but I really didn't want to work with fiberglass for a whole weekend.

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Missing heatshielding..

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Repaired and repainted
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I fabricated new shielding from Thermotec bulk stick-on shielding.

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I made a few layers where it is closest to the exhaust for extra protection.

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Reinstalled and looking great!

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Then I refilled the cooling system with the Airlift bleed kit. I was skeptical, but it worked AMAZING. It sucked in all of the coolant and hopefully there are no air pockets or bubbles in the system. I'll probably end up cracking the bleeder once the car starts just to verify that it worked.

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I used the Airlift bleeder/filler tool that this guy uses

 

Sunday I was just putting everything back together. It's a slow process, cleaning every part, replacing missing and mismatched hardware, ziptieing everything lose, fabricating little brackets and such.



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I did all that Sunday, then today finished the ECU stuff, and started it up. Started right up and ran perfect

Oil level was good, coolant was perfect and didn't leak, thermostat is now working properly, etc

Drove it around the block and it shifts like butter, perfect through all 6 gears

The clutch doesn't have great feel, but that's pretty normal for a hydraulic clutch in my experience.

It felt great to drive around and double clutch and rev match and everything I've been missing, this is what a Ferrari should be


It's pretty loud and hot driving it with the engine going a foot behind you and no cover or anything!

 

^^^ Thank you!

I've been driving and enjoying the hell out of the car, about 3-400 miles so far and no issues at all!

But it's getting warm and the A/C has never worked due to a leak. If I fill it up, it lasts a few days and then the R134 leaks out. So borrowed a leak detector from my buddy at the local Ferrari shop and found it was leaking around the top of the compressor.

I knew that was going to be the case so I already bought a new tensioner pulley and new idler pulley as the ones in there didn't look great.

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After removing the compressor I brought it to the local AC shop and they said they had a rebuilder in Reno NV that could rebuild it for $450. So it's in Reno right now hopefully getting all new guts.

I think the leak was the rubber seals that seal the mounting block to the compressor, and possibly the compressor housing itself looked liek it could be the culprit as well.

Then I took a look at the heat shield that protects the compressor from the exhaust manifold about 20mm away.

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That's not good. Why would Ferrari make such a fairly ciritical heatshield that is so close to the manifold out of raw fiberglass and nothing else?? argh

I have a feeling that the heat did no favors to the compressor RE: leaks.

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So I made a new one out of metal and i'll probably double stack it with the original fiberglass and stick the Thermotec aluminized barrier on it as well for a Triple Threat©




Then today I decided to try to repair the undertray. I've been putting this off because I've never worked with fiberglass before and I just know how messy and gross it's going to be..
And it would by insanely expensive to try and find a shop to fix all of these little cracks and busted bits. It's easy work, just time consuming.

So I sanded away around all the areas to repair and then put that aluminum duct tape and masking tape where i needed to back a hole or provide structure.

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Then you cut out fiberglass patches out of the raw mesh (make sure to cut out mulitple layers)

Then mix up the resin and coat the area, then lay down the sheets and coat them.

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I did one side and then the other.

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I had to make a HUGE section in the corner here. I hope it fits on the car well. It's really hard to make a nice backing "plate" out of tape with a section this large and complex.
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And thats where it sits. I'll get out the sander/grinder and clean it all up and fit it to shape and then paint it all black and hope it works.

It's my first try at fiberglassing so I'm not expecting perfection.

 

Thanks Yeah that's the real one from what they said. I don't think they would bullsh*t haha

The tour guide did say to take some photos because that car is going to a private collector and will probably never been seen in public again. There were guides watching everyone to make sure nothing happened to the cars, I guess that was their security

 

Yeah I wish I could just pay someone a few hundred dollars to do the fiberglass fixes to a mediocre standard of quality, but I don't know any shops like that. Everyone would want way too much money I think. And I don't want to run around to 20 shops asking for such a small job haha

 

Oh the new thermostat is working perfectly too. Always dead on at 175 degrees. The old one was very lazy and temps would be all over the place.