Ryan's First F Car - 2004 360 Spider

I finally made the plunge into the Ferrari world after many years of owning Porsches (964, 996, 996 GT3 and 997 Shark Werks GT3). I've wanted a car that was fun at all speeds while still being fast enough for some fun driving in the mounts. The 360 Spider seemed like it would be the right choice for that. I also chose an F1 deliberately as I wanted something different. I've been in the manual camp for awhile but I feel like there's a different element of experience to the single clutch transmissioned cars that is a different type of fun/engagement than rowing your own gears.

I use these threads as documentation of the car over time.

997 GT3 build thread: https://rennlist.com/forums/997-gt2-gt3-forum/1445418-ryan-s-sharkwerks-3-9l-997-1-gt3.html

996 GT3 build thread: https://rennlist.com/forums/996-gt2-gt3-forum/1256593-ryan-s-basalt-black-6gt3.html

I like projects so this car shouldn't be any different.

Delivery day
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Back home with the GT3
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Day 1 Ownership was cleaning up the car. It was super dirty inside and I was pretty annoyed with my PPI done at Ferrari of Austin. They probably did one of the most half assed PPIs I've ever done. I told them that the primary value I get out of PPIs is on the condition of the car (exterior, interior). So, when they said everything looked great and it arrives with the driver mirror flopping around, missing buttons, interior with a good deal of wear and tear, the top not fully closing and a bunch of other misc things...I was pretty pissed. I'm still trying to figure out what to do about that. If anyone has some advice, shoot me a pm.

I wish I took a photo of how knackered it was when it first showed up but my detailer did a pretty good job cleaning things up (albeit, a little too shiny on some of the leather products)

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After a few minutes of searching, was able to find a thread on fixing the mirror which only took a few minutes

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Then, a little bit before dinner, I took the wife out to cruise around LA in the new car.

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With the Capristo exhaust and valves open, this car is a riot even within the speed limit. Even coming from cars with Ohlins R&T which are pretty comfortable, the active dampers on this car do a really good job smoothing the car out. I did have one faff and got stuck in neutral at a stop light for about 20 seconds not realizing that the car forces it there if you let off the brake pedal for more than 10s. I couldn't get it to go into first immediately, so that was pretty embarrassing.

 

Fast forward to this morning, I was trying to troubleshoot the convertible top mechanism and understand what would need to be adjusted. Seeing threads about the elastics and the trick to push the bar back, I started with that. I closed the top, heard a crunch and saw this:

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So...that's effin awesome...

Looks like because the capote shell is sitting higher than it should, it hit part of the arm mechanism inside:

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It's currently sitting higher than it should:
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I'm going to pop out the left and right side brackets to compare to see if the left side got bent. If it's not that, then could it be placement of the microswitch? If so, I was having trouble finding information on adjusting the microswitch placement. Does anyone have a reference?

 

The passenger side guide was bent a tad. Straightened it and it now clears the internals fine. Still am not getting the beep on close so I'll need to troubleshoot the micro switch next.

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Yeah, X-pipes on those cars really wake them up and make them sound like a race car on the streets. I sold mine back in November. As a driver, it was one of the best cars I had. The dated interior bothered me though (the 360 doesn't really, strangely).

This was with the M&M catless X pipe and muffler bypass (jump to 1:40 to hear what blipping the throttle sounded like):

https://photos.app.goo.gl/mjB4s7y6TZJenPv69

Running through the gears:

https://photos.app.goo.gl/yxh7WxK32FiueZ3f7

Mr. Toad's wild ride up in Norcal near Napa on I think Dry Creek (Canyon?):

https://photos.app.goo.gl/i5yJ7nDUTZQ33873A

Regarding PPIs, I have had a lot of decent ones (and now two bad ones). I don't expect that they can catch everything but they are usually good at assessing the current condition and catching obvious things. My buddy and I have been talking about this but as a service, I'd almost rather just have a fellow enthusiast check out a car and give input on the condition, how it drives and any codes it's throwing. Depending on the car and my schedule, I would normally check out the car myself. I should've done that for this car but that wasn't feasible. This is a reminder to myself that I'll do a much better job than most PPIs...but also...I haven't started wrenching on Ferraris yet so I don't have the same knowledge of what to look for like I do for Porsches.

 

Had quite the fun weekend with the 360.

My friend invited me to an Aston Martin event on Saturday. His Aston decided to not want to work properly so he tagged along with me in the 360. We started at Galpin Aston Martin in Van Nuys, drove over Little Tujunga to Porsche Santa Clarita C&C. Little Tujunga is one of my favorite roads but unfortunately, some guy that hadn't done group drives before decided he should slot himself 4th in line and had zero clue how to drive. So, we ended up doing a fairly leisurely drive over LT. With the top down and revs up, still had a good time.

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Porsche Santa Clarita C&C is pretty wild. Never seen that big of a weekly C&C before.

Since I didn't get to work the 360 at speed, I decided to head up to Newcomb's Ranch this morning via Big Tujunga. I left a little late from my place, around 8am but got lucky and didn't have to deal with much traffic on the way up. This car is the most fun I've had without pushing a car. I was doing much lower speeds than I normally would in the GT3 and having a blast doing it. The gearing on these cars is also very close together so I was able to use 2-5 whereas I'm mostly in 3rd only on Big T (2nd goes up to 80 mph roughly in a GT3). In sport mode, banging through the gears was epic. People ***** and complain about the F1 box but to me, coming from 7 years of owning manuals, this is such an experience. The shifts on WOT are violent and the downshifts sound epic when you're going at speed. The sound bouncing off the canyon walls was pure F1 of old sounds too.

All in all, a solid way to add 250 miles this weekend.

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Late to Newcombs and mostly empty by the time I got there. Ferraris are a rare sight up there. Lambo and Ferrari spottings on Sunset Blvd are a dime a dozen but 30 miles up into the mountains, are almost non-existent. Shame, cause these are such fun cars up there.
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It was raining today so I decided to tackle some of the things on my to do list that I didn't see in the recent service history. Today was brake pads, rotors, brake hoses and SRF brake fluid.

Car jacked up and ready to go:
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Getting the calipers and rotors off on the front was fairly straight forward

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The brake hose wasn't fun though since the clip was pretty stubborn coming off and it's in a weird location to get any sort of leverage on it. I think I spent an hour on that alone which was pretty annoying.

For hoses, I prefer rubber hoses since any cracking or other issues can be spotted. Braided makes it more difficult to identify if your hoses are about to fail.
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Cleaned up the calipers and looks like the seals on the pucks seem to be in good condition:
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After more time than I'd like to admit, first corner was done:
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Very annoyingly, I also identified that the pads I ordered for the front were wrong. Seller stated they worked for 360 and 430 fronts but these are too big:
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The fronts were pretty straightforward but the rears were frustrating in how tedious it is to do this job. I couldn't figure out how to get to the clip end of the hose without taking off the fender lining. That's okayish on the driver side, not so okay on the passenger side on a spider which seems to have a large quantity of crap bolted to the liner.

The rear rotors required taking off the e brake which was a little perplexing since the bolt was basically inaccessible. Turns out you need to unbolt one of the arms to allow articulation:

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The above is the arm after I installed it again with paint marking to visually identify if any bolts back out.

This was odd to me since you have to remove the caliper to install the hose:
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Fender liner off, you can get to this and at this point, fight the level 10 master which involves figuring out how to get the compression nut (not sure actual name) off after it's been sitting there for years
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Don't forget this little bastard that needs to be undone:
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Thanks Ferrari of Austin for flagging this:
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And now we're down a rabbit hole on the passenger side:
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Many things were removed but I am not convinced I want to unbolt all the things from the fender liner. I will try to get the hose out blind, behind the fender liner.

 

In between working on the car, I got the starfish clad with new rubber (after getting them powder coated gloss black earlier in the week):

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Right before I wrapped up the night, I wanted to see if the Porsche sliders fit and much to my amazement, they seats fit without changing a single thing. I kept seeing threads about people making custom adapters but Porsche rails fit perfectly: Image Unavailable, Please Login

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These are from my 997 GT3 and have the Porsche crest embossed on the top so I'll need to order a new set.

 

Here's the measurements of the stock seat rails:

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Correct, these were pulled from my 997 GT3:

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Thanks, I'm actually looking at picking up a Modena right now too cause I have a problem, lol. I was checking out a car for a buddy of mine today and the owner also had a 991.2RS and he made a comment that really summed it up: unless you're actually pushing the RS, you might as well be driving a Corolla with a bucket seat. I kinda felt the same about the 997 GT3 too.

The Spider though is an event through and through. It's also a riot at speed on the canyons and a shame that you don't see more of them there. The one thing I have to give credit to Porsche is the community. Lots of them use their cars as intended and the numbers on the weekends in the mountains show for it.

On picking up a coupe, I really want a Giallo Modena 430 Scud but I don't have the patience to wait for one. I've been looking at 430 Berlinettas to compliment the 360 Spider since I like the 430 design as well, but it's missing something without the Scud body work. For those that have driven a 430, do they still have the similar, violent shove that 360s have when shifting WOT? I think that's one of the things that make these cars so much of an event to drive and a primary reason I'd be hesitant to pick up a 991 RS. I also like to modify cars so the 360 probably lends itself best to that.