355 owners, ex and present.

Chaa, I am honestly going with the option of the Ferrari tech (Greypaul) got it wrong with your mates car (Main Dealer Ferrari tech getting things wrong??? Surely not!?!?!?), and possibly Shiltec not being accurate with their information.

He was probably thinking of how the F1 box works when he told your mate.

The F1 cars all obviously say sport, so thats where that comes from, no manual cars have that. Then its down to how you perceive the 'firmness' in each setting, and 'seat of the pants' feeling is not always 100% accurate.

I think its fair to say that Ferrari didn't wire the switches up differently on early / late manual cars - at least not on purpose, maybe his car was made on Friday afternoon after too much red wine and pasta at the factory!

 

Chaa mines a 97. have a picture of a suspension leg come up on dash when i push the switch down. have read your poll. still dont know and cant tell the diffference.

 

Here's mine.

1. Year: 1997, 5.2 car.
2 Style: Berlinetta (UK model)
3: Trans: Manual
4: Design on switch: picture of a shock absorber with an S next to it.
5: No wording on instrument light only pic of damper/spring
6: Light illuminated = soft mode (seat of the pants and confirmed by my owners manual).

 

we should do a poll and ask who can tell the difference when the light is on or off...

Dino

 

IT's VERY easy on my 96 355B to tell the difference. Under HARD acceleration, the hood rises noticably (as the rear squats) in the SOFT (light ON) setting. In the sport setting (light OFF), the rear no longer squats and the front no longer does the nose up dance. And the difference in severity of "shock" going over rough pavement increases substantially. And the handling on the track is worlds apart in the two different settings.

 

Soft !

 

To summarise...If you have piles...switch the switch ON..if you don't...switch it OFF...ask me how I know

 

Way too much info there

 

As above except for Euro spec.