Hi everybody Just wanted to share personnal experience. Last summer I had a problem on a very poorly maintained road. basically had no choice but to scrape the underside of my 550 a bit. Visually checked the car afterward : nothing visible. I assumed all ok. A week before service was due I noticed the water temp moving up a bit. Low on water surely a leak. Diagnosis : cracked rad at the bottom. Good news : the car is in capable hands at Verdi's. and the engine never overheated so it's only just annoying Has anyone come up with a fix for this design weakness ? can something be done ?
Sounds like it could be removed and welded. Probably better than having to buy another. Good luck with it.
I dont know which rad you have but there are 2. The early one had a spigot pointing straight down with the drain plug below it. The later one had a rearward facing drainplug. The difference is only about a half inch but that is often enough to prevent problems. Bad design all in all. One of my very few criticisims of the 550.
yes, very common problem. Also, the engine oil cooler is bolted to the rad, so in some cases you can damage both. Stiffer springs reduce the bump travel and improve grip and reduce body roll, but really you just have to be careful on bad roads.
Rifledriver, My 550 is a 98 model so I guess I have the earlier water rad design. I guess they are trying to fix the rad, but if I need to have it changed, do you advise changing to the latter design ? Is that possible without have to do addition work ? thanks Thibaut
you can only buy the later style, and it's a straight swap over. Not cheap or quick though. Be sure you are using the correct size tyres all round, as many alternative options may use a lower profile at the front, so your ride height is reduced, or even a higher profile at the rear, will tip the front overhang lower to the ground.
How much does a new rad with the latter, better design cost ? I guess there is a bit of labour as well to swap it... any rough ide of total cost for swap ?
Central Florida Ferrari was working on my ecu's last month and the mechanic was showing me another 550 that had run over a gopher turtle. The turtle shell damaged the oil cooler which resulted in the loss of oil and the end result was a trashed engine. Insurance paid for the guys new engine along with a new wiring harness for the car to try to get the ecu errors to go away. Man, a gopher turtle is about 4" high. Damage totaled about 50K. I worry about my clearance all the time and even the slightest inclines have to be taken on a angle. I don't even know where it happened but my bracket was bent up that the belly pan screws onto. it was necessary to rebend the bracket to get the bow out of the belly pan.
Is a 98 550 definitely the early version with the radiator clearance problem? Is there anyway to cover the low hanging bolt? One more issue to deal with!
I suspect it is. You can do what we did to repair many of them when they got dragged around enough that an OE drain plug would no longer work. Grind off most of the offending spigot and retap for a pipe plug. Install an allen pipe plug and you have very close to the same clearence as a late rad. The other side of the car has a pair of A/C hoses to act as skid plates. They are long enough to reroute above the frame rails to the A/C condenser to keep them from being ground through. It was a little harder to route them that way though so it didn't get done at the factory. Just remember, these cars aren't jeeps. They are much easier to negotiate a driveway than a TR.
