360 New 360 owner: top 3 issues?

I have a 2003 Spider F1 with 14k miles. Normal annual maintenance is required such as oil and filter changes, brake fluid change, have a shop/dealer get the car on a lift for a general inspection and have clutch wear % checked. Follow Ferrari time/mileage recommendations for belt changes and all of the other normal car maintenance items. Check the date codes on the tires and change them at around 6 years. (not in your case since you are having new tires installed). These are fairly reliable vehicles. I've had no other items to address on my car.

 

Jay,
The tops don’t seem to like being stored in the down position for long periods. Every time I’ve left mine down for more than a few days it is a bit finicky to raise. I’ve read several posts that detail similar experiences.

Keep the door lock mechanisms lubricated.

Keep the fluids fresh. Both the heat exchanger and the calipers will last longer if you do.

Keep it on a battery tender and don’t jump start it if the battery goes flat.

Other than that, DRIVE it. It truly gets better the more exercise it gets.

 

I tell potential buyers that the worst combination is an F1 360 Spider. Either you get a Coupe manual/F1 or an manual spider. There are lots of issues regarding the capote. Use the search function and you'll get plenty of hits about this subject. Having said that, I do own a '03 F1 360 Spider. I wrench my own cars so I'm not worried about it. If you're not an DIY'er, my suggestion is to reserve about $4,000 outright just for any capote issues in the future.

 

I have not had any top problems. However, one of the hydraulic units was replaced by my dealer before I purchased the car. I also agree with Killer58’s recommendations.

 

In addition to the views you will find on this forum, go to aldousvoice.com and read his excellent technical articles. He has three on the 360 top. He notes:

"The entire unit is an independent part, often called a cassette, and was manufactured by CTS Fahrzeug-Dachsysteme, a subsidiary of Porsche AG at the time. The fabric material is made by Haartz Corporation and is called Twillfast® RPC (thanks to Tom for digging that nugget of info up).

The roof has proven to be very reliable over the years with most common problems manifesting themselves from low hydraulic fluid or incorrectly positioned microswitches."

See https://aldousvoice.com/2013/02/05/ferrari-360-spider-roof/

He has two other articles on the spider roof that are worth reading.

I have 2003 F1 Spider and I love it. I hope you enjoy your new car. I think they are great fun. Drive it and enjoy it!

 

Make sure to change your coolant. I believe you can't access the timing belt covers without pulling that coolant pipe, so you should be good there. Another common failure is the F1 relay. Aldousvoice has a write up on that. If it dies, don't jump it. Also I know a lot of 360s have broken reverse switches. Mine didn't automatically home on the first drive with my car and triggered a check transmission light which scared the crap out of me.

 

Door lock cables
Alarm sirene
straps whithin the capote (spider)
role over valves

Regards
Joerg

 

Did anyone mention fuel pumps...
Oil sender unit...
Siren...
Engine mounts....maybe
Transmission mounts...maybe

 

No issues with those on mine.

 

I would agree with AldousVoice that checking the hydraulic fluid at least every two years is critical. Not sure if the loss is from weeping past seals, or what, but I noticed in my F355 spider that if filled to the "max" line, it would be anywhere from the middle to approaching the "min" line within a couple years time. So top ups (or at least a check) every two years is my recommendation. I know if you let it run dry the hydraulic rams will be damaged and require replacement. Previous owner of my 355 had that happen, and why I kept an eye on the fluid level. I think it was five or six years old when it happened to him, and am sure the fluid level had never been checked.

 

Most of this list is easy to rectify but can be a pain to go through on a car when they haven't been done...

1. VDO Oil temperature sender fails due to heat fatigue which is accelerated being in the engine bay directly above oil filter. Thankfully an inexpensive repair and only for informational purposes only. This sensor not actually used by engine ecus only for display in dashboard! You can also get non ferrari part as long as you buy adaptor.

2. Bosch alarm siren is a failure point due to soldered on batteries inside of it which are by designed going to fail after a given number of years. They are not designed to be replaced so you have to cut case open to access them and glue it back together. You can either replace the relatively cheap batteries before they fail and leak all over the circuit board or replace entire siren.

3. Same thing just started to happen with cheap Bosch immobilizers too which has built in failure points with soldered on mechanical relays and capacitors of a given service lifetime. Once these fail it can cascade into multiple thousands of dollar charges if repairs done at main dealers. Look up Swiss Army Knife tool immobilizer delete for inexpensive way to resolve this. The immobilizer can be entirely removed and a modern insurance approved system used to replace it. Meaning no worry about loss of key fobs. Alternatives available once immobilizer is removed.

4. If jump started at any point this can degrade the engine ecus internal pusle wave modulation circuits to the point where they are likely to fail within a year even if not exhibiting any issues yet. Whatever you do please don't jump start a weak battery, replace it or correctly trickle it. Never jump a 360, ever as none of the electrics are designed with any high voltage protections in them. You could cause thousands in damages. When the ecus fail usually you get a ticking throttle body meaning your ecus pwm has died. Time for a new ecu. I can help you if this ever happens without having to spend multiple thousands replacing both ecu with new.

5. Engine mounts and gearbox mounts are basically a service item and make handling considerly worse as they age as they are rubber that degrades over time. When bad they allow a lot of fore/aft movement which makes car handling feel sloppy and slower to respond to sharp turn in.

6. Lower ball joints on the suspension Lower arms are service items in my mind and need to be replaced at regular intervals as factory items they tend to rust and then rattle causing poor handling and sounds like bag of nails in front compartment.
Hills engineering do stainless coated variants which don't suffer the same problem. Also check uppers too though less common.

7. Door lock solenoids can be problomatic, again not so expensive to fix but a pain. Cheap fiat items. Silly internal bar can pop off too causing problems to unlock doors. Easy fix but annoying.

8. Same problem as with Bosch immobilizer in the door and window ecu has soldered on relays which arent designed to be replaced, they expect you to throw away entire board when an old mechanical relay gives up. They can of course be desoldered and replaced.

9. Dashboard back-light is known to fail and can be expensive to repair as its EL illuminance panel is via high voltage circuit. Check its working. Its not using bulbs.

10. Stock exhaust is only spot welded at points and many therefore liberally leak a white dust all over engine bay. If you see such dust it's the internal ceramic dust coming out. They can be seam welded to prevent further dust leakage or replaced entirely with aftermarket.

11. Inexpensive Clutch block is prone to cranking and leaking fluid. Replace with superior hills engineering part.

12. Cat ecu stations resin can crack so water leaks in and damages board. This in turn leads to misdetection of 'slow down' light. Happens even when the engine is stone cold. Check resin isn't failing and if crack re seal them as preventative measure. Also Check thermocouplers too as they can go brittle with heat and crack causing similar problems.

13. Coil packs are at the age now where its worth just replacing the entire set with new, again this can be done inexpensively if looking up bosch part number and bypassing Ferrari parts dept.

14. Same thing for o2 sensors. I replace them every 4 years along with battery and full set of plugs and it makes the car run much better.

15. Fuel pumps are another Bosch item destined to fail at some point after 10 to 15 years. Check if they have ever been replaced before.

16. F1 Relay, again just considering the relay routine maintaince. Or alternatively seek out Scuding relay. Equivalent failure on gated is the plastic part in the shifter mechanism which can fail apart leading to sloppy shift feel. Again hills do a replacement part. Also for gated clutch pump has been known to let go. Again can be sourced directly rather from Ferrari.

17. Oil cooler. Can rust internally causing breakdown. Better to replace the item if no history of coolant flushes in service history.

18. Indicator relay, another relay that can fail causing strange intermittent indicator problems or no indicstors at all. Also failing immobilizer can cause same issue too.

19. Sticky switches, again sponsors on here can sort them out but the coating really can get into an awful state.

20. Battery, they are a service item on the 360, they are very sensitive to poor battery. Cheaper to replace every 3 to 4 years. Also Trackers, many are never removed by new owners so some cars can have several fitted which can all cause battery drain problems. Again failing immobilizer can also play a part here and difficult to diagnose.

Basically all Bosch stuff seems to be designed to last about the lifetime of a regular car so 10-15 years, so I would be surprised if there aren't some of these in your service file! If not be prepared to sort these out...

 

Great post Trev! I learned a lot just reading it.

And I agree with Peter's post above. In the past two years I have --

replaced both fuel pumps (one after the other, and the carbon canister)...
replaced the oil sender unit (and added the Hill Engineering protective cover on the new one)...
replaced the siren (big improvement)...
replaced the engine mounts (when we did the belts)....
I'm OK with my transmission mounts, but I'll do those when I have the clutch done, whenever that need to be taken care of.

That sounds like a lot, and maybe it is, but I knew from reading this forum that all those parts tend to eventually fail, so I was not unhappy to get them fixed.

 

My ship just came in this year. Leaking cam seal lead to full belt service and water pump. While in there, found the oil cooler needed replacing. After that, my upper and lower front ball joints needed replacing that once getting those in showed I needed a new upper a-arm which then lead to bushings on those a-arms. And to top it off leaking steering rack that I opted for rebuilding vs. buying new at the suggestion of some here. Well into 5 figure repair. Just be ready for the big one!

 

Lots of great information.

1) Upper and Lower ball joints. Multiple previous explanations. Also rear tie rods
2) Engine mounts. Again, multiple previous explanations.
3) Door hardware. Spent almost 3 months not being able to open the driver's side door.
4) O2 sensors. If you do not drive your 360 regularly, be sure to drive it hard when you do.
5) Annual fluid service. Be sure to consider coolant, brake fluid, F1 fluid and filters in F1 system, in addition to engine oil. Not all need to be changed every year, but should at least be inspected.
6) Gearbox mount.

 

One thing I replaced which no one has mentioned here is the AC dryer. I got the Fiat one for the usual fraction of cost, you need to have system evacuated by a shop with tool (cost me $110), change out dryer located in front behind vapor barrier which more than likely has been previously removed or fallen apart and cheap to replace now. On the scale of 10 wrenches, I give this a 3. Couple minor things to know, if the dryer hasn’t ever been replaced, the stuff that drips out of it will stink and when removing it be careful not to have O rings sucked in to lines due to vacuum not fully released. Other than that, most don’t know its a serviceable item and pretty important for your AC system. Sorry for run on sentences. Cheers.


Sent from my iPad using FerrariChat.com mobile app

 

Thank you for posting all of this information. I'm in the process of purchasing my first Ferrari assuming it passes the PPI. A 2001 360 Spider with 33k miles. There is a lot of helpful information in this thread. I look forward to learning more about the car and making sure I maintain it properly. I purchased a 2007 Porsche Cabriolet manual 6 speed a couple of years ago and have really enjoyed that car. Looking forward to adding a Ferrari to the fleet. The difficult thing for me was not purchasing a manual version, but the price difference meant that I would have had to wait a year or so and I'm just not that patient, so here goes with the F1.

Cheers,


John

 

My top's pretty reliable... maybe 95% success rate and the occasional time it sticks I just let go of the button, let it rest for a few seconds, then continue on. Maybe one time this was not successful so I turned the car off and back on, worked fine.

 

Make sure your spider has the complete tool kit. It comes with a female square bit adapter that will allow you to manually operate the capote. Also you need the owner's manual which has a section as to how to use the tool correctly.

 

Also always travel with a team of NASA engineers to help you negotiate the 400 steps to the procedure.

 

I've had the CS for 9 years. While mostly reliable, I have had a few issues that I have had to correct.

Clutch Position Sensor
Transmission Heat Exchanger
Engine Mounts
By far, the biggest PIA was the immobilizer (thanks Trev for sorting and eliminating)

Other than regular services with fluid changes, plugs, cam belts, O2 sensors, etc., I think it's been great!