New member/owner of a 456M GTA with a question

Hi Kiwinz,
Your handle implies you are from New Zealand but you are not brave enough to provide your name or even country. Easy to rectify.
If you live in NZ get the immobilizer removed.
Give the insurance company the actual info - when first registered and VIN#. Let them worry about what is what. You are doing too much thinking.
Enjoy your car, they are great things but better with standard wheels & tyres! Nice colour combo too!!!!

 

hi. some of the time difference might be the original target market. your car seems to be an american delivery model, but your plates look swiss (tough to see completely but thats my impression). the m was made from early 98 to 2004, so the vin makes sense. first date of circulation is not really that important.

your immobilizer seems to have a short in the unit, not the fobs.

btw, you need to put spacers on the rear wheels to keep it from looking pigeon toed. best source for that is hill engineering.

 

Welcome aboard. Great car, agree it needs to be on the correct size wheels/tyres though.

 

Welcome, Stefan, and congratulations on a beautiful 456!

Can you post the VIN? That would be very helpful in answering your questions.

 

Stefan- Batteries in the fobs need to be changed regularly (about once a year, Ferrari recommends 6 months), but they will not affect the LED or siren. It sounds like the rechargeable batteries in your alarm siren are going bad, and that will give the symptoms you describe. A replacement Ferrari siren is around $350, but owners have had good luck replacing the siren with one for a Corvette for less than $100. Some owners have also mounted external rechargeable batteries, but with only partial luck.

This thread will give you all the details.

http://www.ferrarichat.com/forum/456-550-575/303529-alternate-alarm-siren.html

Your Ferrari is a very early 456M since the model was introduced in 1998. Give us the VIN and we will see what we can surmise from Carbon's files and Matthias Urban's books.

 

Stefan- Take some photos and maybe we can help. The alarm LED is only a single red bulb on the center console near the switches.

Sounds like you have a built in radar detector, and that is beeping and flashing at you from whatever it is seeing. There should be an on-off switch and a sensitivity setting control on the panel you describe. If you can ID the box, you should be able to download a users manual from the internet.

25 mm Hill Engineering Type 2 wheel spacers will fix your empty wheel wells. Have them on my 575M.

 

Stefan- No sweat, just torque the spacer bolts and the wheel bolts and you should be good.

 

Stefan- Matthias Urban's book just says she is a 99MY US 456M, blue with naturale (cuoio) interior and the same VIN you show. If she was Canadian, the instruments would likely be metric

 

Seriously, I would ditch those wheels. They're not the right offset, and they may not be the right widths either. Stock 456 wheels are pretty common. I got a set from a fellow f-chater inexpensively. I wouldn't mess with spacers.

Great car!

Cheers,

George

 

I hope that what looks like a small pool of oil under the left front of your 456 isn't leaking from your car.

 

I only mentioned it because the oil reservoir is located nearly overhead.

 

Stefan- 550 and 575M wheels fit the 456M perfectly, as do Novitec NF2s. They improve handling and braking at a slight cost in ride. Here are some photos. Most have rear spacers, except the one with the 550 Barchetta wheels, which needs them.

A new set of 550 wheels (2nd from bottom) from Exoticar are only $1200. Tell Chris I sent you.
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I, too, have Stefan's 456 as a Canadian model.

 

Carbon- Both have an A prefix in the VIN and the only real difference is metric vs English gauges, so entirely possible.

 

Stefan- Trick on the parking brake is to push the button and pull up on the handle before letting the handle down. Should do the trick. Learned by everybody who has driven a late model Corvette or Ferrari.

 

This^^^^

You have to hold the button in ALL THE WAY DOWN or the parking brake will not disengage. Felt like an idiot when I learned that.

Cheers,

George

 

Stefan, +1 on what Taz and George said. Sometimes it helps to use two hands. You think you're getting the button down but until it goes all the way in, it won't cut-off the "Park" light. If you still can't get it off, might look at my post on the location and testing of the switch.

Regards... Mark