No boost Cali T

Take it to the dealer. Don't putz around with it, as you may void the warrenty.

 

At this risk of sounding like an ass, a wet Cali T is something generally to be avoided...

I am not an expert on the new V8TT, so I'll defer to an actual technician here

Based on my life with other Bosch and Marelli-based turbo engines...

1) a simple/common issue is a loose connection or hose (Eg. vacuum hose). The ECU's monitor a lot of sensors and compare readings, if one is off, it will put the engine into a limp mode (i.e. self-degrade performance) and will not build boost. May or may not throw an alarm, but you can see it on the data.

2) you may have a bad sensor (MAF, air pressure) and be getting correlation errors - again, the engine will back off and may (or may not) throw a code.

3) if you have no active alarms, it may still be registering error codes; you can read them with a scan tool, but interpreting them can be tricky to then diagnose and isolate.

4) a tech with a DEIS can monitor a long list of engine data channels in real time and compare to optimal - eg. ignition advance, vacuum. You'll need access to a DEIS tool and know how to read/interpret.....which a dealer service tech will do.

5) have you tried a hard reset? (i.e. disconnect battery, wait, reconnect and do the ECU relearning process?). It works sometimes. My daughter's car just had a low boost issue, we had to have them reset the ECU using a manufacturer's scan tool, took 20 mins and fixed.

Even if the car is not under warranty, aside from checking all connections, hoses, looking for leaks, et al, it's probably worth a labor hour to get a good diagnosis.

 

Just out of curiosity, exactly what are you supposed to be "burning out"? a "plugged exhaust" can create some serious problems upstream

 

As an owner of a car that went totally under water - I am here to tell you this will be an electrical gremlin monster forever - depending on what got wet. Mine was a VW Scirocco - circa 1980 - and I am fighting more problems still this moment (the car is in the shop now getting its third wiring harness). The flood was in 2002. I friend is still saving his MR2 Turbo from the same flood. He just fixes things as they present themselves. 14 years later he is still patching up new problems.

Just a heads up. It really doesn't get better, only worse with time.

 

If God had intended cars to swim, he would have given them outboard motors and a door delete option.

A really wet car is bad news. IF they tell you "Up to the floorboards" they probably meant, "Over the roof."

Sorry to say it, but damn, might be a really good time to drive it back to the dealer, take a hit, and let the car become someone else's problem.

Put this one out there to the real mechanics here. I doubt any of them would recommend a drowned CaliT as a winning choice.

 

Did you buy this car from an an, official, authorized dealer? Or an independent?

99% of salvage Ferraris in the US (those that are insured, anyway) are liquidated through CoPart, which is an auction. Factory authorized dealers tend to avoid (like the plague) selling anything with a salvage title to avoid situations like this....some even refuse to work on any flood damaged car since the liability ("my airbag didn't work, the brakes failed, etc") is high.

I'd imagine you got a good price based on the CoPart listings. $7K isn't much to repair water over the floorboards....lots of electronics hidden in the middle and bottom of the car. if it ran for months without issue, it could be completely unrelated, or about the time it takes for corrosion to happen; eg. your car could be sensing low voltage somewhere, which seems to be the most common failure mode, caused by issues in the wires.

On the current generation cars, diagnosing issues like this require (more often than not) dealer intervention since the technology is still proprietary, unless it's something mechanical like a bad connection, loose hose, etc. To add complexity, these cars can generate errors in strange places (eg. gearbox) that manifest themselves and point to somewhere else, hence the diagnostic challenge.

 

"situations like this" = the inevitable and overwhelming probability that even if the car runs fine now, it will have problems and gremlins soon enough

Most dealers (and manufacturers) want to have nothing to do with selling a car and having a customer experience being the equivalent of a lemon. Did you buy this car from an official dealer?

Turbos from a mechanical perspective are easy, they've been around forever. The challenge is these cars have an immense amount of electronics, sensors and software that can be maddening to diagnose glitches. If your car is throwing no codes, but is down on power....something isn't working. If you got water up your exhaust, and that's what your dealer says to "blow out", I'd start looking for a new exhaust and check your cats. Your car CAN be in a degraded mode as part of normal operation if it thinks the gas is bad, your engine is knocking, or have exhaust issues..

That's also why you're getting a consistent reaction of "run away from a flood car" on here....it's the statistical and empirical reality. Of course, there are always some people and some cars that are exceptions and make it work.

Good luck

 

If the water was truly only up to the floor boards I personally cannot see too much that can be wrong with the car. However, I fear that this is not the whole story. Assuming water intruded into the tail pipes it may have worked its way forward, but likely not into the turbos - unless someone was driving the thing into a deep puddle. Then water could have gotten anywhere in the engine. Okay this is weird, but did anyone actually slant the car backwards at a strong angle? My BMW experienced this and we lifted the front end pretty high to make sure everything was drained from the exhaust system. Then we ran it for some time periodically revving the engine to see if there was more water trapped inside - there was. Then I had to reset the ECU a couple of times. I changed the plugs too. if the car was being driven, it probably fouled the plugs when it died of water suffocation. Now, what if the thing was also deluged in a heavy downpour, or the maniac driving it tried to power through the standing water. So you see, there can be a crap load of ancillary stuff that got wet. How about the turbo controller - basically the electronics near the turbos. Maybe they got wet. In a new BMW M3/M4 this is at the lowest point by the turbos. This device controls the vanes providing consistent boost through the rev range.

If it were me, I put the thing on a lift and look for anything electronic that might have gotten damp up to about 2 feet from the ground. Also, I'd look for places water may still be retained. This stuff is water resistant, but not water proof.

 

James
Perhaps put the car in the air, and unook each electrical connector one-by-one and spray them with de-oxit. Some connector could have just enough corrosion from when the car was a dolphin that it is causing some boost problems but not enough corrosion to set off the OBD system?

Jonathan

 

Well, alright then. ...

 

Water line on the rotors? You said it was run into a deep puddle. Sounds like it sat in water if there's a "line on the rotors" showing water damage.

My new advice is, Take the car to a Ferrari Dealer, and have him rebuild the car since you got it so cheap you can afford to do that. When you're done, you'll have a properly running car, maybe, that cost you as much as a non-drowned, non-salvage car would have, that you can't sell for nearly what you have in it. Remember rule #1 when car shopping, "Pick one, cheap or good, can't have both."

But you asked, "What can I do?" in your original post.

Next time, don't ask a question that has quite such an obvious answer, knowing you're going to be upset by said same answer. You were hoping for a cheap fix for your cheap car. Sorry, it's a Ferrari, a drowned Ferrari, ain't no such thing as a cheap fix.

D

 

Buy salvage car. Take it to repair guy/dealer. Spend $7k on getting it running, but not right.
Ask fchat for something the tech might have omitted, Asking for free advice.
Then gets mad when he gets called out for buying said salvage and told how to work it up..

Ah I love fchat.

 

Cali T does not allow full boost in lower gears, perhaps the low boost is because there is a problem with the sensor that tells the ecu what gear the car's in ? Maybe that got wet ?

M

 

Not sure what was done on the DB6, but that's a 50 year old car. It barely has any electronics. Quite easy to replace anything electronic and get on with it.

Now...trying the same with a car from this era, replacing everything electronic is a huge operation, and very expensive. So you try and narrow it down, and replace all that's ''probably'' needed. Water damaged cars of the current era are a huge ****ing nightmare, and not comparable in any way to cars such as the DB6.

 

That is a good attitude to have James. These cars are incredible to work on and you can learn a lot by taking off the panels and doing some diagnostics with Digital volt meter and even one of the usb oscilloscopes. There are some good books on CANBUS systems. The biggest problem is a good schematic is hard to find. My first post on Ferrarilist was about how to remove the TR alternator had one comment about needing a special wrench! Remember some owners are more worried about trade-in values than anything else. FWIW.

Jeff Pintler
89 348tb, 86tr, 99 360 3-pedal, S-160 Bobcat

 

are you sure your dealer is using the right scanner and not some 5 or maybe 105 dollar OBDII scanner?

You will need the proper Ferrari Diagnostics system to pull all the codes as many are stored without even giving you a malfunctioning light.
100% throttle without sufficient boost levels will store codes.

 

James, I've owned a few turbo cars and one thing you might try is disconnecting the control line from the wastegate, and running it (carefully) only on the WG spring. This line may be a hard line, and if so, will probably be a screwed fitting connection.

This may throw a bunch of codes, but it should also tell you whether the problem is mechanical (WG sticking) or electronic (in the WG controller). Just be REALLY careful not to overboost during testing.......