Nuts & Bolts...

Hmmm... you must be bored today.

 

Carbie, when you get an fcar, I am sure you will come "over to the tech" side, at least somewhat. In time....

 

Let me relay a little story to you. I was a film major in college. Loved films. Couldn’t get enough of them. Then when I began to dissect them in class over the course of several years I was no longer able to enjoy them as much. I'd be watching them thinking "Hmmm... our hero is moving from right of the screen to left... Why are they trying to create tension in the audience? What's about to happen?" And other things of that nature. In short, it took me a good many years to allow myself to just watch and enjoy a film without dissecting it.

After college I tried to get back into auto racing which I had been doing before I went. When I had been racing before I new a fair amount about how to set up a car. More importantly I could just drive fast. If the car had a problem I'd just drive around it. But, after college I worked as a race mechanic trying to get into a drive (it never happens anymore don't try it). I learned just about everything you could know about how race cars and road cars are put together. With the exception of engine building. It helped me with setting up a car immensely. I no longer had to drive around any problems. They were easy for me to identify them and make corrections. I could then go faster. In that sense it's a major plus!

But, like the film school experience it has taken the magic out of cars that I once felt. Now when I look at a car, Ferrari or Ford, I see how it's put together. How it all works as a unit. There's no mystery to it. Often I'll look at a car and think, "why'd they put that there? It would have been much better if they'd just moved it down there. And why use that? That's kind of half-assed for the price of this car..." You get the idea.

In one sense I envy you. You'll always have the same bright eyed enthusiasm and wonder I'd had when I was a teenager about a car even when you're old. Me. Not so much. But, I can make anything go faster. And I can fix it myself. That's saved me a lot of money over the years. Money I can use for other things.

Like movies and popcorn on a rainy Saturday afternoon.

 

I think that a true enthusiast should be interested in ALL aspects of that which they choose the be enthusiastic about. To ignore the mechanical aspect of a Ferrari is to miss out on a fascinating facet of its existance. Ferrari's have rich racing heritage and there are tons of mechanical details that point to that when working on one of these cars. Just my .02

 

Carbon.

I love to tinker, I have since I was 16 years old, and that's some time ago.

At the same time, I respect people who either know their limitations, or would rather drive a car than fuss with it. To each to his own, right?

So what if you don't know how find the points on a car? Or what the points are, for that matter. Although, if you decide to go classic or vintage with your first Ferrari, and want to drive it distances from home, some rudimentary mechanical skills are required to keep you on the road. ANd a few tools in the trunk will save your arse sooner or later.

What annoys me more is that new cars in many ways, have become tinker proof. If you don't have a supercomputer and a PhD in mechanical engineering, you ain't gonna do a lot of diagnosis or repairs to your 2004 360, or you 1995 Honda for that matter.

They make cars that are waxable, and you can still change the oil, but I'd be very nervous about doing any major work on one of these new fangled engines. (Although I did chip a 911 recently.)

So, long answer to your short question. Love the car, hire a mechanic if you don't want to turn a wrench. Doesn't drop you down a notch in my book.

DM

Oh, how'd the download of the Enzo pix go?

 

Dammit Carbon, you need to listen to Gerald. Why not buy that MG he has sitting under the tarp. After six months of trying to get that beast running, you'll understand all you need to know about nuts and bolts and crappy connectors and grounded wires and leaky carbs and slipping clutches and pulling brakes and...

Dr "Nutty" Who

 

It wasn't so long ago that you didn't know a 308 from a 328 from a GTO..... Now half the time you identify a car by it's serial number which leaves quite a few of us scratching our heads wondering WTF it actually is. You still have some time to learn a thing or two about the watchamacallits and thingamabobs

 

..the God of All EVIL LUCAS ELECTRICS and his insidious Italian cousin MAGNELLI MARELLI!

 

Since my Dad was a mechanic, I learned to work on my own vehicles early on. I still work on them when I have the time, partly because I'm too cheap to hire anyone to do it for me, and also I know that what has been done has been done correctly. To be an enthusiest of any car, I would think you would want to know how it works from top to bottom, at least that's how I feel.

When I get burr up my butt about anything, I go on a mission to find every/any thing I can on it. I research, gather info., investigate, communicate with others, and read lots and lots on the subject. Then sometimes after I've learned everything I can on the topic, I lose interest. It's kind of like the "I've conquered it" thing.

 

Once you own a Ferrari you cannot help but become mechanically involved. It's going to break sooner or later.

If you're a gearhead, you'll crawl around and fix it, and curse.

If you are not a gearhead, you will take it to a mechanic, who will fix it for you. It is only out of sheer morbid curiosity that you will ask the mechanic what went wrong, because it cost so much to fix. He'll tell you, and you will learn.

 

No.