Quick 355 spyder roof

Yes. In fact just test it and you'll see. You can even operate it while out of the car with doors open. It will completely overide the ECU. I was going to do the same if my roof failed one more time. Plenty of room to run the wire to the tunnel. Remove ashtray (pulls straight out) and you'll see one screw. Undo it and the entire center consol snaps out.

As you mentioned in your post, make sure seats are far enough forward.

 

When and if you can do that, let me know how to do it will ya?

 

wally - not sure about wiring in the seats to move at the same time...never thought about that.

As soon as you incorporate moving the seats with the roof operations your now routing the electrical signal through the potentiometer...which is a part that is prone to failure and is a pain in the butt. You want to by pass it all together if possible.

Problem with them is that they have cheap plastic internal gears and if they break you have few options:

1. Dealer will sell it to you, but only with the entire seat rail asssembly! Big money and it will probablly fail again.
2. A company in US rebuilds them, but want about $1K to do it.
3. An independent can get it seperately if he does some research.

Actually, the best thing to do is convert it to a 348 manual top. Goes up in 2 seconds

 

When the 355 roof works right IMO it looks good in operation, with seats moving forward roof lifting/closeing then seats moving back again in a smooth action. As opposed to having to get out the leaver needed in the 348, and get out of the the car to start the roof operation buy levering the hood up after you have located the leaver in its position.
Even though a more simple way of doing it, the 348 roof system does not quite cut it when theres a crowd of on lookers waiting to see the Ferraris hood operation. I do like the 355 system when working correctly, the seats moving at the same time would be a nice touch.

 

Tell ya a quick story...prob the most embarassing event in my car's history.

Did many concours...never left without a trophy. At any IAPFA certified concours convertibles have to be judged with the top up. After judging was completed I decided to lower top. Crowd of people around the car, including young boy with his father. As I started to drop the top, father says "Look, the roof is going down". I got the "beep"...seats go forward....top goes half way back...and you guessed it...it just stopped and died. No less than 20 people standing around the car. The expression of disappointment was all over the young boy. Then he says to me "Mister, how come it stopped working?"

What do you say? Man, I wanted to crawl into a hole and die... after the crowd dispursed I went into manual mode. Turned out to be the potentiometer and told myself never again. If she ever dies on me again I'll wire the emergency switch directly to the "normal" switch or convert it over to manual..

However, after that never had a problem with the top again.. Oh well..just part of the fun that goes with owning any exotic, I guess.

 

Good story, i can see that sh*t happening to me.