The Hollywood Mechanic 17 point FF check

What I have noticed is that the bonnet doesn’t line up totally flat with the bumper and I’ve seen quite a few where this seems to be the case - is the is “wavy front bumper syndrome”?

 

Where exactly?

 

Here's where I'm at.

MY2013, purchased 15 months ago with 12,000 miles, currently at 16,000 miles.

1 PTU clutch pressure sensors - No
2 Wavy front bumper - No
3 Leaking radiator - No
4 AC compressor leak/failure - No
5 Loose steering (tie rod ends) - No
6 Valve cover gaskets - No
7 Timing solenoid failure - No
8 Heater control valve failure - No
9 Battery - No issues, I do leave the hood open for a few hours after I come back from a drive.
10 Weeping water pump - No
11 DCT - No
12 Front disc overlap issue - No
13 Rear disc chewed up - No, but I did start driving with TC off recently
14 Leaking shocks - No
15 Sticky buttons - Only the ones one the back of the steering wheel. And the knobs one the HVAC vents. The rest are good.
16 Leather - No issues, but the car is garaged and if not I put a sunshade on the front windshield and crack the windows open.
17 Seat switches - Had an intermittent issue when I first bought it, but it fixed itself...

 

This checklist, and whether or not yours has stuff on it, is meaningless.

At 23K miles I have the weepy radiator and valve cover gaskets. Nothing else, including PTU and DCT... yet, but it is surely coming. The issue is not so much these items, but the cost of the vehicle even if you don't have these issues and if there is basically nothing wrong with the car. I was averaging $4K per year on "services" with the dealer (less now, see below), between scheduled stuff, DCT and PTU flushes, and battery replacements. The labor rates are obscene. I was recently quoted $13K to replace both rear MSRC shocks (one is leaking) by the dealer. This is preposterous, as the shock swap takes 4 hours tops (they wanted something like 8 hrs labor rate) and you can get the shocks from Eurospares for $2,100 apiece or so. I wound up having mine rebuilt. My 2016 Z06, which now has 40K miles and uses those same shocks, has never required any service at all except oil changes. It too has 650HP.

I am on my second valve cover gasket leak, which seems to happen every 6K miles or so. $5K, negotiated down to $3K with shaming. Same story radiator. Wound up having the indie do both. And if I had been stupid enough to purchase the warranty extensions I "qualified" for, I'd be out another $50,000 with nothing to show for it. My 458 is nowhere near this. I love that V12, but come on. Ferrari needs to do better, especially on messes like the DCT and PTU. But they don't care because 296s and 812s are flying out the door on leases. Same story with Mercedes, Lambo, BMW and all the rest of them nowadays. Just wait until the 1,200HP hybrid crap starts having problems...

Regarding Hollywood - I'd be careful. His credentials are vague and spotty... (linkedin profile differs from facebook etc.) and I'm not sure where he actually got all his apparent auto expertise. Interestingly, he works on many cars, but seems to be focused on FFs... and is now selling one, "fully sorted", for $172K. His personal car that he learned on? Maybe.

At this point, I still do the annual service with Ferrari for the official record, and I use my indie for the bigger and more serious stuff.

The FF has taught me that I'm not a normal Ferrari owner, or at least not by today's standards. I keep my cars. I'm not sure that today's Ferrari likes that, but they do still know how to make you feel special, which is more than I can say of most other companies nowadays...

 

The car hes selling is my car, hes doing me a favor, since im out of storage space at the moment

 

I apologize Smegman, I was not aware this is your car. I was just going off impressions in reviewing videos etc. that have been up recently. It seems Hollywood is the real deal, and if so, that is probably indeed the best sorted FF one can buy. And it's a nice car with an amazing interior spec.

I tried to edit my prior post, but I seem to be timed out. Again my apologies. I've been pretty annoyed lately with the FF "tax".

 

The list was generated by ANOpax from the YouTube video of Hollywood mechanic.
I think it is valuable how the owners of FF's look at this.
In my opinion there is no better market research than the user himself!

 

I certainly did not mean to convey that the list itself is not valuable, quite the contrary in fact, but I do see how my post could have been read that way. What I was trying to convey was that, from a probability standpoint, whether or not your car checks the boxes at this point in time is little indicator of what might come, or what expense / downtime you (or a prospective owner) may, or may not have. Your car, like mine, could have almost none of the major issues cited and yet still represent a considerable expense to maintain even relative to other Ferraris (it is what it is), or it could have hit a lot of the majors on the list and actually be one of the best cars to own or buy, going forward, as the major issues have been sorted. If I were in the market for an FF, I would value the "sorted" car far more than the "flawless" never-had-any issues car.

I hope that makes sense, and thanks very much to ANOpax for all the work he does to maintain our FF database on here. Like all of us who own an FF, I love it to death, but it sometimes frustrates me as well. Can't say that about a camry.