I'm know a lot of 360 owners are familiar with the rough idle for a few seconds on a cold start. My car was doing this. I recently switched the engine oil from Amsoil to castrol syntec and now it really comes to life on cold starts. I drive my 360 a lot so this is a conclusion i have drawn after several dozen (at least) cold starts. The stumbling and bumbling is a thing of the past. Hope this helps guys. Would love to hear if anyone has a similar experience.
ihave castrol in mine and it still does the cold hard starts,i doubt the oil fixed your car,i havnt heard anyone really getting a 100% fix for there cold start concerns.hopefully yours is cured,keep us posted
Upon startup when not driven for a while they will start rough if you will at first because it's self adjusting the valves, after which Zoom, Zoom!
If on first start, you shut it down as soon as it turns over, wait for the Check OK lamp, and then restart, you will get a normal, smooth cold start. Some of us think the injectors bleed down over time and the initial rough start is the injectors not being fully filled. Amost starting it the first time fills them. This is the equivalant of starting the old SOHC cars where you turned on the electric fuel pump and waited for the ticking to stop as fuel pressure got to the carbs. Taz Terry Phillips
I find that this issue only comes up sometimes on the first start of a day and goes away with regular driving- sometimes happens when car is sitting for several weeks or something. It is true you can just turn off the car as it's doing it and re-start and its fine, but my mechanic said just let it "put put" as you describe it for the few seconds- without touching the gas- just let the car settle to a normal idle on it's own (it only takes a few seconds). Once normal idle is obtained (either immediately or when I get the put put after a few seconds), I back her out of the garage and drive the car easy skipping 2nd gear until the gearbox is warm. I am old school in that I believe the best way to warm up a car is to drive it easy- easy throttle, low revs (in a 360 I'd say ideally below 3,500 if possible without lugging given the incline of road etc) until oil temperature is up to a normal operating range.
Not sure if it's coincidence, but I've noticed the same thing. If I don't drive it for a week and don't put it on the tender, it starts rough and will often stall initially but turning it over the second time seems to be back to normal. With it on a tender, it seems to fire up nicely on the first try.
There were many posts by FChat-ers describing similar "symptoms", which had completely gone using a new or well-charged battery. To avoid problems, make sure to switch off the battery (main) switch while charging and NEVER (!!!) "jump" the car using cables. There were several reports of damaged electronics and instrument clusters due to this... I am not sure why (the mains switch was on when placing the wires? or another reason), but IMO one should avoid this. Cheers.
just my 2 cents: yes, use a battery tender but I don't think it has anything to do with the cold start problem.
Turning it off, turning the key to get the "OK" again and re-starting definitely works, just that it's un-needed since the car will be at normal idle pretty quickly (and since my mechanic told me to just let it get to idle on its own). I understand if you just like doing it though- a ferrari running rough even for just a few seconds is like fingernails on a chalkboard Regarding the people talking about batteries/maintainers, I'm not sure that is it. The description of maybe the injectors losing some sort of prime sounds reasonable. At least in my case, I only use the battery tender when I'm not going to be using the car for something like a month- essentially it's off the tender from spring until late fall. I notice (again on my car anyway) if I'm able to use the car within say a week or so (i.e. the car was sitting for a week) it wasn't doing the put put anymore on the first start of the day. In the early spring and if the car was sitting for a longer period of time during the "driving season" (2 weeks or whatever), it might do the put put initial start, but only half the time if that. With the opportunity to drive the car regularly (i.e. a bunch of sunny weekends in a row or days off from work) the car doesn't do the put put on startup. (and maybe it's just my mind playing games, but the car seems to run even better with regular usage vs. when I first purchased the car and it was likely sitting for a while in the prior owner's collection not being used as much).
I'm using a battery Tender (since the troubles I had on a 360 from a low battery) and NOT turning the main battery switch off. My mechanic said it was not necessary. With the slow (low level) charge of a "tender", do you think it could possibly cause damage? I'm curious what others are doing.
I have used Battery Tender for 5yrs on my 360 without turning off the main switch in the trunk. So far, I can see no ill effects, and battery spins the motor briskly as always. Also interested if some believe this could be deleterious.
I doubt it if it's a low level battery maintainer- it's things like jump starting that can fry some of the sensitive parts of the 360 electrical system like the dash lights. I have a battery tender that's 1.25 amps- it's advertised in a bunch of auto magazines (even in Porshce Panorama, the porsche club magazine). Anyway, it takes so long to get the green light of full charge even when the car is plugged in with what seems to be a strong battery that I can imagine it's a low level charge. The charger is nothing fancy and worked so well I even got one for my old vw bug: http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/NEW-Deltran-Battery-Tender-Plus-12-Volt-1-25A-CHARGER-_W0QQcmdZViewItemQQhashZitem20b60db272QQitemZ140493304434QQptZMotorcyclesQ5fPartsQ5fAccessories plus one of these to get across the garage: http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/BATTERY-TENDER-PLUS-JR-25-FT-EXTENSION-LEAD-_W0QQcmdZViewItemQQhashZitem43a4738f72QQitemZ290521845618QQptZMotorcyclesQ5fPartsQ5fAccessories I'm not affiliated with the sellers above- just grabbed them off ebay- can maybe find them cheaper. This thing is so much easier to use than the factory battery tender that my car came with as an option...the prior owner used the battery tender as well, I don't think he ever opened the ferrari $900 POS in the trunk with the tool kits- I only opened it to see what it looked like and put it back for the next owner to look at and put back
Well, yes since technically after cutting power to the battery there is a whole sequence you are supposed to follow to recalibrate the computers- something like letting the car stay in start with no motor for a while, starting and idleing for a while, then driving for a period of time under light throttle at certain RPM....It's better to keep a normal flow of power to the computers.
5 years....that's good to hear! Thanks for your response. I left the $900 POS (LOL) in the tool kit and bought a Battery Tender.
Taz is absolutely right. I have the same problem with my Feb 2007 430. The problem is a new one and just started occurring about 2 to 3 months ago. According to my mechanic, the issue is most likely with the fuel pump / regulator. He prescribed the treatment that Taz described and the second crank starts up the car wonderfully. A complete solution would be to replace the fuel pumps but he said there was no need to. However, it is quite irritating that a Ferrari should start off so awfully from a cold start. And I wonder what long term effects / damage of double-starting the car every time from cold starts are? Does anyone know a solution to the problem apart from replacing the fuel pumps?
those are good points,some say just let it idle low and build up and some say just turn off and recrank,id love to hear someone that fixed this problem 100%.
I guess that's why my mechanic says just let it do it's thing. The long terms effects might be minimal (you're just using the starter 2x instead of 1 only for the first start if the car is put-ting), but I guess it's easy enough for me anyway to just wait the few seconds.
My first winter as a ferrari owner, had the dealer put in a new battery at time of sale last March, start the car and drive it still in 30 degree weather every few days and neither seen nor heard any of this. Car roars to life immediately every time.
Bob- Consider yourself lucky. Nothing wrong with our batteries. I cannot stand the putt putt because to me it sounds like the engine being tortured with an improper mixture, so I will stick to the double start when she has been down a few days. To each his own. Taz Terry Phillips
Terry- this happens on 550/575's too? I thought it was just on 360/430's... Does it happen all the time for you with the v12? As I said on mine and other's it's only occassionally, and rare if the car is used on a regular (weekly/biweekly basis)
In another thread someone mentioned NOT pushing the clutch down and turning the key. This helps to pump some oil around the engine. Then shut off, turn back on and wait for the "OK" and start. Not sure if this will help the "putt, putt, putt" problem. Just throwin' it out there. Yours, Tom
My 2002 F1 just started experiencing the same symptoms. I'm hoping that when I take it out of storage and in for service Ferrari should be able to diagnostic. I've tried adding injector cleaners during the summer without any luck.
