On track

One of the benefits of being a member of the Ferrari Club of Australia is that you get the opportunity to attend track days. This allows you to more fully experience the performance of your car on a track.

The above video, that includes photos and snippets from the days, was taken at the May 2013 Ferrari and Maserati Track Day at Eastern Creek. I went along just an observer given firstly my car was still in the shop having the dash re-trimmed and secondly I wanted to see what these days where all about before bringing the car along.

The morning was divided up into a number of ‘training’ stations around the track where drivers could learn more about their cars. In the above video you’ll see them doing a launch and then down to a breaking point. Other stations involved a slalom and cornering practice. Each time an instructor was in the car for tuition and assistance.

Once this was complete each driver then receive one ‘sighting’ lap of the track with an instructor and then, after dropping the instructor off, they could blast around as fast as they wanted (which you will again see in the video).

It certainly looked like great fun and I have never seen so many supercars in one location (especially 458s). The next track day is in October and I’ll seriously be thinking about giving at go with my F355.

Spare me

On of the things that many are not aware of is that the Ferrari F355 does not normally come with a spare wheel. Nope, not even a space saver! When you think about it, it is a rare occurrence when you actually need a spare so it makes sense to leave it out of the car since it reduces the overweight which provides better performance.

However, I have only ever driven cars with a spare so I always found it a little perturbing that the F355 didn’t have one. So the easiest solution to overcome this nagging doubt was to buy one.

The spare that suits the F355 is a space saver as shown above. It lives in the front trunk of the car. Now there is apparently a brace that you can install in the car as shown below:

to hold the spare firm. Apparently that assembly is quite hard to find and when I took a look in my car I could easily see where it should be installed. I’ll have to have a closer look when the car is outside in sunshine one day.

Obviously to change the spare you also need a jack and wrench. These come in a kit, as shown above, that I also purchased to give myself piece of mind.

The other thing that you need to beware of when you purchase a spare and jack is that it adds weight to the nose of the car. I noticed this only after driving around after putting then in the car and finding that the car scrapes more over driveways. Will need to be even more careful now when entering and existing driveways.

Now the spare and the jack are not cheap, but then again nothing on the F355 is cheap. That said however, I see the spare and jack as more than just piece of mind I see them as adding value to car if (heaven forbid) I ever decide to sell it. This is because the spare and jack are becoming harder and harder to source, so getting one now should certainly add value to the car overtime. I suppose we’ll see on that score but for the time being, having a spare and jack are worth every penny simply in my books for the piece of mind they provide when I’m out and about with the car.

Airbag ECU and cables

Well the replacement airbag ECU and cables for the F355 have turned up. Here are some shots of the parts:

169712 – Airbag cables

169710 – Airbag Electronic Control Unit (ECU)

So the car has been booked in with Racing Red to have these parts changed and to get the shrinkage on the dash repaired.

It is probably a little hard to see in the above image but just above the wiper connection you might be able to see some brown bits. This appears to be where the glue and the dash have parted ways. Not a huge issue but if the dash has to be ‘almost’ disassembled to replace the airbag cables might as well take the opportunity to get this ‘whole’ dash disassembled and this taken care of as well.