So far so good

Took the F355 out for a drive this morning as well as giving a good wash and polish. This involved a number of stops and starts.

I am happy to report no issues manifested themselves, with no sign of the ‘chuggs’. As positive as this experience was I need to wait until I need a refill to see whether the ‘chuggs’ has truely been banished. That test should come in the next few weeks.

An other addition I added to the car was to connect a charger directly to the battery and feed it up through the opening where the isolation switch is. Now when the car is standing it will have the charger plugged in keeping the battery in good order.

Over the years the thing that I have been most apprehensive about was the charge in the battery, especially after long periods of being idle (which are rare I admit). Typically, if I was really worried then I could isolate the battery and effectively the car could probably stand for months but I always wanted to avoid that and get a charger.

The charger that was recommended was:

Victron Energy Blue Smart IP65 12-Volt 5 amp 230V, Battery Charger, Bluetooth (AU/NZ)

which is available on Amazon. It works well but also includes an app you can use on your phone that connects to the charger via Bluetooth and allows you to view that state of charge as shown above. The app supports multiple chargers if required and also has an adapter for more modern Ferrari’s here:

Victron Energy 12V (Max. 15A) MagCode Power Clip

also available on Amazon.

Now that car has a charger that can easily be connected I don’t feel the same pressure to ‘have’ to take the car out just to keep the battery charged. I can leave it a few weeks if wanted. Not that I would, but at least now I have more flexibility and less angst.

I am very happy that the car has exhibited no issues after an extended highway run and a number of stops and start while cleaning and polishing. The big test will come in the next few weeks when I take it to get refuelled.

Fingers crossed, no more ‘chuggs’.

Final test before pickup

Here’s a video of the final test of the F355 by the mechanic before picking it up recently. No sign of the ‘chuggs’ which is good news.

As yet I am not fully convinced that issue has been totally resolved. I’ll still need to drive a few times and see. It will be interesting to see whether after a fill up on a long drive the problem does not re-occur. Time will tell.

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/eOm8Pj2CCXk

Surely it can’t be just this

After asking around I found another mechanic who was willing to take on the project of solving the ‘chuggs’. I therefore picked the car up from Ferrari and drove it to him.

Having described the issues he went straight to the seal inside the petrol cap. Took one look and said that it wasn’t the right seal and that may have been contributing to the issues. I can tell you that I will be both extremely happy and extremely annoyed if that does in fact turn out to be the case.

The old (wrong) seal had a metal cap as shown above, whereas the correct seal

is all rubber with no metal parts as shown above.

I left the car with him for a week and he tested it thoroughly using all the processes I encountered that caused the ‘chuggs’. The main one was getting the car hot and then refuelling.

Throughout all the tests the car performed faultlessly and based on that assessment I picked it up and brought it home. Again, without issues. To be honest it started much stronger that it had and drove well on the return trip.

It would seem to me that perhaps the fuel cap seal is just the last (hopefully) in a long line of issues that contributed to the ‘chuggs’. I think the main issue was that the injectors were in fact dribbling prior to a good ultrasonic clean (detailed here). However, getting a variety of things fixed/replaced like the charcoal canister, greasing the mass fly wheel, etc. all contributed to the overall resolution.

So, fingers crossed, the ‘chuggs’ have been solved but I won’t be fully confident until I have driven the car a few times, refuelled and repeated the typical process I saw when the ‘chuggs’ materialised. How many drives/weeks will that be? Not really sure but for now I’m happy to have the car back and be able to drive it again. Let’s hope that indeed the issues have been resolved.