A place away from the crowds

I am now able to house the F355 in a space that isn’t open to others and has it’s own security. Although nothing ever happened to it where it was, I was always worried about it getting hit by others. Now no more! Yeah!

Having a space makes it much easier to work on the car when needed. This certainly came in handy after getting the car back after having the interior refurbished, because the alarm light wasn’t working.

When I removed the ashtray to have a look why, the actual LED completely broke away and fell down inside the car. I could see it down there, but honestly it wasn’t worth fishing it out. I pulled the wires that ran to the LED through the dash and taped them up temporarily. I then started a quest to get a replacement LED and mounting.

Initially, I found something that I thought would work but the challenge was getting it connected in place. I wasn’t particularly keen on having a soldering iron anywhere near the car, so I decided that a screw on connector would work best. I also wanted to have a system where I could plug and unplug the LED if needed. This become pretty obvious when you want to remove the ashtray for any reason.

I bought the above audio connectors from Amazon. They are perhaps a little big but it does make it easy to connect and disconnect when needed.

The initial LED I bought I wired up and started testing. When I did, I saw it was drawing about 0.06 amps. I looked up some load tables and found that the battery would be more than able to cope with this and shouldn’t drain completely for about two weeks. However, given that I had the opportunity to reduce the load now I decided to do some more hunting.

In the end I settled on a 12V mini chrome bezel from Jaycar. It was pretty small but I liked the fact that already came with a casing. Even better, when I tested it, the drain was only 0.03 amps. That is, half of the original one. So, LED secured. Check.

Next, I had to find a way to mount to the console. The exposed portion was straight forward, but securing it underneath proved a real challenge. In the end I managed to secure it with some foam packing and nylon washers. Not the cleanest job but it seemed to do the trick. Besides, it would be easy to remove if I ever had to.

I wasn’t 100% sure whether the LED was 12 or 5 volts but decided to assume it would be 12 volts and adjust if needed. I removed the ashtray (again – man I thought I done this enough times already!) and secured one of the plugs with screw terminals into place. Next, I mounted the LED from the external side of the console and secured as best I could using the nylon washers. I then screwed in the other connector. Now, deep breath, make the connection and voila! The LED started flashing in its familiar pattern. Success!

I carefully put everything back in place and finally screwed the ashtray back. Hopefully, It will be a long time before I need to go back in there but at least now, disconnecting the alarm LED should be straightforward.

It felt good to be able to do a minor repair in a environment where I could have both doors open, a set of tools lying on the ground and no one looking at you. I can also report that the following week the car started and ran as expected, so no unexpected shorts or unforeseen current drainage.

I’m approaching my tenth year of ownership and I’d do a write up on that milestone soon. Hopefully, with the car in a better location I’ll be able to write more articles! Let’s see.

The parts are back

The good news is that all the bits are back! They were sent to Carplastix in the Czech Republic.

What an excellent job. Just take a look at the refurbished A/C console above. Bright and shiny logos and text as well as a great finish that ensures no more stickies!

The man that has put in all the hard work to get the interior sparkling is Elliot Caras whom you can find at elliotcaras@gmail and @restored_by_elliot on Instagram. Elliot loves the 355 and I highly recommend you reaching out if you need some work done. I’ve booked my car in with him (although there is long wait he is so busy) to get the suspension and shocks done next. Maybe on day it’ll be concourse material?

All that said, I have not as yet seen the car in the flesh. That’ll be later this week. I’m afraid to get it dirty now! However, I think the desire to drive the car is going to beat that in the long run.

Go figure

The F355 is getting closer to being returned with a complete refurbished interior, which is awesome. Interestingly, one of these steps was stripping the coating that had been applied to the centre console as you can see above. When I saw this I was dumb struck I will admit. Why the hell would anyone do this?

Seems the reason is that during resale, the quick way to ‘refurbish’ leather is to simply paint it with a coating that kind of looks like make up doesn’t it? It apparently requires a huge amount of work to remove unfortunately. I ‘sort of’ understand why it is done to help get the car ‘out the door’ but I still can’t understand why you’d do something like this that makes it really really hard to remove on a car like the F355. That’s perhaps why I’m not a car dealer. I just don’t get it.

The good news is that it has been removed and luckily is not also on the seats which would be a a major headache! So no long now until I’ll have the F355 back with a bright shiny interior. Can’t wait!

An interior refresh

After recently discovering the ‘stickies’, I reached out to a few owners to see what they suggested as the best course of action. The recommendations varied from applying a coating to cleaning with solvent. All of these would have involved a major effort on my part and also ran the risk of damaging other parts of the car, especially the leather on the dash. I also figured that once things start becoming ‘stickie’ it is only a matter of time until it all becomes ‘stickie’. Thus, if I’m going to fix things, I should get it done properly.

Luckily, another contact has extensive experience with this and suggested a interior cabin refresh, including refurbishing all the trim pieces. This would also include laser etching the graphics back onto the trim, which I had also been considering as some of my switches were becoming worn and faded.

Downside is that the car needs to be away for a couple of weeks to have all the trim pieces removed, sent away to be reconditioned and then re-installed. During the same time it was suggested to do a full interior detail, which I agreed with. It makes sense to do this while the trim pieces are off and the car is in pieces. It was something I have been meaning to do myself but just never had a location in which I could do this.

One of the areas where the wear and tear is most obvious is on the door handle, buttons and grip. Part of the refreshment process will be to also tidy these up which will be great as these had been areas that were starting to annoy me.

There are far cheaper ways to remove the ‘stickies’ but I’d rather get it done properly and completely so I don’t have to worry. Also getting the interior detailed and tidied up during the same time also makes sense and was something I was going to do. Given that the inside is where you spend the most time with the car it makes a lot of sense to get this done and time away from the car is a small price to pay for this. Also, doing this will add to the value of the car and let’s be honest, after 25+ years of use it could do with a once over!

I’ll have more to share as this process progresses so stay tuned.

The stickies have arrived

I was adjusting one of the vents in the middle of the dashboard and discovered that it is suffering from the well known Ferrari ‘stickies’ that plague many older cars. Basically, the coating on the plastic begins to separate from the actual plastic moulding leaving a nasty black sticky residue.

Luckily for me, this is really the only place I have found it. Not doubt it has been caused by sun exposure over the years, given the position of the vent on the dash. The question now is how to fix it? The challenge is that there are so many remedies out there, finding the best one is the next step. It’ll also be a little tricky to get right into the vents and I’ll no doubt need to clean the complete surface and lot of reside is going to come off I reckon.

The problem would be far worse if it was on the buttons for the A/C in the centre console. Finger crossed that it doesn’t start appearing there as well. Being on the vent in the dash means that I don’t to worry about it too much but I’ll need to start working on a solution because the reside does make quite a mess and will only continue to deteriorate.

In good news the 3D printed cog for the A/C controller that deteriorated appears to do the job when inserted in the controller. The next step will be to get the 3D people to make me a few copies that I can make available to people if they want. No idea on a prices as yet because I need to work out how many to make and what the actual, rather than test, costs are going to be. I’ll certainly post an update when I have that sorted, hopefully in the next few weeks.

The next 3D challenge will be to copy the F355 ashtray body, which I had lots of drama with back in the day.

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Hopefully, being a bigger item it will be easier to 3D print this and perhaps make it out of stronger material to prevent the arms from snapping as you see above.

As always, once one projects ends another appears. Let’s see what witchcraft people recommend to get rid of the ‘stickies’.

We maybe getting somewhere

It seems that we may be one step closer to getting a 3D print of the cog that is part of the timing actuator for the air conditioning that failed on me.. Someone has finally been able to render the part into a file that can then be used to actually create the cog!

Now that the part is on file it should be straight forward to print it. I’m not holding my breath as this tiny component has pushed many people to breaking point, including me. However, fingers crossed, the end result should not be too far away now. Then it needs to be tested to see whether it actually does the job.

Singin’ in the rain

Even though it was a wet and rainy day things couldn’t be better because the F355 is back and fully operational!

The failed hose ended up being Part Number 161609 (pipe from tank to radiators delivery pipe).

Which has now been replaced. The split appears to be right at the point when it bends up from the transverse pipes as shown above.

At the same time, the re-conditioned cats were re-installed as well as the suspension warning light being rectified. All that now needs to be done is to replace the broken gear in the air conditioning unit. At the moment I do have a replacement gear for that but I’m having a number of copies made, just in case!

The car will need to go back to Sal in about a month’s time for its annual service and registration. Hopefully, by that time I’ll also have the replacement gear, which can finally be fixed, and that should be it!

It looks like it is going to take about a year, mainly thanks for COVID, to get the car fully operational without ANY residual issues! However, in the meantime, even though it was quite wet today, it was a joy to take the car out for an extended drive. It’ll be even better to do likewise when the sun is shiny, but that is for another day. I’m stoked that the cats are back, there is no warning lights on the dash and no green liquid under the car.

Next project is to get the 3D print of the broken gear sorted. Updates on that when it happens. Stay tuned.

Green, green go away

After a month’s wait for the opportunity to be repaired, I decided that the safer bet was to trailer the F355 over to Sal for a diagnosis of the coolant leak. Watching the temperature gauge constantly while driving on the freeway and potentially having to pull over is not my idea of fun.

Loading onto a tilt tray is always a nerve racking experience and this time was no expectation. Inching along, holding the car by the clutch is not what these cars are designed for. However, being manual, it is probably much easier that using a F1 gearbox. The worst part is simply not being able to see where to align the wheels and relying on someone else’s hand signals, again, is not fun. But, we got there and up on the trailer she went.

Even on such a short trip onto the trailer, the car was still losing coolant as you can see.

The puddle created, when stationary, is about mid-vehicle. This means the leak is somewhere between the engine and firewall.

I waved the car farewell and awaited word.

The diagnosis is that the top hose to the header tank (driver’s side) had a small hole resulting in coolant being sprayed upwards into the engine bay. Luckily, not a major job after all.

Hopefully, I can also get the cats refitted and the suspension warning light resolved.

I am still in the process of getting the cog for the A/C control 3D printed, so I have a backup of this rare part. The replacement of this cog will have to wait till next time it seems. Next time, in fact, won’t be too far away as it will soon be time for the annual service and registration.

At the moment, the car remains at the doctors having the coolant leak, exhaust and suspension repaired. That hopefully won’t take too long and we’ll be back on the road again after many weeks.

Green is not my favourite colour

After a long hiatus, the F355 was about to go out for a longer run in the spring sunshine. It was also an opportunity to wash the grim off as well. During this process, I notices some coolant leaks (spray) near the firewall, just behind the driver. It had sprayed onto the underside of the engine cover and across the middle of the engine, near the braided connectors as you can see above.I cleaned off the area but upon arriving I notice it had returned.

Ok, this is a current issue that’ll need to be addressed. The amount leaking doesn’t appear to be huge, and I topped up the coolant tank, so the car should be drivable if needed.

After letting the car stand for about an hour upon my return, I check underneath the car and found a steady drop, drop, drop of coolant leaking from right in the middle of the engine. Again, nothing tremendous but enough to have me worried about getting it fixed asap so it doesn’t get worse.

Gear of misfortune

So the issue with the 63307100 Timing Actuator I’m having issues with turn out to be with the gear inside as shown above.

Given the teeth are all broken the easiest option seems to be to replace these but new and second hands are hard to come by. Seems like 3D printing might be the best option for a replacement.

Let me see what I can find and report back.