SpidermanUK - 1999 F355 Spider

[Club Scuderia]

1999

1st Reg 1st May 99

The 1st May 1999 was a very special day in this little boy’s life, for that is how I felt , like a little kid, as I proudly walked into the old showroom at Maranello Egham to pick up my 1st ever new car, and much more importantly, my 1st Ferrari!

The car was waiting in the valeting bay, and all that was required was for me to lower the hood, and fit the hood cover, and I was off to smile at anyone who cared to notice, and on a warm summer’s evening in May, on the M25, I got noticed!

A month after taking delivery, I was invited to a charity shoot at The Royal Berkshire Shooting School in Pangbourne. Glorious weather, so I got the car out and blasted the 120 miles down and was puffed up like a peacock when I was ushered into the VIP carpark and the host announced that alas the “stunning brand-new Ferrari isn’t 1st prize today”. I was convinced I’d arrived in the most desirable transport, in spite of the Porsches and Bentleys lined up along-side! My bubble was burst a little later when Jonathan Palmer arrived driving his helicopter, but hey! These things happen!

I had a thoroughly enjoyable summer taking the car on the 110 mile round trip to work whenever the weather looked even remotely promising. The only thing to spoil my joy was scraping 2 wheels in a width restriction and coughing up £192.70 to have them refurbed at Egham. At the same time a small repair was carried out on the hood cover which cost £58.75

 

[Club Scuderia]

2000

2000

By her 1st birthday, she’d covered 6208 miles, so the nice people from Egham sent their covered trailer for her, and delivered her back a few days later after having relieved me of £1302.22.

At some point in the 2nd year, I was left stranded at the side of the A1 with a failed water pump, it does look quite spectacular to see a huge plume of steam suddenly appear in your rear view mirror! After waiting what seemed an eternity, with every joker in a white van hooting and waving, the car was recovered, I was dropped home, and off she went to the careful attention of Maranello. Fortunately, all was covered under warranty, and no collateral damage was caused!

Later that year it developed a fuel tank leak, I could smell petrol leaking especially after filling up, and I was extremely careful not to spill any, in case I spoiled the paintwork, and anyway it was bloody dear by then!
They collected the car, and returned it a few days later repaired.

At around 10,000 miles, I’ve lost the receipt so I can’t be more accurate, the rear tyres needed replacing, which I had done locally at circa £210 each, while I stood over the man doing the job to ensure he didn’t scratch the wheels!

 

[Club Scuderia]

2001/2002

2001/2002

By her 2nd birthday, she’d covered 11857 miles and needed an oil change service and brake fluid replacement at a cost of £770.77 and a stone had broken the front bumper-mounted flasher lamp, which was £91.30 to replace. I had also managed to kerb another wheel which is no surprise to any other 355 owner, as the design of a convex alloy that stands significantly proud of the tyre means that damage is pretty much inevitable! This time it was £162.15 to refurb one wheel, when it had been £192 to have two done the year before, I suppose that’s inflation! The annoying part was that the bodyshop “only did wheels on a Wednesday” so I had to leave the car with them for a few extra days until they got round to it.

Now the countdown started……….it was less than a year until the dreaded cam-belt service was due. Should I sell it and let someone else worry as the salesman had suggested when I took delivery? Hardly! For 2 reasons, the main one being that I couldn’t bear to part with her, and secondly, my 360 was nowhere near in sight!

By now I’d realised that these cars should’ve been available on the NHS as treatment for manic depressives! I had long ago discovered, that if I’d had a bad day, a certain cure to cheer me up was to put the roof down and go and frighten some villagers! I still was running the car completely standard, and I couldn’t hear any reason to fit a Sports exhaust. My car sounded great in standard trim and as I hadn’t heard a car with an after-market system, I had nothing to compare it to.

Another summer of joy came and went and as before I used the car whenever I could. I’d find excuses to go and buy a pint of milk or post a letter 25 miles nearer to the addressee, any excuse would do!

The car has always seemed a bit of a handful in the wet, it hasn’t leaked, but it’s certainly misbehaved in plenty of other ways! It commands respect, if you don’t, it’ll flip it’s end out and show you just where you’ve come from!


The dreaded day arrived, along with the covered trailer again. I think this may have been the last time they collected in this manner, after that they would send a driver by train to collect it, thus adding over 100 unnecessary miles!

A new alarm siren was fitted for £107.63, it had packed up over a year before and would trigger the Tracker on EVERY trip! I was on 1st name terms with all the lads at Trakbak!

The door mirror change-over switch was replaced, I argued that they must’ve broken it, because it had never been used since the 1st day I set them, and no one but me and their drivers drove it! They agreed, and I wasn’t charged.

The cam-belt pulleys were replaced but also so was the clutch and flywheel, the flywheel alone was £1479.56 which helped contribute to a final bill of £6240.55!!!!! For a service and a clutch!!!!

The warranty had officially expired after 2 years, but at the time of delivery, I’d been told that they’d look after most things up until 3 years. But this didn’t apply to wear and tear items……like a clutch and flywheel! I argued that they should last considerably longer than 15128 miles and was informed that I was lucky it was the 1st time the clutch was being replaced, as many owners were on their 3rd by then!

 

[Club Scuderia]

2003

2003

A few months later, in Feb 03 the engine cover stay started to sag, so I ordered 2 new ones at £50.76 for the pair and set about becoming a fully fledged Ferrari Technician by fitting them myself!!! That’ll show them, I thought, I’ve saved my self millions by doing it myself, even though it took me about 8 hours to do it,…..and then Philip in service said when I called about booking the car in, that they would’ve done it for nothing if I’d popped in because it was such a simple job, and I was a good customer!

The 03 service was a little more worrying. The car needed a few repairs at 16745 miles. It needed a broken exhaust clamp replacing f.o.c, N/S/F hub bearing and ball joint £302.09 + £132.19 labour and the oil tank repairing at £345 labour. The service was an additional £801.53

 

[Club Scuderia]

2004/2005

2004/2005

The 04 service is interesting to note that Maranello had managed to buck a world trend! We had seen the world oil price rise and rise, but I paid £37.75 less than I had in 2000! Of course the car was well out of warranty and goodwill by now, so they were starting to cut me a deal on servicing, in a bid to stop me joining the exodus to the indies! The bill was £654.33 which I thought was reasonable, and it gave me another Main Dealer stamp in the book, this time at 17507 miles.

Yes! You’ve noticed! I only did 762 miles in a year! But I have a good excuse, honest, I do! In March 03, my long awaited 360 Spider arrived, so I tended to use that for most of my Ferrari motoring that year!

Then came the major saga! In late 03 I took the car to a friend of mine who has done exceptional work for me in the past, to have the stone-chips done! They flatted back the damaged areas on the nose, headlamps and bumper and blew it in where necessary. It looked great. I was very pleased, and although it wasn’t cheap, they showed me the hours they’d spent on it and I paid £800 for a job well done!

Until I went into the garage a year later and discovered my pride and joy had the measles…big time! All the repaired areas were micro-blistered, and badly! To cut a VERY long story short, the 355 is the last of the hand-painted V8s, 360’s are done by robot! Consequently, the paint is much, much thicker on a 355 than most cars, about 350 microns as opposed to 160-180 on a machine painted car. The extra thick paint, combined with the extra thick primer had reacted with the new layer of paint and blistered! I had all sorts of experts look at the car, including technical reps from the original and replacement paint manufacturers. This is where my relationship with Maranello Egham became truly worthwhile. I wrote to Ferrari UK, and they weren’t interested, so I called Maranello and spoke to their GM, Rowland Luff. He got involved, even to the extent of accompanying me to an inspection in Slough. He persuaded Ferrari UK to contribute towards the repair cost, and also wrote a 4 figure cheque on behalf of Maranello Egham as a gesture of goodwill to a good customer……for a 6 year old car that had never had a paint or bodywork warranty! I had the front end stripped of parts, and the paint stripped back to bare metal and then repainted! A total of 66 hours work and a total bill of £4045, but it looks fantastic! The work was carried out at Bodytechnics in Slough, who do all of Maranello’s work, including new car rectification.

By the time they’d finished it was time for the 2nd belt change at 17899 miles, and again the cam-belt pulleys were replaced, and the alarm siren…again. I also had the water pump bearing, some exhaust clamps and the oil tank support bush replaced, total bill £3439.

All this saga took some 5 months to resolve, and it was at the advice of my solicitor who I was consulting at the time, that I should surf the net to find an owners forum to see if anyone else had encountered the problem. I’ll explain, initially, it was suspected that the whole car was somehow contaminated as when it was inspected under a powerful magnifier, there appeared to be tiny holes in the paint and you could see the white primer showing though, and the contention was that the stone-chip re-spray had exacerbated, not caused the problem!

There was only one problem with this theory, Ferrari use pink primer on red cars, so how could white primer show through? Answer…..it couldn’t…..the white bits were polish residue! The lesson I’ve learned is that sometimes you can look too carefully!

So I surfed the net, found a US based site with a strong UK section and the rest, as they say, is history! Apart from seeing an ad on “that site” for a 2nd hand Tubi, which I bought for a very reasonable £900 including fitting from George gee355, and I wish I’d done it from new! It just sounds so much better, and the bark and growl on the over-run makes me grin every time, well worth it, and thanks George!

 

[Club Scuderia]

2005/2006

2005/2006

During the summer I realised it was time to think about disposing of my 360. This was due to a number of reasons, the main one being the anticipated arrival of my F430 in Jan 06.

Now I was back to only 1 Ferrari in the garage, and a return to using my pride and joy!

I realised what I had missed most was the sense of involvement with the car. The fact that there aren’t any electronic gizmos, to save me when I over-cooked it! Yes, of course the 360 is faster, quicker, feels much more modern, has more comfortable seats and an infinitely more useable roof arrangement, but to me it just lacks something, and to be honest I’ve never considered the 360 a particularly good-looking car!

The 355 however is simply a joy to behold, and an even greater joy to drive. So I was not in the slightest bit disappointed to have to get the old girl out of the garage for the summer!

Apart from the usual issues with the battery not lasting, the car hasn’t let me down at all in the 1600 miles that I’ve put on it since the last service! I now plug in a battery maintainer direct to the engine bay charging point if I’m leaving the car for more than a few days.

I can genuinely say that I didn’t miss the 360 at all when I sent it away on SOR, in fact I was quite grateful of the opportunity to reacquaint myself with my older Italian Stallion!I just wish the weather had been a bit better so that I could’ve put a few more miles on it!

In June 05 I decided to try and eliminate any more stone-chips by having plastic film applied to the vulnerable areas of the car. The 1st installation was carried out at my home for the not inconsiderable sum of £887.50!!! It was horrid! The film had numerous ripples, ridges, and air bubbles and had lifted around the tightest radii on the bumper! I took the car to the supplier’s premises and they stripped off the bumper area and re-applied it. It lifted again! I took the car back yet again and……….well I feel I cannot disclose much more of this sorry tale, as I’m shortly issuing proceedings in the County Court!

A much more successful investment was to employ the services of Zymol Dave, Sportscar Protection. He arrived bright and early one morning in November and Dave and his assistant proceeded to graft like mad for 6 ½ hours! That’s 13 man hours to “clean a car”! I was frankly astonished by the result, Dave applied Red Zymol Royale and as you can see from the picture it looks pretty impressive! £400 VERY well spent!

In April 06 I needed to go to Maranello in Egham so I took the opportunity to drop off the car for its’ 18750 service, it was a little late a 19507 miles. A split o/s c/v gaiter was replaced, all 4 wheels were refurbished and the MOT was done. The total bill was £2698.85 inc VAT, but I do have yet another supplying dealer’s stamp in the service book!