Giles’ 488 Scrapbook

[giles]

Fabulous to have that record of your build. Will we see it on drive it day (sans fake carbon mirrors…)?

The mirrors are a classic example of people thinking they know better than the highly paid design team that put together the vehicles in the first place.
Take a look at these mirrors, who in their right mind would conclude they look better than the original condition?
Miss-match of carbon effect weave pattern, visible wrap edge conditions and red paint visible at the edges/joints too. It’s like poor quality wallpapering.
The best thing to do is take the wrap off and apply PPF. That way the protection against trees and brambles is maintained and it looks better quality too. However, the risk is unearthing some underlying damage…. We will see!




I know a fantastic PPF company in the midlands who I’m sure can do this, Covertech Midlands in Birmingham, so I’ll get it booked in
Cheers, Giles

 

[A348W]

those look terrible! hopefully the paint is all good and you can show that great colour! ppf a must. ppf on my mirrors need redoing soon as it takes a battering!

 

[giles]

Hi Folks,
With encouragement from various sources, I finally took the brave pill and had a go at removing that god awful carbon wrap from my mirrors……




Super happy with the result, there are a couple of usual stone chip type marks, but nothing substantial and most importantly it has revealed original Rosso Fuoco OEM paint, happy days!
Now the passenger side to do, fingers crossed!
Cheers, Giles

 

[Nosevi]

Much better. Carbon is all well and good on the right type of car - generally looks fine on a 488 I think but I've seen it on 348s and older cars and I've never really liked that - but 'fake' carbon just looks like you're trying too hard. All imo and if others like Carbon wraps all fine, but if it isn't a carbon part then personally I would never try to make it look like one.

 

[giles]

Hi Folks,
After successfully removing the Carbon wrap on the driver mirror I tackled the passenger side mirror, that revealed a lack of lacquer and wet and dry flatting marks where some prep work had been attempted. My guess is the mirror cap was cosmetically damaged and they concluded that the easiest thing to do would be to wrap it. Thankfully I have now had the mirror repainted by Colour Code Motors in Studley, a great colour match which is a bit of a challenge on the triple coat Rosso Fuoco.
The only job remaining to do is to get the rims back to matte Grigio Corsa as per the original spec sheet.
Coming up in July I have my last free service, planning to take to Graypaul Birmingham, we’ll see what they find and also how ‘free’ is free after they have been over it with a fine tooth comb. The only thing I can pick up is a slight noise on the brakes, apparently switching the front ceramic discs can help (switching left to right and right to left), we will see.

My 488 out and about sitting pretty amongst some other fab cars!





Cheers, Giles

 

[giles]

Hi Folks,
Just had the last of the free services done by Graypaul Birmingham, all ok with the following issues:
Rear bearing bush needs replacing, at 24k miles that is somewhat of a surprise and it’s quite an expensive job, however it is covered on the Power 15 warranty so no worries.
Wiper blades are split which isn’t an issue but at more that £250 to replace there must be another option? Anyone?!
After having the geometry done I noticed I have been getting an Automatic Vehicle Hold (AVH) and airbag warning, dealer says this is a ‘battery state of charge’ issue which is in line with another issue found on the trickle charge connector, near the rear numberplate which has oxidised and therefore needs cleaning off. This they believe would be the cause of the erroneous error messages. The battery on my car is the updated Odyssey type.


They also wanted £1000 to ‘clean off’ my discs because they say lack of use has meant they are a little squeaky. I will either give them a clean up by more use or live with it.
Other than that pretty ok
Trying out the fit on the Ferrari cover:

Cheers, Giles

 

[A348W]

Ill clean your brakes for £500! Just give me the keys…back in a bit!!!

 

[Kyodo]

A thousand quid to clean the discs
They can get a bit squeaky though, mine do at low speed (although pretty minor, not too embarrassing)

 

[dermot]

When I had my 488 I changed out the OEM branded Odyssey PC1220F. You should get equiv (non Ferrari stickered version) Odyssey 1220 for about £200.. Ferrari will charge you double.

 

[giles]

Hi Folks,
After cleaning the contacts for the trickle charger (Absorbent Glass Matt - AGM compatible C-TEK MXS 5.0) and placing back on I still got the error messages, maybe they are not as erroneous as I thought! The (slightly) good news is that because I have the Power 15 warranty they can investigate/diagnose without charge then give me a quote if it doesn’t fall within the warranty cover.


‘Go to dealer’ - and be prepared to be fleeced!
Cheers, Giles

 

[dermot]

Many of us have been here before, the C-TEK MXS 5.0 is good maintainer but it will not save you from battery issues. The battery may test OK on a basic test. The problem is these cars are very sensitive to voltage drop on cold cranking. Once the voltage dips it triggers all sort of random errors. The AVH one is very common. There are loads of threads on this on FChat. I posted a technical report on 458/488 batteries on FChat some years ago. Some suggestions are supposed to help. Press ignition on, light up the dash for 30-60 sec before cranking. Another is doing this in combination with pressing hard on the brake pedal. The ultimate solution in a Lithium battery, I looked into trying to do a group deal on an AntiGravity solution but could not make it cost effective.

 

[giles]

Thanks for the top tips, appreciate it

 

[giles]

Hi Folks,
Graypaul Birmingham have just contacted me and said they are still waiting on the hub carrier/bearing bush which will be replaced under the Power 15 warranty, the hub will arrive this afternoon so I will get the car back today for the weekend and return it on Monday when they can do the job, collecting Wednesday that includes 48 hours standing time for the bonding to cure.
Regarding the AVH and airbag lights, they believe it was a low voltage issue and they have explained that the CTEK 5.0 will maintain voltage but once the voltage is low it will not bring it back up, this surprises me to say the least! Anyhow, they have apparently connected it to their powerful charger (she called it the 'la ferrari' charger - not sure how relevant a PHEV charger would be on a 12v system?) and they are confident the battery health has been restored and I'm good to go. I guess when I get it back today and drive it over the weekend I will find out.

 

[giles]

Hi Folks,
I picked my car up yesterday as planned from Graypaul Birmingham the Ferrari my local main dealer and it’s good and bad news.

Funnily enough I’m pretty sure the purple 296 parked up next to me is a guy I know in our village, small world in Ferrari circles it seems!

Ok, so the good news is that on the way home the error state AVH and airbag system failure messages didn’t illuminate so their diagnostics of low battery voltage followed by a full charge appears to have worked.
The bad news is they have damaged my bumper paintwork, I’m very particular with how I use or where I take my 488, I don’t leave it anywhere unless flanked (and therefore protected) by other F owners on club meets etc.. (yes, very nerdy, fully aligned with that! ), so as a result I was pretty disappointed when I spotted this in their car park……

They said they believe they will be able to polish that out. I’m not so sure.
Either way they said they will sort it out.
The curious thing to me is that she was telling me how they wrap the cars in cotton wool and how careful they are, and CCTV keeping track of the cars etc…. but did say something along the lines of, I hear your words but that isn’t quite aligned with what I’m seeing with my car! Oh well, we will see.
Cheers, Giles

 

[giles]

Looks like I spoke too soon!




In summary, the main dealer has had my 488 for a working week, they told me they fixed the warning messages but haven’t, they were supposed to fit the new rear hub bearing bush (complete hub unit), but parts have been delayed so they haven’t done that either. But they have damaged the bumper.
So when I get the customer satisfaction feedback form to complete, what do I say?!
Cheers, Giles

 

[Nosevi]

Looks like I spoke too soon!


In summary, the main dealer has had my 488 for a working week, they told me they fixed the warning messages but haven’t, they were supposed to fit the new rear hub bearing bush (complete hub unit), but parts have been delayed so they haven’t done that either. But they have damaged the bumper.
So when I get the customer satisfaction feedback form to complete, what do I say?!
Cheers, Giles

Got to say I've been there with main dealers (and some indies tbh). Over the 14 odd years I've had my car I've loved owning it, the one big let down being the level of service I've sometimes received. On numerous occasions I've had to rectify problems myself that weren't there when the car went in and she's been sent back on a few occasions too. Often it's just carelessness such as having overspray across the bonnet when she hadn't even been painted or the underside of the engine cover being badly scratch after it had been removed for work. My 2 daily drivers are looked after by a little village garage near my house and I can honestly say I've generally had better service when they've gone in than when the Ferrari has. I've actually been close to giving up and selling on more than one occasion because of it,. Drives me nuts, the level of service vs what we pay for it.

 

[A348W]

thats all rather frustrating and really not encouraging me to a newer ferrari!

id be tempted to change the battery as whilst you can boost them, or whatever the technical term is, they may not recover long term! as you know all the forums ate full of battery related issues; generally related to lack of us…!

 

[giles]

Hi Folks,
The 488 is back home now, and, I think, all fixed.
The issue on the airbag warning and AVH failure was a failed drivers side (RHS) seatbelt buckle, £760 all in. Previously after they charged it with special Ferrari positively charged electrons/ions, which are clearly better than your domestic positively charged electrons(!), it drive home fine then after a later drive the same error message appeared on the fascia, so I guess I should reserve judgement until I’ve done a few error free trips
The LHS rear hub bush has been changed under the Power15 warranty, but it would have been around £2.5k.
The scratches have been done too, scratches do seems to have been taken out, quite impressed with that thinking back how unsightly it looked.



Ready for more fun drives
Cheers, Giles

 

[Nosevi]

Great that it's all sorted including the scratches but did I read that right - a faulty seatbelt buckle triggering a fault with the braking system?!?!? Well, parking brake anyway. And can that system cause the brakes to lock on so you can't move the car? Think I've heard of that happening before. Then it costs £760 to replace the seatbelt buckle as it has sensors in it etc.?

Sorry, it's just that the mind boggles as to why they have all these systems that can (and in your case did) fire up faults when I can't for the life of me work out what the point of them is. Just so happens I decided to replace my seat belts a couple of weeks ago and while I know you can just get new aftermarket belts put on the reels I splashed out and bought a brand new set of the lot from Maranello Classic Parts - new belts on the reels with new buckles with bolts and fixings for the lot. Cost significantly less than that buckle. Just don't know why engineers insist on complicating things so much these days.

That said, good that it all seems sorted now

 

[giles]

Yes, that’s correct, how I had it explained to me is…. the auto vehicle hold feature talks to the seatbelt buckle to check it has a driver on board, then the airbag system performs in conjunction with the seat belt (that’s where SRS, ‘secondary’ restraint system comes from) so if the vehicle detects an issue with the seatbelt buckle (presumably unable to detect in use or not with the intermittent buckle failure), it then deactivated the airbag and pops the error message red warning light on the fascia. And also, yes, it was £760 all in, which I’m not to put out by really.
I’ve done a couple of local Stratford drives this weekend and so far so good, no warnings illuminated so I’m pretty satisfied it is indeed fixed.
Next step will be to get the car to JP Alloys fit the refurb of the rims back to Matte Grigio (Corsa?) the option paint finish from new. That’s clearly purely cosmetic and not something that really needs doing as the satin finish black rims are blemish free.
Cheers, Giles