My AC was constantly on the fritz with the fan having a mind of it’s own. Daniel from Ricambi America for reasons that I can’t fully understand offered to give me a reconditioned unit in exchange for my unit, what an amazing freebie. He has a customer for life!!! I can’t say enough good things about him and Ricambi, if only all others ran their business like Ricambi.  Anyhow, the new unit fixed the problems and I have reliable cold AC now. I couldn’t be happier. Little by little the car is really being fixed and coming together.  Se my old unit below.

So I’m thinking of doing this to my car. I really like what a fellow fchatter did in this thread. What do you think?

Thanks to the help of Toggie, from Fchat, I’ve launched the Ferrari 348 Registry to keep track of all 348s. Check it out, it is a cool site. Unfortunately, I only have 194 cars in it right now and there are thousands out there. This is the breakdown of 348s production numbers:

348 tb Total production: 2,895, 130 RHD. First serial number: 81617. Last serial number: 96679.

348 ts Total production: 4,230, 261 RHD. First serial number: 81651. Last serial number: 96964.

348 Serie Speciale Total production: 116. First serial number: 92812. Last serial number: 95683.

348 Spider Total production: 1,090, 68 RHD. First serial number: 96520. Last serial number: 99627.

348 GTS Total production: 137, 15 RHD. First serial number: 96826. Last serial number: 99197.

348 GTB Total production: 252, 14 RHD. First serial number: 96937. Last serial number: 99364.

This is what the new french fog lights look like. I think they look great! The yellow gives a very different look to the front of the car. So while this was an unfortunate and unnecessary expense, at least I got an upgraded look out of it

I was driving back home from work on a beautiful day, when I hear a rock hit the car and then rattle down the underside. I get home to see what damage might have happened and here is what it looks like:

The worst part is these fog lights are no longer available from Ferrari because apparently they’ve lost the mold. Can you believe it?! So, Daniel from Ricambi found me a set of fogs from france. Not ideal and not cheap, but that should fix the problem….

Just some gratuitous pictures of a freshly washed car

I got a new steering wheel for Christmas, an authentic 360 Challenge wheel. It is covered in Alcantara (synthetic suede), and much sportier. It is amazing how a small thing like a steering wheel can totally transform the car experience since it is something front and center that you are touching all the time. It looks fantastic:

Competizione said they’d do a dyno run on my car once it had some miles on the 30K, so I took it there yesterday morning. Unfortunately, I don’t have a before baseline to compare to. They use a pretty slick hub based dyno as you can see below. We did 3 runs. The first was screwed up (red line in the photo), the 2nd and 3rd came out almost identical.

The verdict is 263 wheel HP. They put a 15% power train loss correction factor in the software which takes the engine horsepower to 303hp. Fernando thought 348’s lose a bit more power in the gearbox than most and said in his experience the loss factor is more like 18% which would put engine HP at 310hp.

Either way, the good news is my engine pulls like a factory fresh engine according to the specs. The bad news is that the Tubi and hyperflows did not seem to gain any substantial increase, maybe 10hp at the most if you believe the 18% correction factor.

Another interesting data point is that while they did not have another 348 run in their system, they had dyno’d a Mondial T (same engine as a 348, same spec 300hp) with a fresh 30K major which came in at 280 motor HP using a 15% loss factor. He said that on the Mondial, the intake is highly restricted compared to the 348. This lends some more credibility that HP is to be gained on the 348 on the intake side of things.

Check it out, great video about the Ferrari Factory:

I got my car back and everything has been fixed! The car now idles much more smoothly and pulls a lot harder in the high RPM ranges. Richard at Competizione also put on Hyperflow cats since he thought the old cats were close to failing. I am SO happy to have the car back and in this condition. Check out the before and after pictures of the heads: