Quote:
Originally Posted by Tim Hancock
I have always wondered why folks claim these cars are so poorly built and what actually breaks on them necessitating tens of thousands of dollars to continuously repair them.
I mean can't a hard core DIY type keep one of these running if he is determined to do so? Most seem to imply that Ferrari machanics are some sort of gods..... I just can't imagine that these cars could not be maintained by mere mortals so long as they had the patience and shop manuals.
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Anything can be DIY. People build entire airplanes in their home shops too.
There are several DIY guys on Ferrari Chat. Many do their own 30K Major services. The entire subframe is dropped out of the car. The general consensus is that it takes ~40 hours to do. And you shouldn't wait 30K miles, it's really once every four years. And you'd better have the electronic tensioner measuring tool (kinda like 944 belt gauge) or a place to rent/borrow one.
If you think Ferraris are as well-built as Porsches, you'd better look again, really hard. They are low volume. They had/have parent company bean counters that substituted cheap crap parts. They're engineered by Italians, not Germans. They're robust in some ways, and delicately fragile in others.
So, even if you were a DIY kind of guy with the ability, space, time, and tools, you'd still have to buy parts. Ah, there's the catch. As someone posted, many items are NLA and others are just plain nutso priced. Used parts are also very expensive.
I'm not suggesting that 348s are bad cars. They're great cars. But they're really not meant to be daily drivers unless you have a pretty big bankroll, a great technician (maybe DIY), and something else to drive while its being fixed.
Here's a typical INDEPENDENT 30K 'Major' service bill:
($12,722.05 total, only $4769 in labor)
