Ferrari 360 - ‘Challenge Stradale’ conversion

[slickcell]

Nah, can't be. They did a first class job filling it in within 48 hrs

View attachment 388079

First class f**k up of a repair more like.
Direction of travel is to the left. I'll be surprised if it lasted a week tbh. Just on the railway bridge north of Girvan. The tape measure in the pic was set for 1m.

@slickcell, glad you got everything back. Hopefully you'll get it all done for the spring and upcoming car shows/meets.

Thanks mate - hoping to have it sorted for end of this month!

 

[slickcell]

So, my left side carbon challenge doorcard FINALLY made it to me all the way from Maranello and I fitted this today after a bit of fiddling!!!

The doorcards are secured with some black Titanium bolts - if you’re going to fit carbon then these bolts are required, right?

The door opener cable works perfectly and the fit is awesome! The window motor needed spacing back by 3cm with some nylon spacers and extended bolts. Otherwise, the doorcard ‘pocket’ fouls the window motor and won’t sit flush.

the doorcards are back out again as they’re going for lacquering this week. They don’t currently match as the passenger side is new, flat finish and the right side is used and seems to have been satin lacquered at some stage previously!

Since I had the dash back, I popped it in and closed the doors, to see how well my hacksaw job worked. Perfectly….

At this stage, I was so tempted to tidy up the ends and keep it as it is but it’s booked for retrimming on 27th so I’ll just hold off to see it complete as originally intended!!

Most Ferraris/Maseratis and other exotic cars of this age suffer from ‘sticky buttons’ and mine was no different. I wasn’t keen on this so have been sorting bits and pieces as I go along. I ordered a replacement switch panel from Ferrari in Italy and to my surprise, this cost me a whopping £16.50!

Before….

After…

Delighted with this cheap fix! I just rubbed the individual switches with alcohol and a micro fibre, and the nasty degraded soft lacquer came off! Looks perfect I think!

That’s it for now!

 

[svensktoppen]

That's brilliant you can still get random interior stuff like that

 

[natogreen16v]

Mk4 Golfs are another exotic from that era that suffer from sticky buttons. A lot of people remove the ruined finish with oven cleaner. It's great you can still get them, especially for that price.

 

[NedHan79]

I don’t be on here much but I’ve just read through this whole thing. Great to see the big effort. Very jealous of any man with any Ferrari. Keep up the good work

 

[slickcell]

 

[slickcell]

Both doorcards now fitted after lacquering and are looking mint!

I couldn’t resist a little start and rev - I’m getting impatient now, waiting for my retrimming slot. Ive been tempted to throw it back together but I’ll hold out! Will be worth the wait

 

[svensktoppen]

That's fantastic, well done

 

[S2K-Aaron]

Looks brilliant, but please put a cloth or something soft between that door and your garage wall, I'm getting the heebie-jeebies looking at that lol!

 

[bigsigh]

That sound is incredible

 

[Con]

New Doug video might be a good watch for you bud if you didn't see it

 

[slickcell]

New Doug video might be a good watch for you bud if you didn't see it

I tried watching this last night but couldn’t tolerate him after 3 minutes of saying ‘Challenge STRAAADAAAAALLAAAAAYYY” so turned it over lol

I’ll update this thread later - I’ve a boot load of retrimmed interior bits to fit

 

[EF Ian]

I tried watching this last night but couldn’t tolerate him after 3 minutes

You are not alone

 

[slickcell]

So, AREK did the retrimming….I really don’t want to get into it and take away from the car/interior (which I am happy with) but I will never recommend anyone going to him for anything at all!

The quality isn’t what I was expecting and he took a few shortcuts that I really don’t want think about as it just pisses me off! He also tried to get away with charging me four times the original price he quoted me for…”it’s a Ferrari mate” lol
Anyway, here are the pics having spent all of this evening fitting

 

[big_pete]

That looks mega!

 

[natogreen16v]

Seems typical of most experiences I've been involved with or seen from Arek

 

[slickcell]

Seems typical of most experiences I've been involved with or seen from Arek

It’s very, very frustrating but after the last drama with the boys in Glasgow, I didn’t have many other options.

 

[Rigger]

I can understand you wanting the best for this conversion regarding quality etc and aside from him trying to gouge you, it still looks fantastic!!

 

[Boydie]

What were the issues because he would be the guy the most of us here would go too for that line of work.

Best to know the nitty gritty

However, from the pics, it looks good!

 

[slickcell]

What were the issues because he would be the guy the most of us here would go too for that line of work.

Best to know the nitty gritty

However, from the pics, it looks good!

I really didn’t want to get into this (or even think about it as I’ll end up pulling it apart again to get redone) but basically….we spoke about how it would be done when we were originally discussing the job. I was told that the original leather would be removed (obviously as you’d expect) and the soft-touch foam underneath would likely need to be removed completely and redone, if the foam got damaged during removal of the leather.

The area above the instrument cluster, looks a little ‘odd’ and I queried this when I asked for photos prior to collection of the dash. They told me it was due to the material and ‘difficult shape of the binnacle’ etc. they then took other photos of it from different angles, where it looked ‘better’, but retrospectively, I believe this was simply more careful photography.

When I collected the parts, they had them wrapped up significantly with cellophane and I took this at face value, loading them into the car.

When I got home and properly inspected the parts, I saw the reasons for why there were irregularities to the material. The lazy ****s thought it was a good idea to leave the original leather on and just trimmed new material out over the top of the old.

This is bullsh*t for a number of reasons - the whole point of retrimming was not only to restyle the interior, but to fix problem areas like where the leather had detached from the base and was slightly ‘baggy’, and as well as this, to reduce weight given the purpose of this build. This sounds stupid but even when i lifted the dash yesterday, I thought it felt surprisingly heavy removal of the leather from other parts that I did myself, actually did save more weight than you’d think!

But the main issue is how it looks given their corner-cutting….the dinamica is still ‘baggy’ behind the instrument cluster and still mimics other imperfections that the 20 year old leather developed over time.

Most frustratingly however, is that the impression of the leather stitching/seams can clearly be seen through the new dinamica because they’ve not been able to perfectly match the new stitch/seams with the new material. It’s left lines and imprints on areas that I can’t get my eyes away from.

Even the glovebox area - I asked them to leave off the original ‘360 Modena’ badge when retrimming. Had they actually done their job properly, it would be great looking but they’ve trimmed over the top of the original leather (and foam) which had a 20 year old badge pressing down over it and now the new red material has a blurry embossed logo on it.

Ah, I’m sorry I even wrote this now as I’m fuming….again

 

[saxo_man]

Still looks great though, two colour design is perfect.

 

[ace275]

That sucks on the shortcuts they took, but at least it's done and as far as the pictures tell, it looks great

I also don't like sharing negative experiences that piss me off, but it's important to know the good and the bad and helps others out

I'm sure when you get out and onto the loud pedal, it'll not have put you off

 

[bigsigh]

I also don't like sharing negative experiences that piss me off, but it's important to know the good and the bad and helps others out

I'm 100% the same, there have been a couple recently even in my own thread, and i just gloss over it and make a mental note not to go back there.

I absolutely get the annoyance of things you know weren't done the way you would have wanted them done, but to echo everyone else above, it really does look mega, hope to see it in the metal at some stage

 

[svensktoppen]

As long as it's better than before then that's the main thing. These custom jobs, there can always be a difference between what's in your head and what comes out.

Time to move on and get out driving it, nothing else will matter then

 

[collyirwin11]

I know it’s of little consolation, but it looks absolutely fantastic. Enjoy it.