Ferrari Mailing List: Re: Friday night funnies

[Larry T (l02turner]

Speaking of dealers and Book hours - my long ago boss had a 87 328 GTSi which was coming up for a 30K maintenance - he called Ferrari of Atlanta, DC and Charlotte IIRC and told me the prices ranged from $3200 to $4800.  Wow! I thought -  not only is that a lot of money but it's a wide range especially for a service IMO.  Of course I guess one might do more of the "while we're in there stuff" that they include without asking.

LarryT

On 5/4/2013 9:17 PM, Adam Green wrote:

I think these are pretty typical misconceptions.  A dealer might shake the "book" hours and shop rate at an uninformed owner and "estimate" $2K.  This reminds me of the days when a friend mentioned in passing he'd had the brakes "serviced" on a 360 for thousands of dollars.  I explained that short of replacing every component and doing all the work with arthroscopy instruments instead of hand tools, rinsing the parts in vintage champagne and performing a stem to stern concours detail, it would be literally impossible to cost so much as he had been invoiced.  Worse still, the dealer had machined ("turned") the rotors (!) which I would never do and yet only "bled" the fluid, not even a complete flush or maintenance of the ABS.  Good grief.  The F430 comment perhaps stems from a half-remembered example like valve adjustments (which should be in the context of the 360 initially) but may be anything from parts prices to relative performance without upgrades or the operating costs (and lack of secondary safety) in earlier models.

As for being a formula racer or an HPDE instructor, last I checked, these are not ASE certifications for automotive technicians. : )  If there's something that DE instructors could learn from techs, it would be "mechanical sympathy" since I think it is valuable for the track day driver to be able to explain and apply the basic precautions for wam-up and cool-down, for handling the gearbox and clutch to preserve each and use the synchro properly, etc.

There's no way to know what's going on between the ears of someone when they're apparently misinformed.  I hear the same peculiar bias in favor of one marque or the other, or against another.  I guess it can be a sour experience or just good, old-fashioned baseless conjecture.  Who knows.  In my humble, the real cost of track driving is brakes and tires.  Those things all tend to be much the same from car to car -- more expensive as cars get heavier, less expensive in lighter cars.  The only other real cost, aside from logistics and fees is becoming insurance.

As for people tarring all Ferraris with the same brush of "expensive," I'm usually too preoccupied with preaching my own religion to listen to the nihilistic tendencies of godless heathens!

Adam

On Sat, May 4, 2013 at 4:33 PM, Fellippe Galletta <fellippe.galletta [at] gmail.com> wrote:

Last night this dude at a party told me that the F355 oil change costs $2000......

Yep, $2k......"dry sump, gotta drop the bottom tray, etc".

Now, you may be thinking this is a typical 1% hater with no knowledge of cars, but apparently he races Formula Ford, works on his race car, teaches HPDE and has driven numerous exotics. In other words he supposedly knows things...

My gut tells me this is just a person who is not fond of the car (which is fine) and to demonstrate its supposed lack of merits, fabricates an outrageous claim to undermine it. He mistook my deference to him on racing knowledge to imply I knew nothing about cars, LOL.

Social conventions along with the fact that it's not important in the grand scheme of things means I'm not going to get into an argument about it. But man, it's pretty damn annoying, no??

Anyone run into similar BS?

FG

ps - "The Ferrari that's good on maintenance is the 430.....not that bad"

----> Right, because it's cheaper to spend twice as much on a car to save money. 

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