Talk Morgan Forums Community Vehicle Talk (non-Morgan) Ferrari Reliability

See lots of nonsense posted particularly by Pork owners. So I thought I would mention a friend whose Ferrari 360 is in daily use and whose odometer has now passed 203,000 miles. Currently has a clutch slave cylinder weeping a bit and one of the two engine cooling fans failed for the second time, but no bore scoring or intermediate shaft issues, no engine rebuilds and no oil consumption. A couple of years ago he had a gearbox linkage problem - a minor but not uncommon issue.

Enzo Ferrari was primarily an engine builder and for many years used to rely on outside contractors to do the bodywork. Scaglietti was one such. Whenever I have done work on my own Ferrari I have been impressed by the build quality revealed behid covers, door cards etc.

Interesting the way that false reputations are given by word of mouth. Porsche reliability - when they arent that good. Ferrari costly repairs - when the build quality is generally good. In business I had a string of British cars all of which ( bar the Fords) were reliable. Never an issue with Austin Rover but british people damned them in favour of German and even ( god forbit) French..

Whether it's a Ferrari, Porsche or Morgan, none of them really benefit from extended periods of inactivity. The only real difference to distinguish between them is how much it costs to sort them out when they need work. Porsche air cooled engines were pretty reliable, but since the introduction of water cooling they seem to have experienced more than their fair share of problems.

Lamborghini's by comparison seem to be able to get their owners to part with vast sums of money over simple things like replacement clutches that come about with too regular a frequency.

A good friend had 2 Ferrari's in his garage and gave up on them for Bentley's which also burn holes in your pocket with amazing frequency.

Howard
The reliability of Ferrari, like that of Porsche, is entirely debatable, but the fact remains that Porsche is much more reliable for older cars and at a lower cost compared to Ferrari. At Porsche, it is known that the best model was the 3.2 L. The SC K-jet models had more problems, as did the previous ones with magnesium crankcases since 1968. It still appears that older Ferraris cost more to maintain, this is admitted by honest professionals for older cars. As for Porsche, since the water engines, they are Kleenex engines. The slightest scratch in a cylinder or crankshaft does not exist; only replacement exists at Porsche. The fact remains that there are bad years for both Ferrari and Porsche.

The interest of the Porsche engine is that the architecture of some engines is partly identical from 1963 to 2012 with parts and can be mounted in one and the other, we can put a 1963 crankshaft in a GT3 by increasing the diameter of the crankshaft bearings, there has always been 118 mm between each cylinder and the same space between the right and left cylinder bases as well and that for the cylinder head gasket plant is why at Porsche almost everything is allowed to make 2.0/ 2.1/ 2.2/ 2.3/ 2.4/ 2.5/ 2.7/ 2.8/ 2.9/ 3.0/ 3.2/ 3.3/ 3.4/ 3.5/ 3.6/ 3.8/ 3.9 liter with different crankshaft of 66 mm/ 70.4 mm/ 74 mm / 76 mm of displacement, each time the crankshaft has more displacement, the connecting rods are shorter.
Nowadays, it's difficult to determine the displacement of some Porsches by simply lifting the rear hood; a 2.0 L engine can have the same external dimensions as a 3.9 L in a 2.0 L air-cooled car.
Personally, I made 2.65 liters with a 66 mm 2.0 L crankshaft and a 2.8 RSR cylinder.

Howard, I suspect your friend`s 360 has benefitted from regular use but from all I have read and watched over the years, I suspect that 360 is a bit of a unicorn. I have had hands on with a 400i which was a wonderful engine.. Air cooled Porsches up till the 3.2 were very reliable and powerful enough in their day, expensive to repair in terms of parts cost but nothing a home mechanic could not handle. Once electronics and driver aids such as improved suspension, power steering, ABS entered the scene even air cooled became a tad complex to resolve possible issues... All the hype around IMS and bore score was felt to be blown out of proportion, but if either happened then it was not hype but reality and very expensive reality at that with the IMS issue potentially wrecking the whole engine often at car park speeds... Such issues existed through the water cooled range from 996 right up to 997.2 at which time the engine design was altered....Though Porsche introduced an insurance based extended warranty scheme, to cover "manufacturing faults" and an owner with the warranty, and suffered an IMS failure, could have his engine replaced FOC, if it had a full Porsche service history, and not suffered abuse such as over revs etc..

My 991.1 is covered by the extended warranty, but I would trust my old Trad +8 on a European trip, more than I would any modern digitally managed machine such is the complexity of their systems, whereby even apparently simple issues can take professionals way,way too long to try to resolve....Seem to remember a Morgan brake light issue causing much frustration, and more than one attempt at a dealership to resolve it....!!!!
Seems since vehicles went digital it became a licence for dealerships to print money...!

As ever each to their own

I had six Ferraris as well as a 6.0 Diablo, among others. All were reliable if they were properly sorted, not cheap to maintain. I've had new ones and used ones. As indicated above, if they sit they have problems. The infamous "Italian tune up" does work--but isn't a substitute for proper maintenance. I used an old school dealer that is no longer what it was when I was active. They knew the cars, not just parts changers. There were some good independents too, the Lambo was a beast, but the guy who looked after it knew the cars intimately, and could source what I needed without killing me on parts.
The biggest hit I took was on a new GT2 set up as a club sport. I'm told they are now valuable.
I never did this to make money but never got hurt on the Italian cars. They were a lot of fun with the gated shifter. I don't like paddle shifters, but I'm old school. Thus, talking to people on a Morgan board.

Ferrari dealers know that owners have a bob or two and are able suck greedily on their cash cow teats. Helps if you have a reputable local specialist at reasonable cost.

One of the key reasons I sold my modern 470 horsepower Aston Martin V8 Vantage and switched to a Trad chassis Morgan, was the wonderful combination of vintage aesthetics and engineering simplicity, combined with the modern efficiency, performance and tunability of a Ford Duratec engine mated to the excellent shifting Mazda five speed gearbox.

I have friends with Ferraris and Lamborghinis, lovely as these super cars are I just don't see my friends enjoying them as much as I enjoy my little Plus 4. The high cost of maintenance and the mileage anxiety that all these exotics seem to come with as standard are certainly barriers to enjoyment, but I think the biggest reason they don't use their cars as much as I drive my Morgan, is accessibility!

By accessibility I'm talking about the ability to just jump my diminutive Morgan and pop to the local pub on a sunny evening, or on a whim take me to a business meeting as an antidote to my modern screen and tech heavy company car. It seems my friends need to carefully plan every journey they take in their super cars, the roads they use are a significant consideration as their exotics are simply too wide to thread safely down most UK back roads.

This is a real shame as these type of roads typically offer the most driving pleasure, so my friends are forced onto the wider less interesting routes that are mostly crowded with traffic, and therefore frustrating to use. What I also see with my super car owning friends is they very rarely, if ever, actually use the full performance potential of their exotics. I found the same same issue with my Aston, to get a thrill from the thing I literally had to wring its neck, and this would always end in finding myself travelling at well over 100 mph risking the lives of other road users, and my licence.

Driving Monty the Morgan is the complete opposite, the handling and ride quality is very vintage indeed, but this means there's real excitement available from as little as 40 mph, especially when threading my narrow track open top Morgan down largely empty country lanes. As the roads open out I then find myself winding out Monty's tuned Duratec, and as the engine screams towards it's 7,250rpm rev limiter I'm literally laughing out loud as Monty hops and skips about but still somehow always manages to stay straight.

With the roof down and the sides screes off I'm placed right in the environment I'm interacting with, and when driven with enthusiasm Monty counterintuitively somehow still inspires confidence? Using the crude low tech powers of his wibble-wobble chassis and prehistoric rear suspension, Monty skilfully sprinkles the experience with just enough fear to raise my adrenalin levels nicely, and all this while mostly still remaining at legal speeds.

Then, when I take my super car owning friends on such a drive, they always end up laughing their c*cks off and commenting on just how much fun Monty is compared to their fleet of super wide and often overpowered exotics

The irony is after many years of chasing ever greater levels of horsepower and speed, I've finally learnt the less complex, smaller and lower powered car will quite simply deliver a lot more fun during 'real world' driving.

Perhaps I'm just getting old?

Education is a wonderful thing when gained through experience

Monty I suspect you may be following a path, where impressing one`s peer group becomes far less important in the passage of time..

When I was 16 I thought my dad had a lot to learn, by the time I reached age 21, I was amazed by just how much he had learned in those 5 years.......