All, Noticing an intermittent smell of fuel while driving my 360. Its infrequent, brief but strong when it happens. Does not happen at all at idle or sustained constant RPM. Seems most noticeable on downshifts and immediately after hard cornering. I assume this is bad and time to go to the mechanic. Just looking for anyone who knows or has experienced similar issue. I have an appointment on Friday anyway (for top issue and oil change) . As always thanks for the help. Tim
Tim I just had the same thing on my spider, and it was the valves on the gas tank. Dave Helms has this Nitrogen leak tester, and he found 2 leaking valves and went in and fixed it. I would bet 99% that this is the same case for you.... Get it CHECKED out ASAP, do not drive as this can be a bad thing gone worse. It seems that Ferrari had an update on these valves (the orange ones) and even these were pron to leaking, or breaking. The whole bummer about this, is they have to take the top off to get to them and fix em. (5 min fix, and $5 parts, but hours and hours on getting the top off) Here are a few pictures of them as well (they have the yellow top)... -a Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login
Well that is hard for me to tell, as I had a 30K done at the same time, and my mechanic was working on some other things for me at the time. If I had to guess I would expect @ 2,000 - 3,500.00 in that range -a
Not really.. Since the dealer or your mechanic needs the harness to lift the top off correctly with out damaging it, and it takes an insane amount of time to get the top off, they have to remove everything. I spoke to a few people about if you can get that back tray out from under the top without taking the top off, and everyone said yea RIGHT. The only way would be to cut the tray (its plastic) in a few places. What year is yours again ?? I dont know why they didnt make the access panels in the back under the top just a 1" bigger, and then you wouldnt need to go thru all this. -a
2001. Thanks for the help on this. All I can do now is wait til Friday and see what happens. Hopefully it can get fixed quickly and get back on the road. The car is new to me so I sort expected one or two issues to crop up. That's been my experience in the past with others so I'm not upset!
I was told by a dealer service rep that the early 360 spiders had to have the top off for a clutch change also. This is apparently because the two upper transmission bolts are only accessible with the top off. On later spiders the factory built access holes into the spider tray so that this extra work wasn't necessary. I don't know when they started with this change, but I thought that my midyear 2001 car already had the access holes. I'm not completely sure of this, and I don't know the mileage on your car, so you may want to ask the dealer if a clutch change makes sense at this time.
CEL is not on. Car is running fine. I just bought the car a month ago so I know how you feel on the three day thing. Was your CEL on? Clutch - That's amazing that the top would need to be removed to do a clutch. I will certainly ask that question. I'm taking it in tomorrow and will update this post with results.
All true but only on very early Spiders. Due to the construction of it access holes cannot be made either.
Thought I'd update. Never know when someone might benefit from the info. Still waiting on official word from the mechanic. But the following were his initial thoughts: - Weird that the CEL isn't on, but expected any more driving would cause it to come on - Probably a flooded charcoal canister in the fuel system. He said this when I mentioned that it is hard to get fuel into the tank No word on my top problems yet . Will update when I know more.
Hard to put gas in detail? If so, I had no idea it mattered. This is my first 360 and I just assumed that's the way they worked. I really do appreciate everyone's help.
Hi, i have a bit of an odd one as have a 2001 360 Spider. I had no gas smell issue but decided to replaced the tray for the cover (as mine did not have the fuel pump access) and also to replace the fuel pumps in a preventative manner. Now that the pumps have been replaced (and the old ones dated from 2001 but no crack or leaks), I started to have some gas smell while driving. This typically happens when I start driving, but also intermittently. I checked and there is 0 gas around the fuel pumps and the smell can only be perceived while seated in the car, but there is no smell in the engine bay. This is really weird, so what do you think this could be?
Have you checked your Roll-Over-Valves, incl their connections. They are also prone to leakage. If you changed the pumps as a PM then you should have also changed out the ROV's as a WYAIT These, btw Image Unavailable, Please Login
Hi, I checked them when I lifted the roof and they seemed OK with no leak. What is surprising is that there was no smell of fuel before, and the only thing I replaced (except the rooftop housing) are the fuel pumps. One of the pumps was not sealed properly at first and I started to have fuel leak on top of the aluminium reservoir, but I refitted the fuel pump (easy with the traps) and there are no leaks anymore. So I am surprised that the Roll-Over Valves would start leaking just because I replaced the fuel pumps (and the old ones were no leaking). I actually did no replace them as there was no smell of fuel and it is a GBP 300 procedure so not sure there is a point doing it if no issue with them. Is there a way of checking them before replacing them? (beyond the smell of fuel)
