After some more driving today everything seems to be running smoothly in the Mondial: lights all working, air con cool, sunroof opens up great (tho needs a manual push to help it close), driver electric window slow but ok (a known issue with all Ferraris from this era, Mondial,308, 328, 348), and even the original Blaupunkt radio/tape player works.
A few minor bugs and quirks did arise, as I was expecting for a 22 year old car, most of which I should be able to fix:
- driver side rubber door sill detached at the top (some super glue, should do the trick).
- stone chips: need to get a repair kit with primer and the right shade of Ferrari Rosso red. The paint code of the car is F108 and Halfords didn’t have this (surprise surprise), but they did have a fiat 108/96 so that might be the one… I’ll have to ask some Ferrari gurus if this is the one.
- rubbish boot/trunk catch: it’s pretty difficult to close the boot, requiring a short, sharp blast downwards. 50% power, 50% technique. I tried unscrewing the locking bar that drives into the catch and re-aligning it, plus making it protrude a couple of mm further, and also greasing up the latch a bit. It seemed to make it a little easier to close.
- cracked gear knob (!) umm no idea how this happened, but I was worried that the cracks would get bigger as there was a little movement on them when squeezing the knob, and it does have a lot of force put onto it jamming the Mondial into gear. Super glue to the rescue, seems to be held together a bit more rigidly now.
Slighly more annoying problems….
Speedometer dropping to zero during driving
I was cruising along the M25 at 70mph on my first day driving the car, had been on the road about 2 hours in total, and to my amazement, the speedo started wobbling for about 2 minutes, then dropped to zero (well right to the bottom reading which is 5mph)! So I only had my own rather poor judgement of speed to guage how fast I was going, not what you want on your first day of driving a Ferrari, especially on UK roads notorious for being littered with speed cameras and traffic police. On starting her up the next morning the speedo seemed back to normal again… however it did die again after a couple more hours of driving. I parked up for an hour with the battery switched off, set off again and the speedometer was ok. I was a bit worried so gave Carl at Verdi Ferrari a call. He told me not to worry, it happens quite a lot and could be some sort of (oil?) leak into some part of the speedo mechanism. I also looked it up on the internet and it seems quite common, a failed impulse generator is another cause. Anyway Carl reassured me that it could be rectified at not much cost (80quid or something like that). Thinking about it some more it’s possible that both times it died I had just turned on electrical devices in the car, the first time it died I had just switched on the radio and headlights,the second time the air conditioning. Could be a pointer to an electrical gremlin? Anyway I decided to keep an eye on it.
Update: about 150 miles / 4 hours of driving the next weekend and no problems at all, maybe it was down to the fact that the car had not been used regularly for 5 or more years. I did mention it to Anthony at Hendon Way Motors, he said that speedos on older Ferraris are pretty unreliable, it’s certainly something they would not have been able to spot before selling the car due to the intermittent nature of the fault, and the fact that it only happened after a couple of hours of driving.
Update 2: Spoke to a very knowledgable Ferrari Owner’s Club member who owns a 1985 Mondial QV Cabriolet, he says this is a common problem and happens sometimes on his Mondial too, he thinks it’s a loose connection behind the speedo in the dash (I guess made less stable by heat as the problem only ever happens after 90mins or more of driving?). Anyway this establishes it as a relatively common problem, so I won’t worry too much about it at the moment, it really has only happened 3-4 times in 9 weekends of driving, and is fine if the car is left for an hour or two (also explaning why heat build up triggers it..?).
Update 3: Problem did not appear at all in the whole of 2008 with car in regular use, morale of this story… don’t let your Ferrari sit in the garage, get out and drive it (as long as it’s not raining)! 
Passenger Electric Window Very Slow
The worst and most obvious problem: the passenger electric window is very slow, and a helping hand is needed to close the final inch. At one point the window did actually refuse to go up at all, it would only go down. This was the last thing we needed as we drove along with rain clouds looming overhead. On stopping I found that opening the door, then grasping each side of the window with a palm, followed by a really hard push upwards from both sides (while getting an assistant to push the up button) got the window shut. Subsequently the window seemed to return to it’s usual self where it would happily go down and up, excluding the final inch.
As stated above, electric windows are rubbish on Ferrari’s of this era due to dodgy Italian wiring. Having a look on the internet I found www.ferrariwindows.com run by 348 enthusiast Frazer Smith. He provides a solution in home made, 12v booster units which can be wired into the door. The site also explains why the passenger window is usually worse than the driver’s window (much longer length of thin wire from the power source). I have ordered up two of these units and will give them a go this weekend, look out for a post on the installation procedure and results!
Verdi Ferrari are renown for their depth of knowledge and excellent Ferrari repairs and servicing. I have personally met the current owner (Neil) and been for a drive in the red cabriolet for sale, it’s a great car with impeccable service history, so have a look.
