It’s rare that we get to do a follow up to a Slack Tales, but after Adrian’s Ferrari completely browned the mattress we got a delightful follow up on all the money he had to spend to get his beloved Mondial QV running again.
Life is suffering and suffering, as they say, is good bloggin’ these days. All of us own cars that are wonderful when they run, and huge pains when they don’t. Automotive torture is grist for this particular mill and we use Slack regularly to make our daily bread.
Adrian’s Ferrari predictably and regrettably coughed up a water pump on a rare long journey recently, so we all girded ourselves for the lashing his bank account was about to take.
As a reminder, here’s what the work done was:
While we do some of our own work, most of us (probably not David) have taken our vehicles to mechanics and specialists so we’re actually quite good at guessing.
Yeah, as of today, that’s just shy of $2,200.
This could have been worse! Here’s the full breakdown if you’re curious:
The $2.27 to pour the antifreeze in is absolutely my favorite part. Actually, I take that back. My favorite part is the extremely fancy letterhead. That’s worth $3.00 on its own.
I have to agree that it seems reasonable to me. I worked as a mechanic at an exotic car dealership in the 80s. We had a rare hard freeze and a bunch of the 308 Ferraris that were running 80/20 water/glycol mix failed their water pumps. If I recall the book rate was 16 hours (might be high) and I lost money on the first two, but was able to beat the book rate for the last three I did. As far as reliability and Ferraris my experience was if you drove it and serviced it they gave you few problems. One customer used his 308 as a daily driver rain or shine and it never let him down.
16 hours seems e lot – the 308/328 is mechanically identical to the Mondial.
Not that I don’t sympathize (I do) but actually $2,200. seems like a pretty OK deal. Not that I’ve used any fancy-schmancy service places with letterhead like that one (LA has plenty I’m sure… I just never own anything that has to go to places like that) but I honestly think a bill for the same work here in SoCal could have easily been 50% more or even twice as much if you went to some place Beverly Hills adjacent or whatnot.
I like your Mondial Adrian. 🙂 I consider myself to be sensible and somewhat thrifty most of the time car-wise, and yes, from what I’ve read, the Mondial is pretty much the only Ferrari that might be described as such (enthusiasts richer than I might consider the 304/328/348 to fall in that category, but not I) but the idea of owning one is just too scary for me. I’ll probably never own a Porsche for the same reason… I could conceivably afford an early Boxster (and I genuinely like them) but the potential for financial pain afterwards is just too great.
So, now I can vicariously enjoy a tiny proxy of what it might be like to own one by reading about yours. 😉
986 Boxsters are brilliant cars – I had one about fifteen years ago. Find one that’s been looked after with a nice big history folder and you should be good. They made so many of the damn things they’ll never be worth a lot of money.
The 348 was always the other traditionally undervalued Ferrari, along with some models of the 400/412. But the 348 is a much more complicated car with a lot more electronics than a Mondial (unless it’s a later Mondial t which shares it’s powertrain with the 348) and the 400/412 is a V12. So they’re much more expensive to look after.
I did a lot of research before buying to make sure I would be able to afford to run it. The yearly service is £400 including parts, and the cam belts are £700 (but minuenwere done when I bought the car a year ago).
It saddens me greatly that Adrian’s Ferrari water pump is that much cheaper than the one in my truck. I spent nearly this much just getting the water pump and thermostat replaced a few years ago.
Yep, I was pleasantly surprised. As an aside, the a/c compressor has seized (possibly because it got so hot when the car overheated) and that’s definitely not going to be cheap. It’s disconnected for now while my Barclaycard cools off.
Thats how much I was paying for little things here and there for my 1973 VW Super Beetle. I mean the car now drives better and everything work as they should plus a lot of things were still stock and replaced now. The shop is really nice and they give me a rental “free of charge”
Example from the last service, after this I decided to do my own work
Labor is $150 an hour
For parts was $36.53, total labor $730.50. Grand total = $819.45
This was to inspect an oil leak, top off the oil, safety check, replace oil sensor switch, remove the passenger panel door and lube locks and window. Remove clamps and j-pipes on the heater box and replace them with new seals (For proper heating). Brake adjustment and thats it…
$150 an hour is pretty high labor amount begin with. I’d probably start by finding a new shop and learning how to do some of the more basic things yourself. VW Bugs are notoriously easy to work on and everything you mentioned doesn’t require any special tools or even a dedicated garage/driveway to do them.Somehow I missed the line about you deciding to do your own work already lmfao.
yes lmao I just started doing my own things with a 2009 Ford Ranger 4.0 that I just got. Replaced two coolant lines and service the manual transmission
That seems reasonable. I figured with that fancy letterhead it would be nearer to £4000 ($5000US)
That charge for hardware rings true. I dropped $30 on four suspension bolts for my car. Granted they’re oddly specific sizes and torque to yield. Plus suspension, so reusing old TTY bolts that will be savaged by an impact on the way out seemed like a terrible idea.
Yeah they didn’t mention the bolts when they told me it needed a new gaiter for the driveshaft. I was bit surprised at that but as you say, they’re probably like head bolts. Torque to yield a]use once. But still, £100!
Not surprising. Lexus charges $30 a bolt for the flywheel hardware, and you need 7 for the SC300 IIRC.
Yay, pay wall, again. =(
There’s some seriously elitist automotive conversations going on in this comfortable members lounge that I don’t think you’d understand.
“Parking attendant please pull my 00’ Prizm around, I’ve got a warehouse job to attend to.”
Aww, look at you trying ????
You’re right. I tried. Silly of me to assume that the type of person that uses four question marks (one would do, it means the same exact thing as fifty) to end an attempt at a snide comment would have the reading comprehension skills necessary to understand my comment for the joke it was. Don’t take out your grievances on me. It’s not my fault god made you as a base model human.
I was just kidding. You don’t gotta be a dick about it.
Respectfully, you’re a little off on the assessment: the four-question-mark thing is how some emojis are rendered by the forum software. We can see the 🙂 😉 and 😐 (and possibly others) but if someone posts an emoji the forum doesn’t recognize, it’s turned into the quad-?.
It’s possible the OP was indeed being cranky, snarky, snide, etc. but the missing emoji could sway/modify that.
So I could be the one “being a dick about it” based off my misinterpretation of their comment via lack of emoji visibility?
What you are implying is that I misread their comment and took quick offense of it instead of seeing it for what it was. In the exact same way they read my dumb joke and retorted?
Fair point. Sorry Ana Osato. Seriously. That wasn’t my intention.
But.. I grew up in the real world. A world without emojis to end sentences with. A world where you get your real teeth knocked out of your mouth for talking that kind of shit. (Insert gap toothed smiley face here).
You stupid simple fucks. (no offense intended A. Barth) I seem to have wandered into pure idiot territory here. I’ll be on my way shortly.
Just gotta let you recognize how dumb you sound before I go.
What were you thinking here?
You wandered into “pure idiot territory” for sure. It seems to follow you around. What’s next? Are you gonna write some spiteful, rude, bile about The Autopian in the comments of the most recent article in a sad attempt to shame yourself away from visiting the site for a few days?
I did.
Then, let me guess, you tried to play it off like the internet was the problem when you know deep down that’s a lie you tell yourself to cover over the shame you feel when you say crap like that on it.
You know us well. I’d love to apologize, but that would require explaining our particular brand of neurosis which would quickly become antithetical to the whole purpose of the apology due to our overinflated, fragile ego.
It’s not that complicated man. Just say you’re sorry.
I’m sorry.
Well done. Do you have anything else to say?
>shuffles feet, stares at the ground<
Thanks for reaching out via email Mr. Hardigree. What I said was wrong, I didn’t mean it. It won’t happen again.
Dude.. this is not Autopians Anonymous.
Calm down.
*politely knocks on front door, waits sheepishly*
“Uhm.. hello Mr. A. Barth.”
*twiddles thumbs, stares at ground*
“I’m sorry, I wasn’t paying attention to what I was doing and how it could negatively affect other members of the community.”
“I was just playing around at first. Then I got careless. I broke your (metaphorical) window with my (stupidly defensive) baseball.”
*shuffles feet, continues to stare at the ground*
I’ll pay more attention to the unintended consequences of my actions before I commit to them going forward.
“Sorry.. I can save up my paper route money and pay for the window pane, I’ll cut your grass every Thursday till I make up for my mistake.”
Or I can just get off your lawn if you’d prefer.
Hey.. I’m sorry. I dropped my sippy cup from my high chair and then dumped my bowl of lukewarm spaghettios in my lap here. A toddler like tantrum ensued.
I’m an idiot.
My reading comprehension wasn’t keeping up with my ego there.
My bad. Won’t happen again.
*reaches hand out tentatively*
This item (as with all Tales from the Slack) is clearly labeled “Special Members Area”.
If you are not a member, you will not be able to see it. This is not complicated.
And yet somehow it is. Never underestimate the inherent stupidity of humans on the internet. Myself included.
I too am with the peanut gallery in thinking it’s actually not that bad. Ever owned an Audi?
That said, there have been times in my life where a bill that size would have merited serious contemplation of self termination, so it certainly is a matter of perspective.
20% VAT. D’Yam!
May you receive many mellifluous Mondial miles from your investment.
As the owner of 2 Audis, I looked at this and thought it seemed pretty fair. An audi dealer will quote you $2k just for front brakes.
Exactly.
For my 2014 bmw 328 the dealer charges around $1200 – $1400 for brakes on one axle. This is in a Boston suburb. Wonder why the difference vs Audi.
I appreciate y’all introducing the intricacies of Ferrari ownership to a layman like myself.
And as someone who grew up as a poor kid in the 90’s in middle America listening to Skinny Puppy on broken headphones, I fully understand what Adrian absolutely has to do “this afternoon”.
The connectors had come off because they were very loose. All sorted now, back to SUPER STEREO.
♩Lovers and legions I’ve seen your whore try not to reason forsaken I’m poor♩
Everything is pricey these days. A dealership quoted me $1900CAD to do swap all the fluids in my Acadia 4ish years ago. I went to an independent and it still was $900ish.
10w60? That would be easy to confuse with maple syrup here in Canada.
TIL that 10W60 oil exists – interesting. Maybe it’s a synthetic-only thing; I don’t recall ever seeing a dinosaur version.
Nope, mineral. I usually keep it topped up with Valvoline VR 20W50, which is the specified weight. Synthetic is not good for these engines apparently.
Curiouser and curiouser. A cursory search of US sellers seems (?) to show only synthetic 10W60 but AutoDoc.co.uk has mineral in that weight. Cheers!
Not to add to your bike angst, but I use 20W50 in the 1981 GPz550. 🙂 The other bikes (600, 440, 250) get 15W40 Shell Rotella T6 synthetic.
Synthetic leaks out. That’s the problem. I couldn’t use it on our 97 Explorer 4 Litre because the rear main seal would always dribble.
I find that to be shockingly reasonable for Ferrari service. My brother-in-law just paid a lot more than the equivalent of 25 pounds for two short wiper blades on his Wrangler and had to install them himself. The parts bill seems quite reasonable except for the driveshaft bolts – must be something special about them. Even if the water pump is nothing more than a bolt-on, I assume things are tight enough in the engine compartment that the labor charges don’t seem all that bad.
I have to say, this would tend to increase my willingness to dive into something as crazy as a Ferrari, not lessen it. I know nobody wants a 1700 pound bill on their car, but for something as special as a Ferrari I think it’s worth it. Really, I was expecting a lunatic number like 7,000 pounds.
The water pump is very accessible. If I had a garage I possibly would have attempted it myself, but it was due a service and the window I was going to investigate myself, but seeing as they had the car anyway and I wanted it fixed before Le Mans next week I figured it was just easier to get them to look at it.
One of the reasons I went for a QV as opposed to a later Mondial t or even a 348 (which was the Ferrari I REALLY wanted) was the servicing costs were much more reasonable because they’re mechanically pretty simple.
Barely $200 labor to replace a water pump in a Ferrari? That’s not nearly as bad as I would have guessed!
Right! When I replaced the water pump in my 98’ Ranger $200 for my labor would have been well below minimum wage.
(Granted it was one of those “while you’re in there…” repairs).
44,045 miles! No wonder shits going wrong. That’s about end of life for a Ferrari.
Ha! They’re actually pretty bomb proof, provided you look after them properly and DRIVE them regularly, You gotta remember it’s forty years old this year.
When we did the 2005 Ford GT we looked at a lot of high mileage supercars and 40,000 miles was about end of life for many of them. I’m sure it’s like anything else though: look after it and it will last a long time, abuse it and it will bite you.
Unless it’s Hoovie’s 458, which IIRC is closing in on 100K miles. 🙂
I don;t really watch his channel, I know he bought a ropey 348 as well.
He’s had a few – also a 456 and IIRC a 355.
The 458 was apparently a rental car and was definitely wrecked/repaired.
Yes, that’s surprisingly reasonable. A mechanic only charging $200 in labor (so ~<2hrs) for removing a door panel and all that is pretty surprising. And the materials actually seem like reasonable prices. Only $15 in antifreeze? Going to a mechanic here I expect the usual 2+hr labor ‘book rate’ for every little thing, so that they can do the job in 20 minutes, and they buy their parts for double what I can get the same thing for.
I feel like the next time I have to use a mechanic, it might actually be cheaper to ship my car to the UK, and just have it worked on there.
For whatever reason, labor and professional rates in the UK are much lower than the US. I was looking at engineering jobs and the salaries look abysmal to my eye, around £50k for a role with several years of experience. That’s equivalent to low starting pay here, even in cheaper parts of country; I don’t think the cost of living is really that much lower in the UK either, but I haven’t done a full breakdown. A quick search says that typical hourly charge for mechanic work in the UK is around £60, which is $76 US, compared to most shops in my area which start at $115 or $125. I’ve seen one $90 in the last ten years but I’m not sure that was real. It’s especially odd because it seems like goods, food and utilities are pretty similar to California prices, although houses are a bit cheaper(excluding London, and still much pricier than most areas of the US).
Housing and gas are expensive here. Pretty much everything else is much cheaper than the US.
That is true if you live on the US coasts. Flyover country is much cheaper, and in my experience, cheaper than the UK. I expect anything in the UK to cost as much in pounds as it does in dollars. You can ask David and Jason. I think you’ll find Michigan and North Carolina are pretty cheap. LA and NY, not so much.
Hey it ended up costing me over $400 to install a front plate bracket on my Audi, so that sounds cheap as it is at least a list of actual repairs.
It would have been over $700 if I had gone through the dealer.
Holy crap!
This actually seems pretty reasonable to me to be honest, for a Ferrari. I never got out of the Jaguar dealer for less than four figures except the time I accidentally broke off the antenna mast. Shoot I think I paid over $700 for my last Ducati service.
*starts browsing for cheap Ferraris…*
I just saw an ad for an original Ducati 160 minor garage find one owner with tool kit all original ran when barned for under $3,000. Sounded like a good price but i know shit sbout motorcycles.
Ugh my desire to get back on a bike is not being helped by these comments.
Get a Kaw W650 or W800. Bevel drive and thumpy 360° crank without all the fuss.
It’ll be next year to give me time to save up, but the leading contenders at the moment are a Husqvarna Svartpilen 401 or a Yamaha MT-07.
The Mondial wasn’t cheap, but it was cheap a) for a Ferrari and b) compared to some of the batshit prices some classics are going for.
There are worse ways to spend your money.
Life is short: enjoy your ride.
I was lucky, I’m not rich. But I certainly won’t lose money on it.