Bagged Ferrari 488 GTB
Yea, you read that title correctly. We put a Ferrari 488 on air suspension but used the OEM suspension. Confused? Cool. Now let's dig in!
First things first and that is deciding what components are going to be used. This build is a little tricky as firstly.... it's a Ferrari and secondly, IT'S A DAMN FERRARI!! There aren't kits made for this car let alone many people that have put them on air suspension. Lucky enough, we've been fortunate enough to put a couple Ferrari's on air suspension over the past few years.
With the Ferrari 488 being the successor to the Ferrari 458, we knew what had to be done since we've put a couple 458's on air suspension in the past. We needed to fabricate new control arms in the front and the rear. The reason behind this is we needed the camber adjustability as well as needing more space for the Air bags. These arms are also made in house here at Rad Rides which means if you wanted the control arms to be powder coated yellow, we can make that happen!
Now let's move onto the suspension. Whenever dealing with custom air suspension kits, we prefer not to rip out the suspension that companies spent millions on to engineer. This Ferrari in particular has Mag Ride(Magnetic) Suspension and a hydraulic nose lift on the front struts. Why remove all that when we can incorporate it. That's exactly what we did! We designed a bag and bracket kit that would convert these OEM struts to allow air bags in place of the coil springs. The plates are all CNCed Aluminum too! Going this route with the suspension, allows the car ride quality to stay very similar to the OEM ride quality as well as keeping the Mag ride and Nose lift functioning properly. Don't forget the biggest perk, NO ERROR CODES on your dash!
For the brain of the air suspension we chose Accuair's E-level setup. We've worked with Accuair products for years and their E-level management setup is solid system! For the controller, we went ahead and created a mount that put the controller flush within the center trim area. Then with the management being a height based kit, that means we had to install height sensors. With every car we install a height based air suspension kit, Ferrari or Toyota, we ensure the sensors are installed in the best locations possible. We also replace the sensor brackets with our own in-house made brackets that enables the sensors being mounted without problems.
Now what's an air suspension setup without making the trunk look good? Well in this case.... a frunk. We've done it all from crazy show trunks to basic trunk setups. It all depends on what you want. Even with clean and simple setups, we still manage to make them look like a show trunk just because they turn out looking so good. Thats exactly what we did with this Ferrari. A clean box construction to hide some of the equipment, and Hardlines coming through. Cant forget to mention the front plate of the box can be easily removed as its mounted by magnets to hold it in place. No hinges or screws needed! If that's not easy accessibility, I'm not sure what is.
Besides the air suspension, we couldn't just stop there. We then added Vorsteiner's full carbon body kit package for the 488. This includes a carbon front lip, carbon side skirts, carbon rear diffuser spats and a carbon trunk spoiler. This body kit gave the perfect amount of carbon and aggressive styling to the 488.
What about power? Don't worry, we didn't forget about that. We had Sheepey Tuned flash their 488 tune onto the car. With the tune, this really unleashed the power out of this car. Night and day difference from the stock tune.
All said and done, this Ferrari came into the shop looking good with its custom carbon 21"/22" 3pc wheels, but it needed more to be RAD! The Air suspension, Carbon body kit, and ECU Tune, made this Ferrari 488 GTB into one of the coolest supercars on the road!
