Clutch Wear

What wears out a clutch is putting power through it while it is in the friction zone. That is control over clutch wear is in your throttle foot.

It seems to be a shame to have a 10 year old car with 10K miles on it.

 

Jack- If you drive her the same way with the paddles that the system does in Auto, there is no difference in wear.

 

Though the additional downshifts in auto while decelerating will add significant additional wear to the throwout bearing over time. Learned me that from Taz a few years back Best to shift to neutral and coast into stop lights. Feels better anyway.

 

Not exactly on topic but backing up (especially uphill) puts a lot of wear on the clutch (at least on the 360, I assume 430 as well)

 

The F430 has more favorable gearing for reverse than the 360, where reverse is almost as high as 2nd gear. 360s have the same problem, high reverse gearing, whether manual or F1 since they use the same transaxle.

 

so what was the conclusion?

 

Depends on how you drive it. If you use it in manual mode like it works in Auto mode, downshifting to 1st at every stop or letting it downshift itself, there is no difference in wear, like I said. Shifting into neutral when coming to a full stop will extend the life of some clutch components. Personally, mine never auto downshifts when coming to a stop. I select neutral before she comes to a complete stop. When in neutral (or any gear) and stopped, the clutch is always open in an F1 Ferrari, so you are not saving clutch wear on the constant contact T/O bearing. You do cut down on the clutch actuation cycles by using neutral, however, which saves the T/O bearing somewhat, and slightly (very slightly) lessens clutch wear. Most clutch wear occurs on initial start, Auto or manual. which is why keeping PIS optimized for F1 gives max utility out of the clutch.

 

ok thanks!