Are there skid plates on the bottom of the F430?

After a little over a week of ownership, the rain finally cleared up and I got a chance to take the F430 Coupe out on my favorite winding road. The road also has a number of elevation changes and mildly bumpy surface in some spots. At one point, say roughly 90 mph at the bottom of a small hill and under moderately heavy braking, I heard what sounded like pavement touching skid plates near the front of the car. Do our cars have skid plates underneath? Is there anything else that could actually touch pavement under spirited driving conditions like I described?

P.S. It appears that the previous owner never even heated up the brakes sufficiently to bed the pads. That issue has now been resolved.

 

There are only skid plates on it if the dealer or customer installed them.. most of them I have seen installed around here are plastic and blend in nicely with front edge of the bumper.. I had some aluminum plates installed on one of my older 430's and didn't look as nice.

 

Just take a look to see what you hit. If it was the underside of the bumper(with no plates) you'll see big white scrapes. It was probably something else like the body, under tray.

 

As rberg32 stated no skid plates equipped by the factory. What typically scrapes on the 430 is the right and or left underside of the front spoiler, (fiberglass) which would be the area covered by skid plates.
Look here.....http://www.ferrarichat.com/forum/showthread.php?t=168520&highlight=skid+plates
Should the rear scrape, this would typically be the diffuser blades.

 

I'll check it out this morning. It did not sound like a hard impact or anything like that. Just a very slight scraping noise.

 

Skid plates are very definitely not included on the car as delivered from Italy. You need to have the skid plates added. I opted to have my done by FoSV before I took delivery of the car.

Twice now, driving through the hills in our area, the front end of my car hit the street. Once lightly, the other time pretty hard. Thankfully, the skid plates took all the abuse.

Since you have a 430, be sure to get the big, boomerang style plates which will protect a much bigger area under your car's nose.

Frank

 

I looked underneath this morning. It appears I have ABS plastic skid plates already installed by the prior owner. I can see they did their job yesterday by the big scrape in the plate at the right front corner.

Thanks all for the comments.

 

Agreed - I had the plates installed by FoSV and they really work, a must have for any F430

 

Excellent news.
Take care,

Frank

 

Thanks Frank. It is really great the way guys on this forum help out.

 

I am not a big fan of skid plates. The 430 has very tight clearances under hard braking ect and the skids can touch the road in those conditions. There is a reason ferrari doesnt install these from the factory. My 2 cents

 

Completely absurd.

 

Huh? If you're braking hard enough or turning sharply enough for the nose to dive and touch the earth, something has gone really wrong in the setup, components, or operation of the car.

That seems really unlikely -- but I'm open to learning something new. Please explain.

 

Dont have a 430, but above reasons are why I have skid plates installed. Im not an aggressive driver but I have scraped my front bumper while going fast and the road wasn't completely flat. Dont know if spare and all tools and charger in the trunk had something to do with it or if it was the road. However, Id rather have the plates than the bumper scraping the road or curb or whatever. I dont see a it being more hazardous than not having them. The way I see it is that the factory dont install them because its an added cost. However, I wouldnt be surprised to see it as a factory option in the future.

-Peter

 

I dont think its inconceivable that the bumper could scrape road during aggressive driving and when it isnt flat.

-Peter

P.S pix are borrowed from fellow f chatters.
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I don't think there's anything wrong with the setup. The front corners are a little softer than I expected and the front lip is quite low.

In my case, it was a pretty unusual set of circumstances. It was a very high speed downhill that had a bit of a dip at the bottom and an irregular surface. I'll take that section of the road just a bit different next time (brake a little earlier or a little later). There was just enough rub to upset a very meticulous "concours-type" owner (not me), but not enough to upset the chassis nor an enthusiast.

 

Hey Daniel,

In my case(s) I was driving in the hills around Skyline BLVD where there are some pretty drastic surface changes, roads/bridges in need of repair, really sharp up-sweeping hair-pin corners etc etc.

It was on these road I was able to hit the front bumper of my factory-height, skid-plate equipped F430.

Definitely not an equipment problem as I've not -- yet -- scraped on a driveway.

Take care,
Frank

 

I put skid plates on my new F430 because the suspension seemed "soft" compared to even my 360s.

I'm glad I did because I scraped on my first drive going around a corner with a slight dip at relatively low speeds.

Tim