360 Gearbox ECU HELP!!

Ken, what I have been lead to believe is that the Leonardo tool can reset the parameters on a early TCU that Midwest is telling you that they cant get done. What diagnostic tool are they using? If its a SDx unit then indeed they will not be able to use it to change the settings on a pre-2003.

Secondly the Stradale TCU is a performance upgrade, meaning faster shifts etc. I read in your post that you DO NOT want the car to react like that ..."and do not want it to shift like a track car"... If that is the case then you do not want the CS TCU upgrade anyhow.

How about telling us what the car is doing that is unacceptable? If its shifting like a track car then that IS actually what most here are looking for. If you want it to shift like a stock early 360 then send it over to me & I will hook up my personal Leonardo & try to reset it.

 

Ken,

Do you live in Columbus? MAG is 10 miles away from me. I have a 2001 360 that I just installed a CS TCU last week (fantastic, amazing upgrade). CS TCU's are incredibly hard to find, I looked for 3 months and paid $2100 + $250 shiping/wire/currency fees for a used one from an Fchat guy in Hong Kong. You should be able to find a 2003-2004 360 TCU on ebay for $1800 or so. I did a lot of research concerning the TCU options and would be happy to grab some coffee with you and explain your options, as well as take you for a ride in my 360 so you can see what the 360 CS TCU does. Regardless, I am almost 100% certain you do not need a new TCU and MAG is blowing smoke up your arse. The issue is they cannot adjust PIS with thier SD2/3 software b/c it's an earlier TCU.

Get your car out of MAG and take it to Craig Reed at Studio 47 in New Albany (tell him Mike R sent you from Fchat, he will take good care of you! (I have no affiliation with him, just think he's a great mechanic and the shop is owned by an Fchatter and they treat customers well). Craig has the Leonardo software that can adjust the 1999-2002 early 360 TCU PIS setting, which Ferrari's SD2/3 unit cannot do. I had this done once with him when I had this earlier TCU before the CS TCU upgrade.

I am amazed you got 30k miles on your original clutch. My car got 16.5k on the original, and the second(current) has 13k miles and is already at 77% wear (I've only owned the car for 1k miles since late Oct). I'm hoping the CS TCU makes a big difference in clutch longevity going forward, as well as dramatically improved performance on up and down shifts (and no I do not think it shifts like a track car at all...it shifts perfect): http://www.ferrarichat.com/forum/showthread.php?t=313830&page=2

Send me a PM.

Mike

 

Ken- Sounds like your techs do not really understand what they are doing. One of the big differences between early and late 360 F1 TCU/ECU software is the ability in later software to manually enter a point of initial slippage (PIS) value. On the early software, all you can do is command the software to auto adjust PIS using an SD2 or SD3. So tell your techs to just have the system adjust its own PIS value and give you back your car. After that, I would find another set of techs who actually understand how the various F1 systems on the 360 work.

There is no doubt the later TCU/ECU works better than the one you have, but there are thousands of the early cars with early TCUs/ECUs that work fine. If you do decide to change the TCU/ECU at a later date for the upgraded software, get someone who knows what they are doing to make the change for you.

If your TCU/ECU is faulty, that is a completely different issue, and a TCU/ECU upgrade would be a worthwhile investment.

 

All the early tcu's used "pis auto set" for adjustment. The earliest tcu's have no manual adjustment for pis, wether you use an sd or a leonardo. You can, however, adjust the clutch thickness setting to get it to drive properely. Unfortunately, they are right about replacing the tcu. The early software was woeful, and the best thing you can do is ditch it and upgrade. The strad. Tcu is the best software for the car. The shifts are faster, smoother and better. Clutch wear is greatly reduced, and they are easy to set up.

 

If it's a TCU from a proper challenge car, then no it won't work, it has to be a stradale unit. PIS of 5 is way high. They can adjust the clutch thickness (it will probably be around 13 mm or so) reducing it slowly until they start seeing rpm on the gearbox input sensor in gear but at standstill. Tell them to increase it until the senor reads zero. Then let the car cool overnight and carry out the PIS auto-set again. The only other thing that can cause this issue is if your flywheel is worn. Did they replace it, or at least measure the wear?

 

you should Not be having all these problems..my sense is you just want the car to be 'right', nothing special..the guy is right about the flywheel plus these clutch jobs nothing should be left to chance,every single seal,sensor,t/o bearing,no cutting corners..SD system more than adequate for settings as should be Leonardo..couple shops in Cols have Both systems if that helps

 

Anyone want to bet the wiring looms are shot due to the crappy tin connectors?

 

Leonardo software CAN adjust PIS directly with the early version 360 TCU. SD2/3 CANNOT. I have done this at Studio 47 in Columbus with Craig Reed using Leonardo software on a 2001 360 TCU. Unfortunately, I think the system eventually auto adjusts PIS back after you do this anyway as I lowered my original early version 360 TCU from 5.8 to 5.0, it instantly made shifts better and crisper, but within 200 miles it adjusted back to 5.8 before I put the CS TCU in. I had it set to 4.7 when I put the CS TCU in.

 

The Stradale TCU is not the same as the Challenge TCU. The Challenge 360 is a track car only, not street legal. The Challenge Stradale is the road version of that car that is road legal, and the "enthusiast" hard core version of the base 360. You want the CS (stradale), not the Challenge TCU, as the Challange is the race variant that will not be smooth/proper for a road car. But, as other's have said, the 2003/2004 version base 360 TCU is a good upgrade too if that is all you can find.

Send me a PM (you need 15 posts before you can send one I think though) I have a pretty open schedule and we'll go for a spin. Another Fchatter has his Scuderia getting detailed by Esoteric and a custom exhaust put on at Studio 47 I'm heading out to see later this week if you'd like to join, I'll introduce you to Craig.

 

Man, it looks like your in good hands, that is a lot of helpful F-Chat there for sure. Best to you, hope you get it right soon.

 

I'm well aware of the software differences on the TCU's, and i own an SD3. You are talking about two entirely different software variants. a 1999-early'01 uses PIS auto-set. An sd3, a Leonardo or even an act of god can't directly adjust PIS. The software has no provision. What you can do-and probably what you watched happen-is that clutch thickness index can be adjusted. This in turn alters PIS. 5 is very high PIS for an early car, so i'd say if your car changed fine since it's been adjusted, it'll be the clutch thickness that's been played with. If your PIS moved 0.8 mm in just 200 miles then it's because the clutch has bedded in after thickness has been altered. Clutch wear is calculated from the starting point of the movement of the clutch cover until it has been opened. It uses the clutch thickness versus the distance travelled to calculate clutch wear.

 

Eddie- Nice to have a pro helping on F1 issues. Lots of misconceptions out there, including mine.

 

Thanks for the info on this, much appreciated. You are for sure the resident F1 expert here .

When we used the Leonardo software, there is a screen that says Point of Initial Slip with two boxes "Write value" and "Read Value" (and annoying it seems to switch between italian and english, so sometimes says "letto valore" or "de scrive valore" or something like that. All I know is with my original 2001 TCU (the TCU itself says a MY of 2000 but the car is a 2001) had a 5.8 read value on the PIS screen. We then entered 5.0 on the write section, clicked write. Then clicked read and it confirmed it was at 5.0. I was back in the shop when Craig did this at Studio 47.

Before this, I was getting neutral jumps between gears with a clutch wear reading of 77%. The PIS adjustment I described above instantly eliminated the neutral jumps for about 200 miles, and the clutch also felt smoother and more crisp and grabbed better. After 200 miles, the neutral shifts progressivly came back to about one every 4 minutes.

Last Monday I put in the CS TCU, and on that same PIS read/write page, the original read value of the 2001 TCU was back to 5.8, so what you are saying about "PIS AUTO SET" makes sense if what that screen, despite what it says it's doing, is really adjusting clutch thickness directly and only as a sub effect is adjusting PIS. Then the car, after driving awhile, relearns the true clutch thickness and thus PIS adjusts back to what it was, hence how I returned back to 5.8 PIS readout and was getting the annoying neutral jumps again after 200 miles driven despite having "directly in the Leonardo software" set it to 5.0.

We installed the CS TCU and on that page wrote to 4.7 PIS, and again, instantly the neutral jumps are 100% gone, and the car shifts better than ever, aggressive throttle blips on downshifts throughout the rev band and crisp, perfect upshifts. It's only been 100 miles driven since the CS TCU was installed. So, am I HOPING that PIS stays permanantly at 4.7 now and I can use the last ~23% of the existing clutch before I put a new cultch. If the neutral jumps return, I'll have to do a new clutch immediately unless some other idea to fix them comes up. I did tell Craig about what you suggested here: http://www.ferrarichat.com/forum/showpost.php?p=141138509&postcount=26 but I'm not sure he understood it and we did not do it on the CS TCU installed. I will reexamine it if the neutral jumps come back. There is another thread on this too: http://www.ferrarichat.com/forum/showthread.php?t=344487&page=3

Thanks again, rustybits!

 

Hi
Well good that you have a new 360 CS TCU and all OK, if you change your clutch go with a Kevlar One! Kevlar will be much longer and will perform batter than a Organic one. Valeyo do not sale Kevlar clutch
))) but if you google you will have many companies to chose from. Google Ferrari Kevlar clutch or on Ebay?
I can help but I am not registered yet with Fchat so but will as a dealer soon.

Ciao

 

I wonder what a TCU looks like? Up to the 2.7 motronic low level users could program hot eprom chips. We are sure this can be done for steering ECU's in 550's. Someone needs to open up an unwanted stock 360 TCU and find out what is in there. If you guys are luckly you might be able to chip them to the stradale TCU specs. Or even find out what is in the challenge TCU so that you could have a switchable TCU like we have for the suspensions. Now that would be high on my want list.

 

I have a box of tcu's if someone want to give that a whirl!!!

 

Do you have in your box some TCU's with CFC231F as hardware configuration? It is written at the bottom left side of the sticker.

 

Man - after reading all of this...I am really glad I searched for a bought a car with a manual transmission.