Hi all, My 360 is not starting, the engine will fire up and immediatly stall after 1 second. I did jumped start the car with a lithium pack in the morning, used the car normally for the whole day, and by evening it won’t start. The shop told me the best guess is to replace the 2 ECU + 2 throttle holder. These are $6000USD parts alone! I just wanted to make sure... Anyone here experienced ECU failure? Thx Raymond
OK you know that jump starting the car is not allowed right? I would replace the battery first and follow the correct procedure to do so. ECU's are very expensive...depending on the model year and what kind of car you have (F-1 or manual). I needed an ECU after a lightning storm ( I was on a charger) and the dealer said there was one 2003 ECU for a gated car in the world and they wanted 7500 for just the part. This was the dealer network and I found one from an out of network supplier who bought up stock from somewhere and had one for around 3K IIRC. Good luck.
They said the ECUs are bad without checking for spark, fuel and compression? I would look for another shop.
I know I’m guilty of jump starting a Ferrari, I must have done it more than 10 times over the last 3 years and it’s been fine... maybe it has an accumulative effect. The damage could also be caused by trying to starting the car when battery is just too low to crank. It makes a horrible ticking sound with all the light flashing and you know this can’t be good for the electronic.
There is a significant difference between using a Emergency battery pack & connecting jumper cables to running car. This is a myth that needs to be clarified. You run the risk of voltage spikes using jumper cables connected to another car that is running . That part is true. Your relying on that car's voltage regulator while putting a significant current demand on it's alternator. Emergency battery packs have a fixed state of voltage. As far as your car's electrical system is concerned it's the same as replacing your battery with a good one.
I think a real danger with jump starting is a low voltage condition that leads to too many amps flowing through delicate circuits. When too many amps are pushed through a circuit, the elements overheat and burn out. This is due to Ohm's law: V = I × R. Dropping V raises I (amps) since R (resistance) stays the same. Too many amps spoils the broth.
+1 I was told by a long time Ferrari Tech during a Summer outing with the club that it is indeed a myth when using a battery pack. Dealerships use battery packs all the time for cars more sensitive and more expensive than ours. Battery packs cannot produce a spike that a similar new battery (like-for-like) fitted to the car or under a trickle charge wouldn't do. As a matter of fact he said between the three (a battery maintained via a daily charger, a battery being charged while running via the alternator and a 12v battery pack) the battery pack is least likely to produce a spike to fry the instruments or ECUs. Jump starting from another car, use of an AC/DC charger with a ' 75A starting ability are a different matter.
Ray, I still don't understand why you didn't replace the battery first, you said you jump started it and it was fine. Then when it sat for awhile, it was dead again. Why is this anything BUT THE BATTERY at this point?
I jump started with battery pack in the morning, drove on for 30 min, parked for 2 hrs, drove to get grocery, drove to office and parked for 5 min and suddenly car wouldn’t start.
Common things being common, did you get the battery checked? I'm still confused why you don't think this is a battery issue. When was the last time you replaced it? Here in the United States, auto parts stores will check your battery and test it for free.
Hans, the mechanic did check the battery and a few of the basic things already, still have to get more detail from him. I am also getting help from 360Trev.
Put a multi meter onto the 12 volt socket and press the starter- should only drop to about 9.8 volts when the starter goes in, then up to 14.4 as the alternator kicks in. Also the internal light should dip slightly, not go brown or go out. My battery has 1 week on it so its a good set of voltages to work off.
I wasn't up on the method that seems to be being discussed for "jumping". Sorry guys I don't have any experience with an EBP.
So battery wont charge. Either battery is dead or car fails to charge the battery.. Cant see how this is related to ECUs
It could be the ecus but that diagnosis seems very premature. It could also be fuel pumps, a relay and a dozen other things. Years ago I had a mustang that wouldn’t start. The stealership burned me for an ecu. Problem came back a few days later. Turned out the be the fuel pump relay, a much cheaper fix.
I am now in dialogue with Ray. The first thing I'm asking him to do is pull any obd codes... He is recovering on a tow truck his vehicle so he can look into it with my guidance. I am confident I will help him to get the car running again at the least expense possible. There isn't much now that I haven't seen over the years. The fact that so many batteries fail so quickly on a the 360 is quite troublesome in itself and I now believe a lot of this is on may cars is to either constant current drain (from old trackers, badly wired in aftermarket audio kit, etc.) to intermittent current drain from flip flopping relays in the cheap Bosch immobilizers as well as sometimes in the SDC windows ecu's too (Again soldered on relays). I've replaced and fixed tonnes of these exact issues on many 360's now and starting to see a few F430s too, its a wider problem than many people realize. Just keeping on replacing batteries or accepting the car won't last more than 3 days off a tender isn't the cure. I can still start my car now after a month off the tender! Somehow I don't believe we've yet (or Ray) has been given the full picture by his mechanic. I doubt he'd suggest replacing ecu's unless a fault code pointed to internal ecu failure or some other similar error. We shall see..
So I got more detail from the mechanic. The battery is already replaced. The right side throttle flutters whenever the key is switch to on. I have a friend who is a senior mechanic at the local Ferrari, he came to look at the car and said this happens a lot and the standard procedure is to replace all ecu and all throttle control. He was surprised that someone can actually repair the ecu. I’m working with Trev to resolve this.
I can now do significantly more than Ferrari engineering team could ever do with these ecus, let alone master techs who where never let anywhere near the code or technical details except for the replacing procedures and diagnostic tests. It's like being on the Bosch team as such I have far more access than given to any car manufacturer. I have this access after spending significant investment of my time analysing the code and developing specialist tooling to the point now where I'm adding new features directly into the spare unused capacity inside the ecu's. The ticking throttle body is one of the most common failures and its due to the internal power circuit being damaged by jump starting and low/high/spike voltages. Later Bosch throttle body modules are driven by CAN signals rather than PWM (pulse wave modulation) so at some point in the future if it becomes a flood gate I will consider offering an external module to bypass the faulty components and get control back of the TBs over CAN so don't throw them away! In other words modify software to control over CAN, get signals out of the ecu to a small external inexpensive ecu which generates signals externally to drive pwm signal outside, thus bypassing original damaged circuit. Make sense?
