I have been looking for a 575 for a few weeks now. Key criteria have been: under 20k miles Fiorano Handling Pack 6 speed manual Blue/Black/Red have been able to finding several that meet 3 out of the 4. Finding one with a 6 speed manual gearbox has been much more of a challenge. What are the pros and cons of each type of gearchange? What is the difference in clutch life between the two? How is the F1 in traffic? Does the F1 really impact the driving experience?
4.4- If you type in 6 speed vs F1, you will find 95 threads with comments on that subject, most of which are strictly opinion one way or the other. Taz Terry Phillips
I currently own a 430 F1 and a 550 six-speed manual. The F1 trans is great for track days where rapid gear changes, such as multiple downshifts going into a corner, are done. In all other driving situations, such as driving on curvy back roads or open highways, I prefer the stick-shift in the 550. I'm sure a 575M is a great car either way. If you can't find a stick-shift 575M, then you might want to compare a 575M F1 in back-to-back test drives with a 550 stick-shift. Also, the "auto mode" of the F1 is almost never used by the people that own them, so it is predominantly a paddle-shift trans. The paddle-shifting gets ten times smoother after a day or two of driving an F1 car. BTW, the F1 is a six-speed also, but we all use the term "six-speed" to imply the manual trans. .
Thanks. I used to have a 360 Challenge and the F1 was perfect for the track. On the open road though my feeling is in line with your comments that the stick shift would be more involving and therefore enjoyable to drive (I have owned several manual gated Ferraris). One other major concern on the F1 is how it would handle stop and go traffic. Would this kill the clutch in a matter of months ?
Just like a manually gated box with a clutch pedal, there is a right and wrong way to drive an F1 tranny. In stop and go traffic, feathering the throttle to creep along is going to wear the clutch because it never fully disengages. On the other hand, waiting for a small gap to open to the next car and then giving enough throttle for the clutch to fully disengage will do no more wear than operating the clutch with your foot. BTW, I have a completely opposite take on F1 vs Manual than 95% of the folks here. On the track I love the fact that my race cars are manually operated. Being able to knock off multiple downshifts in a braking zone with heal and toe is a skill that is worth learning and practicing. When I am racing, I want to know I am winning due to my abilities, not the car. I race a 1983 911 with no p/s, no ABS, no traction control, etc. and usually prefer it that way, so maybe I am a little weird. On the street, I prefer the F1. It's more comfortable in traffic and has a surprising advantage in the twistys. When driving aggressively on the street on unfamiliar roads you often don't know what gear to enter turns in. Especially true for blind corners when you can't read the exit radius of the turn. F1 allows you to knock down to lower gears mid-turn much easier then with a manual box. Guys with manual boxes will often just leave the wrong gear engaged as a rapid downshift and upshift manually is too slow to make it worth while. If I only had one car, I would want to a manual clutch so that I had the full driving experience available to me. But being able to have dedicated track cars to meet that need allows me to enjoy the F1 on the street.
Many thanks for the insights. I envy your skill with the heel toeing, have to admit it is one thing I have never mastered. Your comments on the F1 in the curves rings very true.
What a helpful post to revive a year old thread - that type of pump was only on the 355 I believe whereas the current aftermarket price for the 360/575 pump is about USD 500 in Europe (for the Alfa labelled box) and it has long been possible to convert the 355 to use it too
Buxton- Five "hail Marys" for you. Here is retail for the pump. The 355 systems were expensive. http://www.ricambiamerica.com/product_info.php?products_id=261690 Taz Terry Phillips
One thing I will tell you about F1 575Ms mirrors what Jake said. Do not listen to anyone who says "I drove one once and did not like it." It takes a while to learn how to use the F1 system and be really smooth and competent with it. There are plenty of us old timers who learned how to drive with manual transmissions, nearly 50 years ago in my case (1962), and love the F1 system. Drive F1 like you do a manual transmission, and not like you do an automatic, and it is very rewarding. Incidentally, I note Hill Engineering just came out with a new throw-out bearing for the F1 575s and 612. No reliability reports yet and there have been problems with the HE 360 F1 T/O bearing, so only time will tell if it is a worthwhile substitute for the OEM bearing. Taz Terry Phillips
Hi there, I have my 575 with 3 pedals stick trans for over 6 years 30K miles and not a single problem with the clutch other than regular trans fluids change. Just about 5 months ago back in July this year, my elder cousin purchased a 03' 575 F1 under my recomendation with only 8K kilos (5K miles) Vin#133414, (Terry, I will post assembly # and Engine # later), and we spend $10K USD in full service to refresh and renew the car, all fluids, timing belt, tires, rotors & brake pads includes the F1 clutch which cost roughly $4K out of the $10K spent. Job well done by the local dealer in Taiwan, and from August till now my cousin had driven 1K kilos and 500 kilos by me. We drove both the stick and F1 back to back. And as much as I love the stick trans, and my other F-cars are all stick trans, I do learn to like the F1 trans more and more in the 575. Both are quite different cars, both are very awesome cars, and you can't go wrong with either one. Alex Lin
Any comments about 355 or 360 F1 systems are totally irrevelant to this thread. Limiting yourself to a 575 6 speed will make being choosy about any other factor difficult. There are very few out there. You really need a couple of days in an F1 car before you can really judge if it is for you. My opinion is they are great track cars, great weekend hot around the back road cars. If I intended to drive it on any kind of a regular basis in an urban or suburban setting (traffic, stop and go, etc) I'd rather drive a stick.
Brian, Have you ever done a conversion from F1 to a stick? What do you estimate it would cost? Can you use the same exact transmission and just add the shift linkage and pedal assemblies?
No but it would not be that hard to do. In a 360 I would say just find one the way you want but in a 575 there are so few 6 speeds it starts becoming a practical alternative. Best to find a wrecked 550, take the shiftng controls from the interior and gearbox (same on both cars), the pedal box (same again) and the clutch hydraulics. The part I cannot say with certainty but have no doubt it can be done is how much of the electronics need to be changed. I do not think that much. The Motronic units likely need changing. I'd have to investigate to see what other systems might come into play. The throw out bearing would need to be changed too. An off setting expense is the value of the 575 F1 parts that are removed. Those could be sold and for pretty good money WHEN you find a buyer.
Terry, I am aware of the problem that was reported to us from Brian (Failing to learn the clutch position) about 18 months ago and between both of us we never managed to find out what the problem was. Even Brian said that he measured every dimension between the Hill unit and the OE parts and could not find a difference - Several hundred units later and we have not had a similar problem reported. I don't think we will ever find out the exact problem but we can only gather information as we receive it. Only in the last 3-4 month a very good customer of mine who owns a shop here in the UK decided to fit one of our release bearings into his Enzo while doing a clutch change. They also fitted a new clutch sensor and had a similar problem to what Brian described where it would not learn clutch position. It was found that the new sensor was actually faulty and a replacement was sent that unbelievably was faulty as well. A third sensor was fitted and everything was absolutely fine. I don't know what the chances of having two faulty sensors are one after the other are but it happened. Paul Image Unavailable, Please Login
Paul- That is really good news. I was looking forward to seeing that T/O bearing and am glad the similar 360 sensor has proven itself. There was a new clutch position sensor introduced in 2004/5 and there was even a 612 recall for the sensor. Who knows? Taz Terry Phillips
Keith I have a 575 HGTC. The HGTC version has a completely different SW version for the gearbox. Much better and faster shifting than a standard 575M. It is more like a F430. I am not sure if the hardware (gearbox) is the same as for the standard 575M and if it would be possible just to put in a HGTC TCU/ECU into a standard 575M. Markus
Markus, I know the HGTC ECu map brought the shift time down from 220 to 180. I was wondering if anybody was able to get it down closer to the 100 mark.
Keith I am not sure how important the measured times are. Of course 60 ms of the superfast 2 gearbox of a Scud are a completely different world. As you may know, I had a standard 575M which my mechanic crashed. Now I have a HGTC. The main difference in perception is at lower revs when pressing the right pedal only at about 50%. The standard 575M takes seconds to shift (perceived) where the HGTC is much faster (still quite slower than a F430). At high revs with the right pedal fully depressed the 575M had a bang when changing gears where the HGTC feels much smother but also slower (!) although the shift time decreased from 220 ms to 180 ms. I really had more fun with the old software when up shifting at high revs. Worst of all was my Maser Coupe. When driving in normal (not sport) mode, the gearbox took an awful long time when pulling the paddle to a reaction of the gearbox. Just because of this I always drove in sport mode (well, I have sport mode always on in my Ferrari as well ). This is a thing Ferrari also changed in the HGTC software: There is nearly no delay between pulling the paddle and the reaction of the gearbox. You can see this when you pull both paddles to go into neutral. About 50% of the time the gearbox shifts one gear up or down (at random you may think) when I want to go into neutral where the standard 575M always went into neutral. I assume this is because of the shortened reaction time. You have to pull both paddles really at the same time. What I want to say is that the perception of the speed of the gearbox may be different from the shift times that you measure. When I drove a 458 Italia with its double clutch gearbox I thought this is quite boring though the shift times were factors faster than those of my Maranello. Markus PS: I guess that the limitation to go below 180 ms is not the software but the hardware of the gearbox itself. I would really be surprised if a time around 100 ms would be possible with the 575 gearbox.
Markus, Thanks for the info. That's really helpful hearing your assessments. I just didn't know if any of the tuners had experimented with the TCU to even try to get it to shift faster. I was also curious as too the physical structure and if it could handle that.
If you're good with the later 6-speed gate shifters, and I mean really good, you can beat 200 milliseconds and approach 100 milliseconds. The box will work that fast without overwhelming the synchronizers. And you will get the satisfaction, as well as much better clutch life, no pump replacement headache and wallet drain, and a rare vehicle that will hold value better over the longer term. But it is not for everyone.
