This has been amusing to read. Just get two cars. One old with a 6speed and one new. Done. Waaaaaay cheaper.
Many of you are missing the point of this conversion with repeated comments about how the ECU controls so many things and thus it would not work. The WHOLE point of this is to FNCK "the doing everything for the driver, instead of the driver ECU" off. The creator of this wants to DRIVE his car, not let the computer do 75% of the work. So if Hewland make a gearbox, then this gearbox can be modified to have synchros and thus there is an option. Yes it would cost lots of dollars, but so would the building of 458 GT's for race series. And you absolutely could put a 360/430 6-speed in the car if you want ... anything is possible, and anybody that has built a serious race car knows you start by stripping the car and starting again. This would be similar to that but not quite as complex. And yes throw the ECU in the bin where it belongs and put an after market Motronic controller or something ... thus you will have no traction control, no fancy diff, no computer saying you should not use full throttle now and finally no flipping computer allowing you to change gear when you ask it to. Just because we can make a computer do these things, does not mean we should. Yes to win a F1 WDC we absolutely should but for driving on the road, all these things are like wanking over a girly magazine ... so much better doing it for real and controlling your own hands, mouth and penis, etc. AND importantly feeling her responses yourself. There is a reason why the F40 is still by many the ultimate road Ferrari ... Just my opinion, but I can really understand why this will become a growing trend. Already we have a FerrariChat member (360trev) that has made his own 360CS manual, by converting a 360 6-speed to full CS + spec (http://www.ferrarichat.com/forum/showthread.php?t=158419&page=23). Pete
No argument with these sentiments at all. Modern cars - including, unfortunately, Ferraris - have too many electronic gizmos and geegaws that actually prohibit the driver from actually being a driver. I'm sure that some will say that if you want comparable power without the electronic restriction, buy an F40 or 288GTO. And I'm sure that some will do that. However, my experience in the Ferrari community has proven that there is nothing so expensive, or even impractical, that someone won't do it. My wager is that, within a few years (or even less time), someone will create a "kit" similar to - possibly derived from - but not identical to the race prep kit that will enable a conversion of the 458 to manual transmission.
I highly doubt it. There would be no market for such a kit to be anywhere near profitable. The cars are designed to work with all the gizmo's and doodads to get the best out of the car. Also judging by how many people are freaked out by ANY kind of modified Ferrari, what would be the chances of selling the car after all this work was done?? Like i said..Flappy paddles are the end of the true blood performance driver, BUT the cars now are so advanced, you couldn't shift fast enough to get the full performance out of the very machine you are driving.
Again you are forgetting that we are talking about a ROAD car. Getting the full performance out of the machine is NOT what is important, it is getting the full performance out of the machine and driver combination. So yes the flappy paddled car will be faster in both cases, but as less input is required by the driver there is LESS satisfaction/bragging/I'm a bloody hero driver comments. And in the end for a ROAD car, being able to get out at the end and think "I'm a bloody legend" is what it is all about. If anybody gets out of a flappy paddled, computer driven ROAD car and thinks they are a legend ... well, they are seriously mistaken. They should instead admit they can't drive for **** and the car is brilliant at masking that . Pete
I agree. I'm not looking for full performance. I'm looking for driver enjoyment. These cars are capable of performing far beyond my capabilities. Whatever performance I would give up to get the manual will never be missed by me. I'll not buy the F1 version ever. So I guess it's old Ferraris for me from now on.
Sorry guys, its just not possible to take these comments seriously. If someone is sincere about wanting to get full performance out of machine/driver combination and thinking theyre a bloody legend, if someone is truly looking for driver enjoyment, they will insist on a traditional crash gearbox with straight cut gears and no synchromesh. The huge technological advancements of syncro rings and spiral cut gears removed forever the true skill and enjoyment experienced by the real bloody legends of motor sport. Its only modern day posers and wannabes who quibble over trivial differences among which gearbox advances are acceptable to them and which are beneath them.
An interesting aside about this. Back in 77, I had a 900SS Ducati that I wanted to race. The basic problem was that the gearbox and clutch wouldn't deal with the added power if you made the engine race worthy. A guy by the name of Cook Neilson, who was then the editor of Cycle had built one of these into a race winning vehicle. One of the things he'd done was to have a gearbox made. The original manufacturer of his boxes was a fellow by the name of Marvin Webster, who operated Webster Gear. I was fortunate that he was a neighbor of mine. Cook had cut a deal where Webster couldn't make any further transmissions. I found one of their employees who wanted to do the project, and got him to quit, buy the tooling necessary to make the gearbox. We also made a better crankshaft, and many other components. I'm sure that the 458 is quite a bit more complex, but the reality is this: if someone else built something, it can be duplicated, it just takes time and money. The issues here are if there is a short cut or not. From what I'm reading, there is, but the only question is how much is it going to cost. Art
I hope there are more buyers like you out there. the people who can afford to buy these cars new need to let ferrari no they can't completely abandon the manual tranny.
What they are doing isn't abandoning the manual transmission, they are abandoning some of their customers who want one. If they wanted to build a manual version, i'm sure they could, and they'd probably sell a few or maybe even more than a few. Art
I can't answer that question, but I can say that I for one will never own a flappy padle gearbox. It's stick or nuthin.
after 30 yrs of both daily and track driving a manual, i decided to get the best of both worlds. gtr dual clutch for daily/track then got a 71 xke jag with a 4 speed for when i want it. i would advise the op to do same and forget about building a 458 manual. this advice comes from someone who dreams of turning a 430 into a 333sp. that would still be more practical than the trans swap on 458
"Trivial differences". Now I cannot take that seriously. Yes syncro rings make changing gear much simplier, but nothing is as rediculously easy as flicking a flappy paddle. In the end ROAD cars are about driver enjoyment and that means different things to many people but I cannot understand why anybody would want LESS involvement with controlling a performance ROAD car. Because of traction control and the flappy paddle gearbox the ONLY thing you control on a modern Ferrari is the steering and braking points ... that is the same direction that modern SUV's are going, ie. the driver is an idiot so lets take all the controls away from them. Soon "Google's your car drives itself option" will be available for modern Ferraris, and of course the technology will mean the car corners and is faster than a mere human driving it ... and we will have similar debates on this site, and how turning the steering wheel yourself is just so ineffective and how you are still watching out of the windscreen the same, etc. Pete
+1. I had read a post a while back that was something like this.....Ferrari didn't stop making manuals, customers stopped ordering them. Plain and simple. Without demand there is no reason for production.
It will NOT happen. Let's go over the reasons why. You'd need someone to reprogram just about every ECU in the vehicle. This would require a lot of proprietary information from Ferrari, which they won't give you. You can't just "switch to an aftermarket motronic" (which BTW doesn't exist) because it won't pass emissions. Assuming you can get everything to fit/work. Build two of them. I can guarantee you that you will have to crash one for NHTSA, and use the other for the EPA/CARB certification. You will have changed enough of the vehicles structure that I doubt NHTSA would let it fly under the original cert. EPA certainly won't, neither will CARB. That means off to the emissions lab for the FTP-75, US-06 and other fun emissions tests. Oh, and good luck with that. I do it for a living. If you gave me a front end loader and the keys to Fort Knox - it MIGHT be worth the time it would take to do it. The problem is people who know NOTHING about the complexity of modern automotive electronics saying "well, we ONLY have to do this.." hahahaha
We are talking a gearbox change mate and removal of the ecu, thats all. If we were talking a F50 then the gearbox change would affect the chassis rigidity, but we aren't. The other way to do it is replace the hydraulic "mechanism" that does the gearchanging with a linkage ... assuming the 458 gearbox still has selector forks (?). Pete
No Pete, you're not. You have to modify the motronic to not expect signals from the Transmission. And the instrument cluster And likely remove the EDiff controls (or change them) (and and and and and) Not sure what you do - but this isn't it. Change weight distribution of a car significantly, and NHTSA will want a re-test. As I said - I do this for a living - I fix messes the vehicle OEMs create when they cannot.
+1 If they can put a V12 in a 458 for Eric Clapton, I am sure they will make a stick shift for the 458.
Sure they will - because they have the resources to recertify whatever is needed. Also likely a lot of "wink, wink - nudge, nudge" room w/ NHTSA and EPA. Folks, realize that Art is in California, USA - the laws/requirements of other countries (such as AU) differ greatly!
Understood, and agree. All this removal is a massive plus . The weight distribution will not change at all. Pete
When manuals and paddles were offerred simultaneously, Ferrari considered them to be different models entirely. Paddles were not an option. You either wanted a manual car or paddle car. The wait lists were different and allocations made randomly. For instance, when I got on a list for a manual coupe 430, I was about 15th overall for a coupe but first for a manual. The dealer could not predict when a manual would be allocated. As it turned out, I got the 5th car overall. The manual buyers behind me were not so lucky. Number two on the list waited two more years. Another never got a manual at all and he accepted a paddle car instead. It is true that the vast majority of people wanted paddles but in the case of the 430, they did not make enough manuals to meet demand. Nevertheless, it was no surprise to me that Ferrari dropped manuals. I won't be buying any more new Ferraris but I doubt they will miss me (or Art). Dave
