Pretty sure that's what happened, as is the dealer. First one they've heard of.
I've had it about 9 months. Bought it from Ferrari of Houston with 12,000 miles on it, about 19,000 now. Was headed home from last Tuesday night, driving it like a normal car, nothing stupid, just following another car up the entrance ramp on the interstate when a slight knocking starts from the engine, worse with revs. An 'Engine management system failure; get car to dealer immediately' message pops up, and as I head the mile down the road to my house, the knocking turns to banging. Yes, in idle, no sound. Had no loss of power, oil pressure remained great, and the car ran perfectly....except for all the banging and flashing dash warnings. Well the dealership gets it; Maranello hasn't heard of anything like this and asks for a video of the car running and the diagnostic report. Got word today the factory is just shipping over a whole new crate engine and want this one back to go over it. Might be a one bad bearing thing, or something that we all have to watch and be aware of. But in my case, there was no warning and was slowly accelerating. Driving the 360 spider till this one is fixed.
what year is your car? It's great that you are getting a brand new engine, it's like having half a new car, but bad that you have to break it in again
more reason to put miles on these cars so that most of the issues would appear within the warranty period.
Remember when they replaced those "100" crankshafts because of a miss calibration on the machining? I always wondered...
The powertrain in a 458 is, what, roughly $100k to replace? Very, very, very, very few of these cars get to even 20,000 miles before the end of the 3-year warranty (heck, I'd venture the majority don't get to 10,000), so we really have virtually zero information on the longevity of these powertrains (except for a few negative events with the DCT and the engine "recall" matter). So...purchasing an additional 7 years of warranty (power cube, then power "normal", then powertrain) over the years 4-10 is perhaps good insurance...I am guessing/estimating the 7 years of warranty costs around $35k in total. So, its not trivial, but the early years (years 4, 5, 6, 7) power cube and power normal cover much more than the powertrain.
So, you think spending $35K to insure against a $100K possibility is a good bet. Do you really think there is a greater than 30% chance of a catastrophic engine failure over that time-frame ? Anyone have any idea of rate of comparable failures on current 10 year old F cars ?
Well, I spent nothing as they recertified the car an additional two years as part of the sale, as it had just a few months left on the 3 year factory when I bought it.
Haven't given it any real money in the table thought...that's why I said "perhaps". Importantly, it isnt actually a $35k vs $100k decision. It's actually $4-7k for 12 months of "insurance" against breakage. Tough call for sure. I can say I tried to buy PowerTrain for my CS, so I was willing to spend $3k to protect the PowerTrain for one year...
To update, it WAS a crank bearing failure where it fragmented and pieces ran through the entire engine. Trashed it all. I've rebuilt countless engines and have seen some pretty worn bearings and flakes scour cranks that needed to be turned, as well as small damage to other sections, but NEVER seen a complete bearing break apart. Of course I'm just a backyard mechanic but have pulled the engines on my 328 and 360, not totally inexperienced. Anyway, Ferrari is handling it great, new engine and let's hope this isn't a sign of things to come for others. (Headers, 355 valve guides, sticky switches, etc...)
Don't know if I want to get a full two year warranty that covers everything for 9900, or just add year of power train for 4400.
This is very scary. Wonder if it was part of the crank machining issue? The problem, of course, is that most of our cars don't get driven enough miles in the warranty period to find out things like this. Please keep us posted if you get further information regarding root cause.
I am sure there is some real data out there, but as a hypothesis or two... If we can agree that 1 mile on a race track is equal to 10 equivalent miles on a road car, then we might refer to the several hundred 458 Challenge cars out there They too had some of the initial DCT teething pains (same issue). I raced a 13,000 km car at Mugello last year, it had been serviced and not yet rebuilt. So let's make a wild guess that it was run the equivalent of 100,000 road miles. The thing still pulled like a train; perhaps not as much as a newer car, but it ran. I have yet to hear of a rash of crank bearing failures, but again, would love to confirm that with data. Curious as to when the OP's engine was built relative to the prior recall. Glad they are handling this well and taking care of you. Good news (?) is that the DCT's are now becoming more field serviceable, so in the event of a problem, repair is an alternative to a swap.
Really great point. I imagine that the bottom end of the 458 challenge car is identical to the street version (?). I would agree that a racetrack mile is at least 10 street miles, maybe more.
Yes, the very early engines had this serious recall. It is great that they are stepping up and doing the right things to resolve this quickly