Clutch Wear Pic - What's This Translate to?

The last SD3 reading when I bought the car 200 miles ago indicated only a 33% clutch wear. I snapped this shot through the clutch inspection port just recently. I don't have info on what the clutch pad thickness is on a new clutch to compare this to so is there any way to judge by the picture about how much clutch wear I have?
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How does the car drive?

 

Hey I hope you find out much clutch wear you have and I will track this post so I will know how to judge it too. I have a 430 and when I bought it, I was told it had 40% left so I will open the inspection port to look at mine. I owned a a 360 and finally did the clutch after I ran it for over 2 years with less than 20% left but had no problems. Sometimes I think Ferrrari Dealers tell you that your clutch is getting low and you need it to change it up before something catastrophic happens..... it's funny how we get drawn into doing work that probably does not need to be done. I dont mind doing work on my F430 as long as it is justified.

 

The car drives fine. Shifts feel right and no dropping out of gear. I'm in the camp of most that you drive it and not worry about it till the tell tale signs start popping up. And even then, those signs could be for something totally different. I'll be putting under 2,000 miles a year on this car with no heavy tracking. I'm just curious more than anything about "calculated" clutch wear versus what can be visually seen. To you point Robertfrasson, I've had techs tell me the car is on its last leg for a clutch when the SD3 was mistakenly read to show 67% wear and he thought I needed the clutch job asasp before it gets into th flywheel and tears it up. Some techs recommend replacing the flywheel wheel anyway since you're there. Anyways, the dark thicker bands measure about 2 mm thick while the one next to the flywheel is around 1.5 mm thick for what it's worth.

 

I can't tell from that pic because I can't see a wear groove in the friction material. Can you rotate the engine and take an other photo? There does look to be plenty of meat on it, though.

 

Not sure if this is any better.
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The D shaped grooves are what you are looking for - obviously a visual inspection is an indication only, but a reasonable one.

The attached photo (from the thread linked above) shows a very good clutch. I've added green arrows to help.
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You can see the D shape groove in the 2nd pic the OP posted. Based on that barely visible groove it seems the clutch is about to be done

 

Thanks for the reply and link to the other thread mwstewart. Good info! I don't want to beat this to death as I'm sure I'll be getting replies here before long like "just drive the d@mn thing and fix it when it breaks". But more curious than anything plus wanted to get some idea as to how many miles I can reasonably expect to get before she starts slipping. As to the groove, I suspect mine is wore down to it. This pic kind of shows what I suspect is one of the grooves, or what's left of it (depicted by the arrow). So I noticed in the other thread that a new clutch is around 6 mm thick. Is that measuring overall thickness with the metal backing of the clutch material included?
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In the thread that someone linked to, it said the clutch is ~6mm thick. That is the thickness of the overall plate (show in your pic) with the middle backing metal included.

Also in the thread, is someone saying there is about 1mm before the friction material is worn down to the rivet holding the material to the backing plate. That is also about the depth of the grooves.

Meaning the life of the clutch is about 2mm (1mm one each side of the friction surface).

Therefore once the groove disappears you are getting close to wearing the friction material down to the rivets, which will scratch your flywheel or gets worn off and then your friction material comes lose. Both of which are not good.

 

If your car is F1, it is just over half of that and you will need to change the clutch

 

can you measure the friction disc thickness, in its current position / state, and check WSM for spec?

 

Shop manual spec is worthless. If you went by that you'd be replacing clutches monthly. Besides, measuring the 430 discs correctly is nearly impossible. The spec is for a collapsed disc and since you cannot remove the discs from the assembly collapsing them for the measurement isn't really practical. When it is installed it is very easy to determine by the TO position.

 

Finally there are some threads here about the 430 clutch-- this and the one referenced where Andrie measured his.. i did the same when i did my clutch and if i had checked more i may have done it differently-

i will dig my old clutch out of the box and take a pic- as (from memory) it wasnt that worn-

 

I had posted the first picture on the previous thread. I have a manual trans and was looking for a simple way to evaluate clutch wear. What I found, thanks to Andre and others, was Maserati/Ferrari clutch discs are very thin (~6mm) and have very little wear margin (~1mm). For F1 cars this is a quick and dirty check if you don't have access to the mega-dollar SD units and as I understand it the F1's have to be correctly set initially or the wear readings are suspect. So owners might have a simple secondary check before they drop a bundle on a new clutch.

Rifledriver, I thought a collapsed disc was a back injury. What were you trying to say?

 

A clutch disc is not solid. It is really 2 discs of organic material that sandwich a spring....marcel spring. The marcel spring takes up driveline shock and adds to consumer felt comfort upon shifting. A "clutch disc" has among other specs an open spec where the marcel is at rest and a closed spec where the two discs sandwich the spring and press the spring flat for the most compressed position. Most racing clutch discs run with no marcel spring.

 

Thanks. So looking at the D grooves for wear is a good way to do it since the disc thickness varies. Maserati clutches (the picture I posted) seem to be of the solid disc type.

 

Pretty much. If the grooves are gone, so is your clutch.

 

Great stuff! I've got 47,000 mi on my 08 430 and I didn't think that the car had ever had a clutch changed. However, going over my CarFax, reviewing what previous owners had done, I saw that the engine mounts had been replaced. I bought the car with 24,000, mi. I think I'll give the clutch a visual inspection As I have my suspicions as to the ECU being messed with, unable to get proper clutch wear calculations.

 

I’d be shocked if your original clutch lasted 47,000 miles. I guess if you did all long distance freeway driving with very little shifting it would.

 

F1 clutches can last way more than 47,000 miles, especially the twin disc clutch on the F430.

 

Echoing Taz, my twin disc clutch (612 OTO) has 40,000 miles and wear is currently 26%.

Bill

 

It's not a given, it depends on how the car was driven. I urge you to drive your car daily in Boston traffic, or NYC . You will be stranded on the side of the road by the time you reach 15k.

 

I will see your Boston/New York and raise you Paris while parked on level -4 underground. The 40k miles have accrued over the last 20 months.

Granted while most of the miles are proper GT miles, the car is on the road 330+ days a year.

Bill