430 damper upgrade or overhaul

Hi all,

Iam going through the process of upgrading and overhauling the suspension components in the 430 suspension.

My car has always ridden very badly and the ride is harsh, brittle and not compliant or controlled at all. It feels like there is very little damping action going on. The car is lowered slightly, has 15mm take and has the scud geometry settings. I used to own a Scuderia which rode and handled infinitely better than my 430. The ride in particular was for more compliant and controlled and didn’t crash over minor road imperfections and road compressions.

I have replaced the springs 450lb Front/ 600Lb Rear linear rate springs.

Iam now upgrading and replacing all flamblocs and damper bushes as well as ball joints.

The last thing is to upgrade or rebuild the standard dampers. Before I waste good money doing this, am I better replacing the 430 dampers with Scuderia versions? What is the difference between these damper versions?

I find the feel in ride/comfort no different between sport and race so Iam also open to replacing these with non-EDC dampers - the guys who do my wheel alignments said they could get some custom dampers made by Bilstein but I’d prefer not to go this non-Ferrari route if possible.

Any help or advice here would be most appreciated. Nb - the roads in Sydney are absolutely woeful so ride comfort and compliance is very important to me.

Thanks in advance

 

What wheels do you have? CCBs? Lightweight wheels and carbon brakes make a significant difference to ride and handling. If you are used to a Scuderia going back to an F430 with iron brakes and standard wheels will feel like a big downgrade.

How old are the tyres? If over 5 years in your climate I would replace - they go hard.

Scuderia dampers on an F430 will throw a suspension error code.

 

Be good to know your wheel sizes.

Also, 600 lb rear springs are wholly inadequate!

That pressure rating is less than the OEM springs, and that could be causing part of your problem

At 600 lbs you have inadequate rear end support which can be throwing off the suspension geometry

 

I have bbs fi wheels in 19” with 235/285 tyres. CCM’s and titanium wheels nuts. Unsprung Weight loss was the first priority. Basically everything has been improved except the dampers.

Tyres are brand new Trofeo R’s.

You might be confusing the 430 with another car? Scuderia rates are 620lbs rear and base F430 is 590lb rear but they’re progressive rate.

If I were to fit Scuderia dampers I would get the code cleared but wondering if scud dampers would be better than bilstein or whether there’s much difference between 430 and Scuderia dampers.

 

Weight is ruled out so the only other factors that come to mind are tyre wall stiffness and geo (specifically camber).

The code would come back: the dampers require the Scuderia suspension module which isn't compatible with the rest of the F430 electronics. The result is a code and the damping is stuck at a fixed rate (to which of the three modes I can't remember). The dampers are made from a different alloy, are lighter, and a different rate.

There should be a perceptible difference between Sport and Race, and a significant one between Wet and Race. Does that occur on your car?

 

I never really take mine of race... what is the difference you feel... tighter?

 

All of this ECU stuff is solvable as I proved with the Scuderia H gate conversion. Either a reflash, recode or an inline small programmed dual CAN bus packet sniffer/ modifier and you can prevent any of the ECUs throwing a code such as variant coding, etc.

I guess the real issue isn't getting the Scuderia ECUs to work on base model (which I can now do for any element including carbon rev counter can based steering wheel etc) but understanding what exactly has caused the the hash ride, degraded components, alignment or modified parts mix.

Springs do need to be matched to characteristics of the valving in the dampers so if that wasn't the case it cause unintended consequences. The bushes could be worn including common ones like gearbox and engine which make the car feel very "at sea".

 

There are three modes: soft, medium, and hard. Race sets the sus to hard. If the OP doesn't notice a different between the modes then I suspect they are stuck in the hard setting.

 

Trev, I documented all the Scuderia stuff in my thread a couple of years ago. There isn't CAN in use between the module and dampers. If the OP can't feel a difference between the settings I suspect there's a damping issue.

There's quite a bit of leeway in shock/spring damping and no absolute match - the whole stock system is predicated on variable damping which has a pretty big difference between hard and soft.

 

AFAIK the Suspension ECU is relatively 'self contained' on both the 360 and F430. I'd be interested if you could point me in the direction of what you wrote.

Pin 28 is CAN-H and 29 CAN-L on the Suspension Control Node (NCS) for both F430 and Scuderia (same shared pinout) ecu's and Pin 8 is K-Line typically used for Diagnostics. I haven't tested or captured CAN logs but assumed CAN was used to determine if shocks should be in hard or soft mode using CAN from the Dashboard ECU. In other words the Dampers switch is connected to the dashboard and it in turn sends a CAN message to the Suspension ECU to tell it which mode to be in.

The suspension ecu basically uses 2 acceleration sensors to determine if it should be in soft or hard mode depending on the programmed maps and mode its operating it. That's it, then all it does is control the stiffness on each damper with 2 wires connecting each individual damper.

I cannot see any reason why you couldn't transplant 430 Scuderia dampers and ECU to even a 360. I have a spare ECU in storage so perhaps I will take a look someday.

 

CAN is used for the drive mode selection (the words for each mode are different to the F430) and also a link between the ECU and TCU for adaption during gear changes. The damper to ECU isn't CAN however and there are electronic differences between Scuderia and F430 dampers. This is why the OP cannot use Scuderia dampers.

 

I understand ... I’m asking what is the difference. Mine is lowered a bit and what i feel Between the two is in race it’s a little tighter and rougher... not a lot though.... just curious if maybe some issue with mine

 

Can you identify at what point your suspension became squirrely?

Was it before or after you installed springs, etc?

 

I’d say the lack of progressive springs is a major part of the issue, if not all of it.
I run a set of ex-race Ohlins 3 way adjustable, remote canister dampers on a Mk 1 Porsche 996 GT3 road car, I dynoed a set of brand new standard front and rear springs, then asked the Ohlins specialist who built the dampers, to use those rates for the Ohlins springs. We got them within 2N/mm of the standard spring rates, but they’re linear front and rear, unlike the standard springs which are linear front, and progressive rears (IIRC) the ride can be crashy over poorly surfaced roads at low speed, this is primarily a function of the lack of softer initial spring rates the progressive springs provide. The only way round it is to engineer a dual spring system in which the tender spring actually has a sufficient rate to support the car at static ride height (just) but compresses easily enough to provide decent ride comfort before the main spring takes over. Calculating the rates of both springs is not straightforward however.

Many seem to use the Novitec springs on the 430 with great results, whilst not cheap, they seem to provide far superior ride and handling than the standard items.

 

I am in agreement with JC Andruet

The springs are the problem here

The 360/430 OEM rear springs are about 620-621 pounds in pressure.

Forget what the Scuderia pressures are. They are irrelevant here.

Putting in a spring of lesser pressure will cause instability in the rear end that will translate to an overall imbalance in the ride that is now being reported as being experienced.

If you want to correct the indicated issue you need 680 - 700 pound pressure springs in the rear

Single springs are fine for Ferrari's

 

Thanks for everyone’s input on this.

I have driven the car extensively on OEM springs, H&R progressive springs and now linear springs.

I bought the car with OEM springs and was always frustrated by the woeful ride.

The ride was only marginally improved with the H&R’s by drastically increasing the ride height which then had the adverse impact of making the car feel unplanted at the rear at higher speeds.

All of this spring tweaking leads me to believe that the ride compliance issue lies with the dampers and not the springs.

To answer your question I feel effectively no difference in ride quality between any of the manettino modes.

I understand that the standard springs in the rear are 580lb not 620lb?

 

OEM rear springs are 620-621 pounds

That info comes from the Service Manual

Installing less pressure than this creates a big problem

 

Have you been able to obtain your new spring setup and tested it out yet?


Sent from my iPhone using FerrariChat

 

Apologies in advance, but... it hurts when someone talks about pressure and then list lbs (pressure = force/area, not weight), and it hurts when someone talks about springs in terms of pressure. Springs are characterized in terms of their spring rate - weight/distance, e.g. lbs/inch. How many lbs it takes to compress the spring 1 inch. For a linear spring that remains constant as the spring compresses. For a progressive spring it increases. Sorry... Carry on.

 

Since I went down the path of technically correctness... a spring is technically characterized by the force it takes to compress the spring a certain distance... 1 kg on top of a spring exerts a force of F=mass times acceleration = 1 kg x acceleration due to gravity = 1 kg x 9.8 m/s^2 (on earth)... This resulting force is the "weight"... lol...

 

All research I did in this forum indicated that 600lb in the rear is firmer than stock for the 430. 425/600 is the commonly accepted upgrade using AFCO linear springs.

Anyway, as I pointed out I started with OEM springs as well as h&r and still had the same issues so whether OEM is indeed 580 or 620 is irrelevant.

 

You might drive another stock 430 to compare. You might just be experiencing the normal suspension.


I would go back to stock springs and work from there.

It will difficult to trouble shoot w non oem ride height and non oem spring rates.

Also there are aftermarket coil over options.

But I don’t have exp w how they compare to the stock setup in comfort.

Gl

 

My money is on a damper issue. Both my F430's have rode significantly softer in wet or low grip mode. The ride should feel noticeably firmer in Race.

Even though you have changed springs I'm really surprised you can't feel a difference which makes me think something is wrong.

 

360 Trev, what dampers do you have in your beast? Is is possible to turn off the edc using an SD3 or what’s required?

 

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Thread bump! Ya’ll F’d up.

Accordingly to @tazandjan , the stock F430 rear spring rate is NOT 580-620 lbs/inch … unless of course progressive springs are measured differently.

F430 rear springs rates (progressive) are anywhere from 820-860 lbs/inch.

F430 Front spring rates (linear) are 570-600 lbs/inch.



Scuderia Springs Rates:

Front (Linear) : 700-750 lbs/inch

Rear (Progressive) : 860-900 lbs/inch


@tazandjan please confirm if I interpreted your chart correctly.