Good morning friends, Seems like I have some issues with the PTU as well. Not so much the PTU itself, more the sealing towards the PTU. The thing that strikes me the most is, that the dealer I bought my car from, continental Motorsports, obviously didn't made a correct inspection on that vehicle! On my way home after I purchased the car the first failure message came up. I contacted my sales rep and she basically told me to ignore the message "the battery is new, they throw these messages from time to time, you don't need to worry". So I guess I go to eBay next time... But that's a different story. Anyway, back to topic. My vehicle is now in maintanance at Ferrari DC and they do an awesome job there! Nevertheless, here is the diagnosis: the sealant is leaking which should have been visible a while (I only put 2k miles on it and the leak is definitely older!!). THE SEALANT IS NOT COVERED BY THE WARRANTY! So frankly speaking, the PTU is but not the rubber that seals it up. Just wanted to share this and ask for your guy's input. The sealant is estimated with 4k repair costs. Reading above that the PTU is 7k plus labour, is this including the seal? Bc if that's the case than I much rather take the gamble. I'm frustrated enough with the whole continental experience. Ive already out 10k in the vehicle just to have it an a somewhat presentable, optical condition. If this thing is now falling apart from a mechanical standpoint I'm loosing it. Thx
I dont know the answer but i wld replace the ptu with a GTE one if you are gonna disassemble everything. Or just drive it until the ptu goes and needs to be changed?
Hi Chris, I’m sorry to hear about your frustration. It’s too easy to be wise after the fact but if you can afford to self insure your car, you should do so. I had this experience with a fuel pump which my dealer told me wasn’t covered under warranty ‘because it showed signs of being run dry’ - even though I had never run it dry. The warranty has so many get out clauses that you’re better off saving the annual cost of it into a separate account so that you know you’ll be covered whenever you need it. In this case, the cost to repair the seal will be less than the cost of a warranty. I can’t advise on whether you should get the whole PTU reconditioned or not as I don’t feel that we have enough information on what GTE do when they rebuild them. If you could find out more and report back that would be really helpful.
Aie, sorry to read this Chris! The failure message appears sometimes and disappears when re-start the engine on mine. The PTU failure is our "Damocles sword". I read here a guy in UK rebuilds them as well and upgrade a seal. If mine comes I would prefer not only swap it but upgrade it if truly posssible. Thoses kind of issues pollute our passion and pleasure but not sure we can avoid them unless driving a pleasureless Toyota...
thanks - maybe i missed it but who are you? who is we? is your kit similar to http://www.gte-engineering.com/ferrari-4rm-ptu-rebuild.html?
Not surprised! Warranty always get u. How many miles and year on you car? Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Hi Martin, As you'll have gathered from the posts by Chris King earlier in this thread, Simon Furlonger has come up with replacement seals for the OEM design PTU in cases where the fork seal has failed and PTU oil and hydraulic fluid has mixed. From the description of the failures that you've seen and the damage to the selector fork, can I ask; 1) is this the same failure mode as Furlonger are addressing but more progressed in the PTUs that you've seen (given the fork damage)? 2) do the modifications which you make to the fork, shaft and seal housings eliminate the seals which Furlonger have developed? 3) how many miles do your rebuilt PTUs have on them since their rebuilds? 4) how much do you charge for a rebuild/modification 5) do you need the whole car brought to you or can you do the rebuild without the car? Thanks again for your time and posting on here.
Hi ANOpax Yes I read Chris's post and its great to see that other fellow technicians are willing to strip something down and seek to repair it rather than just fit a new unit. In answer to the questions 1) Yes I believe it is the same fault and it may well be that I had my introduction into a particularly bad ptu. Where the circlip had failed it had peeled some of the fork material away and the end cap housing the seals had become canted over and the seal was partially ejected from the housing. 2)The modifications we make to the forks are to strengthen the areas where we have seen the failures and generally improve the setup with high quality materials. I must add we have only seen failures on the 1st/2nd fork but that is the one that is used the most. we have put in re-designed seals retained in a re-designed end caps. I don't know what changes Furlonger made to the seals I think we have all come up with our own ways of sorting this issue which is great. 3) Our final bench testing was only completed a few weeks ago and our first car went out this week so has little mileage as yet. The customer called me and was extremely happy saying that it feels better than ever. We have another one in for repair on Monday that will be driven hard and used daily so will have feedback from that soon 4) For a drive in drive out repair we are charging £7950 with a 12 month warranty 5) We would prefer to have the whole car but would do a rebuild for someone as long as they used the correct fluids and had access to diagnostics. Our fork assemblies are all pressure tested and run through many cycles on our test rig then assembled into the ptu and bled and re-tested to ensure the work before being fitted. Thanks for the interest in what we do Martin
Ok, thank you Ernie, it is good to know some guys like you are able to fix this issue instead of the "same player shoot again" solution. I'm interested to know the following with your cars repaired after mileage, as late as possible but as all FF/Lusso owners I will perhap's be in the market in the future...
£7950 was the quote - drive in drive out with 12 month warranty. If you’re shipping the PTU from the states I suspect the pricing will be different but I get the impression they’re willing to rebuild others provided the correct fluid and bleed procedures are followed.
yeh was wondering about extra cost since we re in the USA. for us GTE seems to be the easier of the 2.
Good to know there is a (fairly) local option for me post-warranty if there is an issue Thanks for posting!
Hi everyone. After a busy week in the workshop, one of the happy customers drove away in his FF, with great big grin on his face. He had been nursing the PTU for a while, by topping up the hydraulic oil, but eventually it gave in and he had been driving around in wet mode, waiting for our repair solution to be finalised. Here are a few pictures from the builds so far; Image Unavailable, Please Login PTU casing stripped Image Unavailable, Please Login Seal partially ejected from fork assembly Image Unavailable, Please Login Not perfectly clear, but this photo shows some scoring on the shaft and some damage to the circlip retaining flange Image Unavailable, Please Login New forks (top) ready to be installed. Ferrari forks on the bottom, for comparison "TTforcefed" we would be happy to rebuild any PTU shipped to us, and we are also looking at the logistics of offering an exchange service with our rebuilt spare PTU. I hope these pictures have been helpful. Many thanks, Martin Parkes
That’s absolutely fantastic Martin. Thank you for sharing the photos of the seal failure and the redesigned parts. May I ask a question regarding the circlips? In your introductory post, you described at length the redesign of the forks, shafts and seal housings. The photos of your redesigned forks look great - the CNC machining being much cleaner than the OEM cast parts. But I can’t help noticing that you appear to have retained a similar circlip design as used in the OEM forks. Given that it’s the circlips which fail, thereby allowing the seal to fail, how can you be confident that the circlips in your new design fork won’t also fail? Was it not possible to design out the circlips completely? thank you
Hi ANOpax You are correct we identified that the circlip was failing but due to insufficient support around the outer rim which was then putting the clip under excess stress exerting loads onto the clip that eventually lead to pieces breaking off. We have put in more support in our fork design but also in making the fork from very good quality material also added in strength. We did look at alternative ways to hold the end cap in the fork but decided on keeping it simple but not expecting the circlip to do its job with inadequate support We are going to be subjecting an original fork to a destruction test where we will force the end cap out of the fork in a press and then do the same to our fork. I will be able to get break point readings for comparison. Thanks Martin Sent from my SM-N950F using FerrariChat.com mobile app
To Martin Great results Martin, very impressive. Is your solution the same for the FF & the Lusso. rgds
Hi fcv001 We have not had a lusso in the workshop yet but I believe it's exactly the same unit unless anyone can correct me on that so that being the case yes our modified fork assemblies would be suitable for the lusso. Many thanks Martin Sent from my SM-N950F using FerrariChat.com mobile app
A Lusso owner has joined FChat and reported on another PTU thread that he's had a failure. I've added it to the database. We now have 18 reported failures on FChat of which 12 are FF and 6 are Lusso. The average age and mileage at the point of failure is 4.1 years and 17,500 miles The standard deviation is 1.9 years and 12,200 miles There is no correlation between age and mileage at the point of failure as the chart below shows. Image Unavailable, Please Login However, there is an outlier with the ex-Lederman car owned by Jose 2077 as Rick likes to drive his Ferraris and it had clocked up 50,000 miles at the point of failure. Removing it from the statistical analysis, we see that; The average age and mileage at the point of failure is 4.2 years and 15,200 miles The standard deviation is 1.9 years and 8,900 miles Crucially, though, there does appear to be a better correlation between mileage and age at point of failure as the chart below shows. However, that may simply be a reflection of the averaage mileage which owners tend to put on each year. We could remove a couple more outliers in order to improve the correlation but that's being a bit too selective for my liking. Image Unavailable, Please Login
Great analysis!! I still wonder if driving style has an impact on it or not? Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
