I need a driving lesson

It is a bit unnerving the first time it happens on the track. You start looking for smoke in the rear view.

But I used to do this all the time in my Miata. The straight before T3 at TWS is too short to upshift and too long to lift, if that makes any sense.

Dale

 

I drive my manual cars 90% of the time, while my wife drives the 430F1, so I don't play with an F1 transmission much....forgive this stupid question: would using the hill start mode be the right solution for traffic jams going uphill? I've had some severe clutch "juddering" trying to crawl very slowly uphill with traffic in the 430F1. My workaround has been to wait for a few car lengths' worth of space to open up, engage first normally (with left foot on brake to avoid rolling backwards) and then move at just above idle rpm until I caught up with the car in front, stop, repeat. Problem is it pisses off impatient drivers behind me, and half the time other cars cut in front.

 

The hill start mode will wear out your clutch more quickly because it slips the clutch to make starts smoother. I do what you do and let a space open, but I put on a burst in 1st and then select neutral and coast up to where I have to stop. When space opens again, select 1st and repeat. Same thing I did with my manual shifter cars if traffic was too slow to idle along in 1st.

The 575M has enough torque and a low enough 1st gear to idle along in 1st with the clutch engaged. The F430 has a lot less torque, but an even lower 1st gear (3.29 vs 3.15), so I am unsure how well it would idle along.

Taz
Terry Phillips

 

Thanks Taz. The 430 will not idle in first up the hill where I get stuck in traffic - not enough torque, as you suspected. I have to keep the gas at just above idle to keep the F1 from going into neutral. Another solution is to stay in the office later until traffic lightens up. That's not fun. The best solution is to drive the 550!

 

Terry - Not sure about. I thought it is the opposite and the starting mode is to reduce clutch wear because it fully engages the clutch at lower revs than in "normal" first gear. Here is the corresponding page from the owner's manual.

Markus
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Markus- If you engage the clutch at lower revs on a hill, you will stall. Otherwise you would want to start in that mode all the time. PIS is a compromise between clutch slip and the engine stalling. Hill start biases that towards slip.

Taz
Terry Phillips

 

Terry,
So 3 months into owning my 575M the F1 gearbox and I are still not in sync. You said somewhere here to drive it like a 3 pedal car. I'm doing the shift to Neutral when coming to a stop and that portion is working good unless I forget which car I'm driving and do it in the Maserati. On the upshifts I've tried letting off the gas a bit and holding the throttle steady, seems letting up a bit is best? I hear a bit of a clunk when the car is cold and doing the first few upshifts. If I pull neutral then the left paddle for these shifts I don't get the clunk. How many adjustments are there for the shift/clutch mechanisms? Any more advive?

 

The clunk you hear is the clutch engaging, most likely, and we all get that at low revs when cold. If it is your gearbox, I would look at a lubricant change and a PIS adjustment. Incidentally, F1 fluid should be changed every 3 years along with PIS optimization, bleed, and leak check. I also swap out half of my F1 fluid every year with something like a turkey baster so a bleed is not necessary.

I now have Trev's updates on my Motronic ECUs and have an HGTC TCU fitted. The HGTC TCU is not compatible with vanilla 575s, but Trev did some magic to make it work.