Picture of my blown out 355 slave cylinder.

Well, I was about to order the slave cylinder rebuild kit, but I probably should order the core exchange unit instead...
Thanks for the pics...

 

I can't see/tell a thing from your pictures......

 

Are you implying that non-1995 F355's had the "uprated" slave cylinders? What was the part number of the new unit you put in?

Thanks for sharing, Chaa!

 

Ugly puddle! Was the car still driveable to the repair-shop?

cinque

 

Yup! The OEM units blow (literally). I have a bunch of Hill Engineering bearings in stock and always recommend folks use that one on F355 6-speed cars instead of the OEM ones.

If you're a 348 owner, you get the nice old-style cast iron ones. No blowin' there!


-Daniel

 

Ouch!

But...

Paul Hill to the rescue!

 

Ha, just a 1/4 mile. Lazy bastards .
Even a Skoda dealer would pull you in his park ferme.

good luck again with your 355!

cinque

 

and they seem such smiling nice people in the brochure too lol

 

Or learn to use the "CLOSE UP" setting on your camera and then preview the images before posting.

These really are crap photos.

 

Nice write up Chaz,

good to see Pauls slave cylinder looks far better than the factory one

 

That "Synchro" guy looks just like a forum troll.

Anyways..must give you some thanks! Pictures were good enough for me to alert me to the problem with the bearings and a heads up on the Hill Engineering part. Just in the nick of time too!! I brought my 355 in for a track worthiness inspection last Monday. Guess what FOA found.. yep, a bad thowout bearing. Dry as a bone! It probably went bad during my ownership, but because it was gradual, the increasing noise from it seem to be it's natural sound. Not so... the mechanics heard it right away... Anyhow, reading you experience led me to the Hill part. Much better and less expensive than the OEM part. AND BIG THANKS TO DANIEL AT RICAMBI for shipping me one straight away in time for the first service bay opening at the dealer to have my car ready for my track day...as well as to some extra footwork with Hill as we discovered that Hill left off the little guide roll pin. not a big deal as it was only $.25 and it was in stock at FOA. FOA was totally impressed with the quality of construction of the bearing and were amazed at the cost being about half the OEM price.

More Kudos to the guys at Ferrari of Atlanta as well as doing the job in only 6 hours! I really didn't mind this time writing them a check. First rate techs and very nice people as well. I would have done the job myself, but my garage is jammed up with other immovable projects. I also doubt that I could have done it as fast as them as it would be the first time I'd have the back end apart.

Double happy, cuz I also replaced the clutch disc at the same time, since the car was apart anyways...happy becuase 3 years ago I bought a new Valeo clutch form someone on eBay who bought the complete pressure plate / disc combo and only needed the pressure plate. I paid $49.00 ..no one else was bidding on it and I figured I didn't need it then but I would eventually. That part new from Ferrari would be over $500!

Thanks again Chaa for you posting!!

JD

 

Is that the clutch slave cylinder we're looking at?

 

Ooh, I had a trollish answer all prepared last night. Not feeling so feisty now but I'm gonna use it anyway:

You mean you abandoned your car and had it towed in just because you lost the clutch? You should be ashamed! Real drivers don't need no stinking clutch you sissy!

There, I feel better now!

And there's a story behind my little rant: My first car ate its clutch linkage one night so I left it and got a ride home. My father basically said the same thing to me that i said to you: hey, kid, you can drive a car with no clutch, what are you, some kind of moron? And he proceeded to drive it across town to our garage so I could fix it. Naturally I was shamed into learning the simple technique of shifting without using the clutch, mainly so I could lord it over sissies like you!

 

The clutch on my 1998 F355 failed completely last Saturday. Managed to limp home by taking back roads. Tore it down over the weekend and sure enough it failed. An unbelievably poor design. The thin material is clearly insufficient.

Am replacing it with the Hill Engineering replacement unit provided by Daniel at Ricambi. You also need to replace the flange so its more expensive than using the Ferrari unit, but it's money well spent. Also replaced the clutch disc.

I decided to do it myself using the documentation found at

http://ferrarichat.com/forum/showthread.php?t=27374

very helpful and a great representation of the excellence found on FChat.

Attached are pictures of my failed units. I expect many others will be seeing failures of their slave cylinders. While mine has only 15,000 miles the fragility of the design makes this a potentially high failure item.

Daniel at Ricambi was great helping me get all the bits and pieces, thanks.
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In trying to determine contributing factors to the slave's blowout, I've seen people state that it has blown when their clutch was worn, and I've seen them state that it has blown when they've held down their clutch pedal for a long period of time.

Any thoughts on yours?