1998 355 F1 clutch questions: Advise please

Not at all upset Taz, I just see insinuations and I attempt to quell it immeadiately...... it is counter productive to all and makes zero advancement.

There are NO big secrets here, there is no reasonable reason why there would be, its clutch wear being spoken of... not how to fix it. IF you had asked about all my secrets to make a 355 F1 clutch better than what it was delivered new...... sorry friend, that is why they are called "secrets". I invested the effort time and money to figure it out and reverse all the failures that happened in route to that success. As goofy as it sounds, Kris insists that the Govmnt (and her) thinks we are a For Profit business.... go figure. About how to read the indicated wear.... who cares? Change the topic to cracking the codes to be able to do custom set up's of the software and then Maybe it can be justified but I suggest most have far bigger problems to deal with than that.

Clutch wear is Not Linier, its is an accelerated wear rate item no different than brakes. Wear it thin where it can not disipate the heat generated and it wears faster. Heat it up real good and warp all the components and then its anyones guess as to life. Plug these variables into the equation and there is no way to predict the life left, let alone give an answer to the original question based on useless numbers that mean nothing.

There is no reasonable reason to make any valiant effort to crack software for getting a clutch reading when the same can be done in a few hours and have your eyes on it directly. I will say before I invested many 10's of thousands of dollars to buy numerous SD testers, I did have the Microsoft Skunkwerks guys have a peak at one to see what they thought about cloning it. Seems the effort was not justified given a $10K price tag (at the time) for a new one.

The Indicated wear function works in Theory but it will not give what most here are looking for, it simply doesn't answer the questions sought. For me I consider it a useless sales tool, a "look, you need a clutch" gimmick, not a diagnostic function.

 

" I will say before I invested many 10's of thousands of dollars to buy numerous SD testers, I did have the Microsoft Skunkwerks guys have a peak at one to see what they thought about cloning it. Seems the effort was not justified given a $10K price tag (at the time) for a new one."

I think the time has come to revisit that one, hand held computing power with quad core tablets and the like has radically evolved in the last few years. And interfacing them has advanced greatly as well. On many platforms ECUs once thought impossible to mod are written to and altered more than Lindsey Lohan's rap sheet. BOE/KoldFire has done well with bringing the Lotus interface to maturity with a laptop and smart cable. If you build one I would buy it, or I would like to see a community effort to combine talents and get it done that way.

 

The problem isnt computing power, its actually more in reverse of that, the SD1 and 2's dont work worth a hoot with anything later than Win 95. I have standing orders at the Salvation Army for any old laptop that functions half way decent.

It wont be me, I have already identified plenty of ways to turn perfectly good money into wasted time and effort, I need not search for more, they find Me!

 

Dave, look into a setup called DOSBOX, it runs on a modern machine allowing DOS to run as an application. It is very configurable and with proper setup you should be able to have a DOS session running on just about any new laptop.

I seriously think that dosbox on a Linux device might be the starting point for an SD2 emulator. A much more sophisticated embedded system than SD2 was recently cracked and is now running in that way on an Ubuntu Linux box.

 

Dave not sure if you saw or could answer my previous question but if a clutch is replaced without the sd2 can you then zero the tcu number or clutch wear number or whatever the heck its called and for the sake of others are there other benefits to doing the whole install with the sd system. The reason I ask is its tough as a business to always have your best guy doing these type of things. I think you nailed it when you said most are never setup correctly I am concerned that if I let someone else do it will it be as good as it is now?

 

A matter of choosing ones battles I guess, I made the investment to do it correctly. Usually efforts like this could have had it done professionally some 26 times for the cost of making said tester...... I just dont see the justification but I am on the inside looking out.

Nope, I usually pass over these threads because very few will listen to what I have to say. If it was in this thread, my apology but as I stated earlier, I simply dont know the answer to your question, I have never had the need to know because I have always had the correct equipment to do the job. "Doing it correctly" involves a great deal more that typing on a keyboard, that is the icing after the real work is done. There are an endless list of variables in play here, change one and the greatest set up in the world will be useless. This isnt a matter of finding the perfect "number", this is a matter of eliminating the variables where a range of numbers will give predictable results... and then fine tuning from there. As much as folks would like to simplify this to novice capable.... I have yet to find the way.

Forget about the clutch wear number, that is sales swill and is highly inaccurate, those that know pay no attention to it. As to the set up ability..... one had better have the full capability the SD offers to be able to duplicate those efforts. Maybe its easy, I dont know but I have been trying different set ups since these cars were new and just recently found a combination I am pleased with........ I am far from the brightest light on the tree, maybe someone else could duplicate it over a beer.