Hi all I hope you don't mind the first post being that of a rather 'cheesed off' nature? Well, it's gone and happened again! About 2 1/2yrs and just 5,000m ago, the chocolate exhaust manifolds, of which it had had two sets already, had to be changed (challenge manifolds replacing the poor originals). At the same time, purely coincidentally, the gearbox required work after playing up, then eventually not going up higher than 2nd gear. After multiple problems with Ferrari themselves, the northern European manage from Ferrari (based at the factory) stepped in, and both issues resolved (so I thought) after 3mths of the F430 being sat in a 'Ferrari specialist' workshop. Then this morning .....at 05.30, after the usual 5 minute tickover to allow the auto-choke to knock off, out of my property I drove. Just 300yds later the gearbox threw itself into neutral and then searched for a gear (engine management light illuminating). I pulled over and selected first with the paddles, and drove away.....all good. For this quick 45min round trip I left it in manual, with no issues changing up or down. I have to be honest, I am now terrified of driving this junk Italian sports car and my nerves/wallet are shot. I'm not sure if it has any bearing on things, but sometimes the starting isn't great. It just skips or rumbles and needs re-starting. I have to be honest, I never thought that I would, in my wildest dreams, buy a car more unreliable than my old Range Rover. How wrong I was! Any help gratefully appreciated. More so as it has been advertised for sale so I can buy a more reliable German engineered car!
+1 this is the reason why I would not buy a Ferrari made after the 328 the look good but very unreliable,this is why you see 10 year old Ferrari,s with 5-10K miles the are afraid to drive them.I have 87K miles on my 328 and no problems at all good luck with your 430
Yikes! Both my 430's have been Lexus reliable, however I do keep up on all preventative stuff myself. Just a couple obvious questions...how much clutch life do you have left and how old is your battery? FWIW, mine was sputtering on start up and jumping into neutral from 6th get a few weeks ago. I put a new battery in it and all is solved. That's likely way more simple than your issue, but it is amazing how twitchy these cars are without a fresh battery. Also listen to how often and long your F1 pump is running. You should get about 3 shifts before it activates, and maybe runs about 15 seconds when you first open the door.
F430 is a great car..perhaps one of Ferrari's best. Hate to say it..I think you need to find a different shop who can fix the car properly. They are by no means a hard car to sort out and get right. They are rather basic.
lol Yeah, I remember when Ferrari introduced the F1 gearboxes and all the dealers and sales people were just going nuts talking it up. They did a good job of pushing many people into the F1 transmission and away from good ol' reliable / dependable manual gearboxes. Anyway, you might wanna upgrade to a new or better (e.g. Lithium) battery. So many ECU's in modern cars and yet barely enough juice to power them. On my 458, it was plagued with a lot of strange / random electrical issues and warning error messages. The minute I installed the Braille i48CS, they vanished and the car ran flawlessly for 3 years without even the need for any battery tender. So many people out there would be well served to realize that their Ferrari's electrical system will function so much better at 13.2 volts vs. 12.59 volts. Ray
You are100% right but why is Ferrari not take care of that in there new cars and install the best Battery in there new cars so the consumer won’t have all the problems,if you go to this forum a lot of problems on there newer models are related to electrical problems
Economics basically. Option 1: Sell car with standard POS battery, sell customer a battery tender for X dollars. When car has problems, give customer song and dance, sell new battery, charge for installation, service department makes $$ Ferrari wins / customer.. oh well. Option 2: Sell customer car with terrifically expensive battery that is 10-20X the cost Do not sell battery tender to customer Never see customer again, because car runs flawlessly and service center makes zero dollars Customer wins / Ferrari oh well. Or maybe, Ferrari is just run by clowns now and they don't know anything about electronics and don't care and/or are busy making electric SUV's for some unknown reason. Me personally, if I were the CEO of Ferrari, I would simply take a hard line: "We make race cars for the street; we do not make electric cars / if you want an electric car, go talk to Tesla". End of story. Anyway, I have no idea what the real answer is to why Ferrari doesn't upgrade to Lithium. It makes no sense to me either. I would think Ferrari would be smart to, at the very least, offer a Lithium battery as an over priced upgrade for customers. I mean customers spend $2K on Carbonfiber cup holders, so I don't see why selling them a $5800 Lithium battery would be all that hard at the time of configuration in the dealership. I mean car manufactures do a lot of screwy things and most of the auto makers produce terrible cars these days. There's a reason I drive a 90's Toyota truck as my daily Also, you may be looking at the car buying experience from the customer standpoint and not the dealer standpoint. If you think Ferrari loses any sleep over what happens to you after you walk out the door (or any car dealership for that matter), then you've never seen what it's like working on the other end of the car dealership counter. Go watch some YouTube channels like Scotty Kilmer or VinWiki and you'll start to get more of a sense of what it's like. Not saying there aren't decent / honest car dealerships out there, buy they tend to be hard to find. Also, never forget that - by and large - dealerships are all mostly predatory in nature and you, my friend, the customer, are their prey. Hard to say what's up with your F1 transmission stuff, but barring any sensor failure inside the gearbox, I think for my money I'd start by tossing in a Lithium Ion battery and seeing if things improve. You might be surprised. Ray
Which brands? Most of the Lithium stuff from the factories are garbage. This is why I personally only use Braille stuff. It's used in racing and gets the job done. Easy 8 to 12 year life span on those in most road going cars. You get what you pay for. Ray
Good day, It would be interesting to understand why this is the case, as a few 100mV of difference off 12V or so should absolutely not cause any issues with the electronics within these units. I say this, as virtually all electronic and computer based devices operate on voltages far below 12V. Most are below 5V with the newer stuff being 1.8V or lower. Although the devices are powered from the nominal 12V, internally there are step-down power supply circuits to create the lower voltages needed... and these power supply circuit would only act odd if the voltage was much closer to what their output was designed to be which is well under 12V. That said, modern electronics can be far more sensitive to abnormal voltage anomolies in terms of electrical noise on the primary 12V supply source. It is possible that a better battery has superior characteristics (greater capacitance, lower internal resistance, etc) that effectively filter these voltage anomolies before they reach the more sensitive components internally to these devices. However, I am just guessing here. As I said, I doubt that the issue is related to the slight bump in normal operating voltage, but more inclined to think it is something more intrinsic and/or noise related. I am surprised that no one has dug into this deeper to find the root cause. If it is what I am thinking the overall cost to sort out the issue could be very inexpensive... but really should be done by whoever is manufacturing the various controllers used within these cars. Cheers, Sam
Without extensive diagnostics on the CAN bus network itself and/or putting a scope on the IC boards themselves, I would just be guessing as well. What I can tell you is that in practical experience, the Ferraris with more advanced electronics (458 and later era) all work far better when run under a Lithium battery. Ray
Because they are cheap. There are countless examples of them sourcing components from the low bidder.
For a 458 and newer I'd do a lithium battery, but for a 430 the red top Optima has been golden for me. Only $300 too, so a cheap first step.
Good day Ray, Understood. However, like I said in my earlier post the issue is most likely not related to a few hundred mV... there is something else going on that the Lithium based batteries seem address. Lithium batteries do have far more internal energy that is available, but also it could be how much more efficient they can be ay delivering all this energy. Given that they can supply a tremendous amount of energy quickly, I would bet that very close attention has been paid to their internal resistance along with minimizing internal inductance. The result is that the lithium battery can supply more current and much faster than other battery technologies and quite possibly if the current/energy is not supplied fast enough to the sensitive electronic devices, that this causes them to not behave as intended. That said, it would not be too difficult for the manufacturers of these electronic devices to address or correct these issues... the question is why are they not? Sadly, this is all too common these days, as the end goal is to maximize and focus on profit at the expense of quality/reliable products and customer support. Cheers, Sam
Good day Rifledriver, The real shame in what you say is that in many cases the cost differential between the low quality low bidder and better quality bidders is not that much different. There was a time where manufacturers' focus was to build the best they could, but now ...not so much. To see how far we have fallen, one should look at some vintage (youtube) videos of various larger US Manufacturers products, where these videos would go through their entire manufacturing process. It is simply astounding at how much effort and attention detail was paid on everything. These days most manufacturers would not do a 1/10 of what was done long ago... and it shows. Looking at these videos, it is clear as to why the US was such a major dominant World wide manufacturer during those times. Amazing. Cheers, Sam
I ran the PC925 in my 360 with good luck. It's all a matter of how advanced the electronics are on your particular car. Ray
+1 It's like that joke in the Army / Marines, etc. "never forget that your battle rifle was built by the lowest bidder" Ray
China, Pakistan and India along with a variety of Eastern European fledgling democracies have all become major suppliers to the auto industry and its not because of their cutting edge manufacturing quality.
You've got the right idea I think. Lithium cells have less internal resistance and therefore can supply electrons more rapidly during high demands periods, such as engine starting - this results in a lower voltage drops (aka "brown out" for the ECU's), which can raise absolute hell with the CAN bus network. This is also why often times resetting the entire system cures many random errors lurking around, communication failures, etc. Also, just in general, if you examine the discharge voltage curves of lithium vs. standard batteries, the lithium tends to hold its voltage levels more constant, while normal batteries tend to have more of a linear downward graph. The trade off is that when Lithium does lose its energy, then the voltage levels fall off a cliff more so near the end (i.e. less linear in nature) as far as discharge voltages are concerned. Ferrari historically has been about making music for the ears of its wealthy customers / elite customers and to hell with what anyone else thinks. You just have to study the life and times of Enzo and Ferrari as an early racing company to understand that. Now, Ferrari appears to be far more concerned about pleasing the ears of Wall Street analysts, than its customer base. Last constructor's F1 win was what? 15 years ago or something? All electric Roma? Did I see that coming? Awesome. Just my 2 cents of course. Ray
we tifosi live with a special kind of pain to own these cars. Only a small group are so masocistic. Ferrari ownership isn’t for everyone
Good day RifleDriver, I blame those companies that choose substandard manufacturers and/or strong arm manufacturers to do more for less. Many in China and other places are somewhat "forced" to produce products to meet a certain price point and do this, something has to give. I have had some extremely high quality items manufactured in China and so they do have the tools and skills. That said, I had to be very clear on what I wanted and what I was prepared to pay. I had some items manufactured where the price was about 1/2 of what I was expecting. The vendor was more than happy to work at this price. I told him no, and stated that I will pay him 2x more... he was shocked and asked why I would do this. I simply stated that I wanted him to make $ and I wanted an excellent result. Even at 2x his offered price I was getting a great bargain and the results were simply incredible. Another industry that is simply bewildering is the LED lighting industry. Customers want to have LED lights that are cheap and when they get them and they crap out in a handful of months and these customers are shocked? Geez, what do you expect? The true cost to produce high quality AND long life LED light is way more than the $4-$5 that people want to pay... and so they get crap and then blame the technology. Ultimately, it is a vicious circle where various companies focus on profit and customers do not want to pay what is truly needed and so we get more and more crap. Cheers, Sam
Good day Ray, Internal resistance is one factor, but the other which limits the speed and/or ability to supply current fast enough is inductance. Low inductance is your friend in this case and it can be associated with lower resistance... but it is the Inductance that is the factor. Now, there are various ways to design circuits to not be so dependent and/or sensitive to the need for current surges. This is not new, but does require electronic designers to be well versed with understanding these concepts and issues. Unfortunately, the industry pushes for things to get done asap, as time is $ and so many projects are rushed to market with inadequate designs or testing. The thought here is to make the customer the tester... which saves the manufacturer $... and potentially generates more sales since customers make have to buy a newer version and/or a replacement. Customers need to push back and simply not accept substandard products. If customers were to stop buying these cars that behave this way, then Ferrari and/or their subcontractors would need to step up... but most customers simply drink the koolaid and think that electronic devices operating this way is normal. It is not... and electronics can be designed to be very reliable with long lifetimes. I am small time manufacturer and I have systems deployed (elevator interfaces) that were designed and installed in 1996 operating 24/7 since then without one single failure or in need of a reboot or power cycle. Now, Ferrari and other big firms have magnitudes more resources than I do and so they can very well produce products to the same standard or better than mine. The reason they don't is simply because they are not interested in doing so. Cheers, Sam
Ferrari builds an over priced crappy car. Sorry..I said it. I think most owners understand this and are willing to take it on the chin for the image. Ferrari knows this also. They honestly don't give a rats ass. They sell every garbagecan they make.
