AVH failure resulting in locked brakes

Brembo makes the brakes and they should have been leaned upon as well as the GM software which might have been used with AVH.

I’m not a Macca fan so I would not have considered their car.

I’m a F car fan, but may need to think long and hard about my next sports car.

Part of the blame goes to F. car owners who are too neurotic and afraid to actually drive their cars!!!
I really don’t get it. Most of the owners have the money to risk with depreciation. Most don’t own the cars more than 2 years, which means that if they did drive the car, any failure would be covered under warranty anyway.

If owners don’t shake down the cars by driving, then Ferrari’s will never be sorted out.

The only saving grace is that 458/ 488’s have been raced by private teams at endurance series such as Le Mans.

All the other models in the line up are essentially garage queens which never get put to any real life driving tests.

It’s a real shame.

 

Wow, very revealing, thanks for sharing your story!

Sent from my LG-M150 using FerrariChat.com mobile app

 

This brake lock problem was not discovered by Ferrari either during the development phase or during the 40 test miles each new car is put thru during pre-delivery. That much we agree upon.

We must also agree that the owner discovered the problem.

My point is that since many owners don’t put miles on their cars, many will never see a problem like this since they don’t drive the car,

I’m not sure why this idea is difficult to fathom.

There are certain problems which may arise from a car not being driven such as dead batteries.
And there are certain problems which arise from cars being driven too hard too.
And there are certain problems which occur sporadically so unless one drives the car routinely, one might never see the problem. I think the AVH falls into this category.

 

Nice of you to ask as i was wondering myself why the hell it was

 

This AVH is a ridiculous feature, creating more problems than it solves.
If one is not able to start on a slope without going backward, he should call a taxi or Uber rather than driving...

 

This morning threw an AVH code. Cleared with restart and started out on Sport Manual mode and while in 3rd gear car accelerated independent of throttle input. Up shifted and it still seemed to want to accelerate.

Replaced battery and so far so good. Tested the culprit battery and it had 12.5 V and 763 CCA and tested good battery. Confused on what is happening.

 

Sorry been busy.

The complete failure was 140mph coming off a long straight on a back road. I hit the pedal and it goes to the floor like felt like all fluid left the car, that was the sensation. I began scrubbing as much speed as I could with the transmission down shifts as we were entering probably a 40-45 corner. The car started pushing as we were probably still in the 80mph+ range. I left off and reapplied the brakes a few times and finally got what I would describe as maybe 10-15% pressure back and got the car to turn at around 60mph and made the corner barely missing the rocks.

Immediately after this the rotation squealing Ferrari had fixed around 2-3k miles prior returned louder than ever. Meaning every rotation of the wheel on or off the brakes it was making a ridiculously loud noise from both front wheels, louder on the driver. Keep in mind the car's stopping power returned as normal at that point.

Keep in mind my 488 also caught fire early on, maybe 2,000 miles roughly on the car, brake issues started around 3k or so miles.

 

To your point my 488 had over 7k mile's on it when I sold it, I put those miles on in 9 months or so. My 488's brakes noise and brake failure would never arise unless you drive the car fairly hard. Ferrari could not replicate my brake noise issues the first visit, because you can't just run it down 10 miles to your local store and back and expect it to pop up. You have to get heat in the brakes before those noises would start for sure. The second visit for the issue Ferrari was able to replicate it with a few hard stops and suddenly the issue was real and they finally started to work on it. The full failure not sure it was random or could be duplicated easy. I traded my car within days after its full failure as I had zero confidence in the cars brakes at that stage. The scary part is my car is sitting on Cars.com right now for sale after its changed hands a couple more times and the carfax mentions NOTHING of the fire or the brake repairs done to my car.

Carfax is a joke is what I take from that. My car spent 90 days at the dealer in 9-10 months of ownership.

 

Do you feel that your 488 lemon issue is a potential flaw which may affect many more 488’s?

 

It would have been great to have gotten to the bottom of your issue.

I’ve heard that in some lemon car cases, fixing the car is like finding a needle in a haystack. Neither the owner nor the company has the time money or patience.

One can look at some of these problems as isolated events. There is no underlying design flaw affecting all the cars, but rather a unique defect which affects one car. A new car might have been built with a defective new part, such as a sensor or ECU. The failure would be revealed early during the ownership period—provided the car is used.

That is what the early warranty period is supposed to address.

On the other hand, after the car is driven a while and broken in, failures would tend to occur at a fairly low rate over a long time/ mileage period. Then the car approaches the end of life phase and failures start to rise, necessitating replacement and repair of many components.

A design flaw affects all or many cars, and not just one or two. A design flaw would probably be revealed after a certain number of miles. I don’t recall your exact mileage on your first lemon event, but don’t think it was a high number. Less than 2000 miles?
If your flaw were a design flaw, one that affects all the models, one would expect to see other cars with similar mileage to exhibit the problem.

(To date there must be at least 8000 488s in circulation. )

So it will be interesting to see what develops in this population.

 

I have had personal messages and others post on this board with similar experiences with 458's and 488's. My theory? Its probably present in all but 99.9% of Ferrari drivers drive them to cars and coffee and back to their garages, they put 1-2k miles on them and their idea of getting wild in their Ferrari is a straight line pull to 100 3 times a year.

 

Possible, wouldn't argue otherwise. But others have had issues like I describe and I don't think they have had a fire.

 

I’m not sure, but I.believe Brembo is the party who needs to take the reigns and solve these problems.

Historically they are primarily a hardware company. They focus on the innovative materials for the pads and rotors, and the mechanical pistons and calipers.

But now I think Brembo needs to get more involved in the software side. The ECUs and software programs tare getting very complex and so are the sensors who regulate everything.

Ferrari doesn’t do much engineering or development in braking. Ferrari should report these types of issues and lean on Brembo and other suppliers to address and solve problems which I believe are quite solvable. We aren’t asking for the moon.

 

Your problem was persistent and detectable. It happened three times and didn’t take many miles in between occurrences.
I believe that your problem could have been determined by Ferrari.

Instead they decided to Lemon your car. I’m not sure what happens to a lemoned car. Obviously the manufacturer buys it back from the owner less the trouble free ownership usage (you probably got back 98 percent what you paid plus taxes! So financially you did just fine. A 488 isn’t LE and not going to appreciate )

But what about the next owner. It seems wrong if the next owner isn’t informed about the lemon history and given a substantial discount.

I think the manufacturer should be required to replace all the parts associated with the lemon defect before being allowed to resell.The entire brake system. I don’t think this happens though.

 

Your problem was persistent and detectable. It happened three times and didn’t take many miles in between occurrences.
I believe that your problem could have been determined by Ferrari.

Instead they decided to Lemon your car. I’m not sure what happens to a lemoned car. Obviously the manufacturer buys it back from the owner less the trouble free ownership usage (you probably got back 98 percent what you paid plus taxes! So financially you did just fine. A 488 isn’t LE and not going to appreciate )

But what about the next owner. It seems wrong if the next owner isn’t informed about the lemon history and given a substantial discount.

I think the manufacturer should be required to replace all the parts associated with the lemon defect

I don’t blame you for deciding to sell the car, rather than driving it and hoping another failure wouldn’t occur.
Anyone know if the 488 race cars— the ones which the private teams run at Le Mans — use the same brakes as the road cars. Le Mans is a 3,300 mile distance and would be a pretty good test of the brake system. Teams also ran the 458 at Le Mans too. Both models won in the AM class,

(You did 7,000 plus miles. And some of that was at high speed, on a track I presume. I’ve heard that CC can be worn pretty quickly after several track days depending on time and speed.

 

My own Ferrari brake history

2003 360 modena 66,000 miles. No issues but steel brakes. Changed rotors and pads myself at 45,000 miles,

2010 California 66000 miles May have had an AVH warning light as well as many other warning lights at start up, but simply re started re booted car before driving. No brake failure or locked parking brake. But had squeaky brakes. (Had other issues with that car)
458 spider 101,000 miles, Changed pads at 80,000 miles, done by service center. no failure or warnings.

 

My brake problems started early before I ever had it on track. The car even had its first brake issues before the first track use. The car was tracked 1 weekend, meaning I think 3 x 30 minute sessions one day and 1 x 30 minute session the next and that's was it. VIR was the track which is not a heavy brake use track really. 2 heavy braking spots. Ferrari said my pads and rotors were normal for a car with that mileage. They ended up replacing pads as they could not get my brake noise to stop and they agreed it was not normal. My argument was always that it was not pads, that it was rotors. They declined to believe that. The noise was rotational, with heat. The front left tire TPMS would hit 150 degrees just on normal driving if you drove long enough. The heat from the rotor was incredible. NORMAL driving. Not track. The whole thing was bonkers and Ferrari treated me like a nobody who bought a snickers not a 300k+ car.

 

Shame that Ferrari didn't sort out the issue. The CC rotors are very expensive. Ferrari probably took the position that the warranty doesn't cover wear and tear. To me that doesn't seem right. Espescially since youir car didn't have many miles and wasn't tracked.

But Ferrari does encouirage customers to drive the cars on the track. Look at the Pista!

As far as analyzing rotors, the factory suggests weighing them. With regular street use, a computer algorithm is supposed to alert you when they need changing. Pads have an electrical wear sensor.

Ive also heard that over torqueing the wheel can asffect the CC rotor. So I do my tires at the service center, and not a third party tire place.