So far, so good, but I still need more time in the car. Picked it up last Friday, drove straight to Safelite for my windshield replacement then home. Left for a family event in Ohio early the following morning. The early signs are positive so far - no shifting issues and no faults on the Scuding Swiss relay module where I previously had faults for nearly every trip. Weather permitting, have several local trips planned next week - stay tuned.
For the benefit of anyone else suffering through this issue, I wanted to update my experience on troubleshooting the F1 shifting issue. Cutting to the chase, it was loose bleed screws - plain & simple. While the evidence vs. the data I was given on the ediff valve leak rate seemed credible and may have temporarily alleviated the issue via bleeding the system, it wasn't long before I was back where I started. I'm the first 430 customer our young indie mechanic worked with that was experiencing this problem, so it was a learning experience for both of us. Initially, he thought the bleed screws would be a little difficult to access, however, when we finally zeroed in on that possibility, he was able to get at them fairly quickly and immediately found 2 were loose. After tightening and lightly sealing all of the screws & thoroughly flushing the system the change in the response from the Scud Ing pump relay module was noticeably improved. In the past, I could hear the module alerting at virtually every stoplight and frequently during shifting - now it's nearly dead silent, which from my perspective confirms that the relay module is accurate in giving you advance notice of a looming issue. When I first installed the Scud Ing relay module, it was pretty noisy well before I experienced any shifting issues and I just tended to ignore it since there were no apparent issues at the time. It did get progressively noisier though and sure enough, F1 shifting issues started surfacing. If you search the threads as I did, this seems to be a fairly common issue with the 430s and it' unfortunate to see how much money is wasted on expensive pumps and other remedies even at Ferrari dealerships. Having lived through this and seen others that have discovered the "loose bleed screw" phenomena, I've now become a firm believer that this should be the first step in trying to diagnose F1 shifting issues of this nature.
Sorry - earlier on in this thread, there are posts talking about the actuator bleed screws. There is also a detailed discussion on the subject here > https://www.ferrarichat.com/forum/threads/f430-removing-f1-actuator-to-tighten-bleed-screws.575003/#post-145958796
Thanks, did you have to remove the actuator to tighten the screws? How many hours did it take? Did you have any leakage between the gearbox and the actuator?
Our mechanic did the work, so I can't say exactly how long it took other than I dropped the car off around lunchtime and he was done by early evening. He also did my upcoming fluid changes at the same time(engine & gearbox), so I'd guess it's not too time consuming. He did remove the actuator but did not report any indications of leakage between the gearbox & actuator.
