Has anyone had the dreaded transaxle/diff failure?

Big red,
I agree with what you are saying.....sad fact of life....
Project updates next week... exterior's pretty much done - still tuning engine and replacing little parts like master salve brake cyclinder which leaked fluid down into the inside of my front wheel well covers..... what a mess! Interior has been completely ripped out and is being re-upholstered. i'll post pics next week.

cheers,

Doc.

 

Thanks

 

I'm doing my eo on my "dream car", and reading these tales of fragmented diff's is pretty tough. I'm sure the owners before me enjoyed the car, but have no idea how. If I start buying g-boxes on my recent aquisition - - - - - - - well it's not a happy thought. I hope the Ferrari gods are on my side on this one.

Help me understand what the deal is: The side loads from the spider gears apply stress to the carrier (which is welded together) such that the welded section catastrophically fails. The steel carrier is welded?? How is the new & improved design assembled?

Well it sure looks beautiful, and sounds great! (fingers crossed) I hope to finish the eo so I can start enjoying it as well.

 

Anyone have pictures of these beasts, both the old welded ones as well as the replacements?

 

I am looking at the results of such a disaster....and I am going to come up with a resolve that will help many of us. I will post here in a day or so.

 

The solution is the upgraded M carrier or one from modena engineering. Its not a cheap fix before or after a failure. I suppose one could make a machined cup to bridge the weld from the end plate to the hub of the carrier and (again) weld it on.

 

Ferrari Uk also sell an updated carrier which means it must be available from North American Ferrari dealers. Certainly the one that I had fitted on the 365BB last yr had no weld on the seams.

 

I know that this has been discussed many times before. However, there are many different opinions...

It would be interesting to plot the incidence of failure of the ring carrier versus years since manufacture. If my theory is correct, that a batch of carriers were welded incorrectly, then there should be a high incidence of failure seen early, with diminishing failures over time. Now, 25 years later, those that have not failed are unlikely to do so.

A manufacturing flaw would present itself early in the life-cycle of the model. Suppose for a moment that Antonio was drinking a bit too much during the months of August through December of 1979 when he was charged with the responsiblity of welding carriers. Those welds were destined to fail. The 100 or so carriers have had 25 to 30 years to fail, and have done so. However, all the remaining carriers, those welded by Marcos, are good and will last forever.

Just a thought and a theory. However, it is sufficiently plausable (to me) and as such, I would be reluctant to jump out of a perfectly good airplane...that is, in the absence of another reason, I would not take out a Boxer or TR engine for the sole purpose of replacing the ring-gear carrier.

Jim S.

 

Good theory but too many variables. I dont beat the snot out of my boxer since its an old car now nor do I use it daily. How were the cars used when new? Was it like a 360 now where people drive them regularly and now they dont? Not every one that breaks tells us or belongs to this site. I havent heard of a failure this year even on a TR but who knows?

 

They broke occasionally on the BB's but the BB's were made in smaller numbers had smaller tires etc.

The TR came out and sold in large numbers. It was also the first time in years that a performance car was sold out the door at a dealership in America. You tube wasn't around so they didn't get posted on the internet but I can assure you we had many people coming back to us bragging about the burnout their new TR would do. We had people doing it in front of the dealership. That combined with the number of people that just bought the cars to flip and drove them like they stole them. Those factors are the ones that make me want to break out in laughter every time I hear someone tell me their TR has never been driven like that. I know of a number of those cars that I have kept track of that either have real live original owners or just one, two, or three owners who drove the cars rationally including one that now has over 225,000 miles. None of those have ever had a differential failure

 

Paul - I just wonder whether the reputation for failure came about as a result of more frequent catastrophes in the early days, and that this reputation lingers despite the rather infrequent events 25 years later.

This, of course, is not a time issue, but a mileage issue. Furthermore, it is not a wear-and-tear mileage issue, but a weld flaw that can snap at anytime. Certainly, bad welds will fail as a result of high load and shock, hence early abuse of the cars, much as Darwin suggested, might have killed off the unfit, and that the remaining gene pool will survive.

Jim S.

 

less power/torque and less weight. How heavy is a US spec TR?

 

Ferrari says 3660 but I would be surprised if it was really only 200Lbs more that a base version BBi.

I have never put one on a scale.

 

And by the way, if you subscribe to my theory discussed in the two replys posted earlier, there is great wisdom in purchasing higher mileage cars. Low mileage cars have not withstood the test of time (read mileage) and may still have Antonio's flawed welds lurking in the wings.

Jim S.

 

Antonio did not weld them Hermann did. If Antonio had done it they would not be breaking. The differential and internal gearbox parts were made by ZF. I have seen many of the same parts failures of the same type in Porsche gearboxes. Those never come on the radar screen because Porsche gives the parts away and they are very easy to rebuild. I have done a few. BB or TR boxes on the other hand are expensive to remove, labor intensive to rebuild and Jesse James sells the parts. If only Ferrari had bought from Getrag, we would not be having this discussion.

And you are correct. IF I subscribed to the theory. I do not.

I worked at the dealer who sold more BB's than any world wide and we sold many TR's as well. I still work on many of those cars and track several others. The one single common thread with diff failures I have seen is the type of usage the cars recieved. Cars that were beat at some point in their life break at some point in their life. Cars that have not been driven like they were stolen do not.

Whether you are correct or I am the problem really is that due to the nature of the market environment these cars were sold in it is just not possible for most owners to really know how their car was treated before they owned it so it is all just an intellectual exercise.

 

Not sure about that. I never abused my TR and diff. went at 85K miles. Replaced it with later unit and all seemed fine until the chassis rotted away @ 155K miles.

 

Good to know that but it makes me wonder how many will ever reach 85k miles? There is a local who does not drive like grandma, he has among other things a 7 liter McLaren and he has 225k miles on his. Has had nothing more than scheduled maint in that time. Motor has never been off the trans and the heads have never been off.

 

Mine would have gone on forever except that the road salt killed it over 14 years.

 

Brian - I appreciate your experience and insight. I have heard others suggest, however, that failure of the carrier is unpredictable and unrelated to how the car was driven. This only makes sense if the part was defective, and not a result of poor engineering (that is, under designed/built for the load experienced).

If there is a fundamental design flaw, then over time all of the carriers should fail. If the failure results from random weld flaws, then only a handful will fail. Thus far, the community has witnessed a small percentage of units fail. We are now 24 years out at a minimum (for Boxers). Early 365s are more than 34 years out. How long would you like to wait?

I submit that the best evidence of Leon Trotsky's farsightedness is that none of his predictions have YET come true.

Jim S.

 

Its a crap design and should never have made it into a ferrari. Knowing its a very real possibility it will break and not being the first owner Ill chose to replace it with a better unit hopefully before it fails. Maybe someone here would like to buy my used carrier?

 

I am not suggesting waiting for anything. The cars can break and when they do it isn't cheap, that has never been kept secret as hard as many salesmen have tried. These cars are built in small numbers with parts that are sourced from all over. Some good and some bad. Even the well intentioned suppliers like ZF make mistakes. Chevy, Ford and Toyota experience the same thing but because of the numbers involved if there is a problem it shows up very quickly and is covered by a product update very often within the first year of production. With Ferrari the numbers are very small and then only a small fraction will fail during the production life of a model because of the small number of miles the entire fleet will see. It has long been accepted as life with exotics. Daytonas blew up a lot of differentials too but because of the small number of cars involved people just fixed their cars and went on with life. A customer of mine bought his Daytona new and went right over to the parts counter and bought a spare transaxle because of the reputation they had. Within a year he used it and bought another spare. There are no remaining Daytona gear boxes or parts and it is not because they didn't make spares. Ferrari owners now are a very different lot and just don't seem capable of accepting that not every part is a perfect piece of engineering.

Back to the waiting part. Don't wait if you are living in fear. Either sell the car or update it if that is what it will take to enjoy it. It is just my opinion that of all the expensive stuff that can happen that one is low on the list.

 

Well Said,
the problem is you have cars that are in the affordable range....with no money down, and 0% interest everyone thinks they can afford one....the price of the car is only the price of the admission....everyone blows a fuse when they see parts prices, and then run on here to find a cheap (free solution) and they high five each other that the car runs, mean while its a mess.

If we think Trs, boxers are an issue with prices low, you just wait for those 360s,430s with pridcution number in the 20-30,000 range and those f1 gear boxes, and all the leather in that interior...just wait in 20 yrs when those prices come.....god help us all

 

And the history of Ferrari repeats itself over and over. The first Ferrari I ever worked on was a 250 California series 2 coupe. Came in for a tune up and I found it needed a valve job. My boss at the time would not even pick up the phone and call the owner. He told me to put the plugs back in it and be done with it. I asked why and he told me a valve job was more than the car was worth. He was right. Over the last twenty years since the vintage cars have shot up in price the shops and restorers have been undoing the shoddy, corner cutting repairs done for so many years because they were not worth the money to do the job correctly.

 

Brian and Paul, please understand that I am in agreement with your philosophy, and accept that bad things happen to old, low-production number cars.

I tend to approach preventative maintenance in a more analytical manner. For example, timing belt replacement at 30,000 miles or 5 years. Let's not go there....

Having owned flat-12s for a combined 45 years, I should have done 9 engine-out services. I've done two. At $10,000 each (we can debate the cost later), I have essentially self-insured against carrier failure or belt failure. I am playing with $70,000 of the houses money. Sure, it is a gamble, but I drive the cars like an old man, which I am, and like I can't afford to fix them, which I can. I enjoy the aesthetics and engineering and sound. I don't have to drive them fast or to red-line to get my kicks. I get my kicks waking up each morning...that is what really makes me happy.

Keep up the good work. I enjoy the discussion. By the way, I have seen a carrier failure (David in Long Beach), and it ain't pretty. And he wan't driving fast at the time. But each time one fails I wonder whether this reduces or increases the chance that mine will as well. Oh well, kind of like going to Vegas.

Jim S.

 

I understand completely and have always put women and Ferraris on the same side of life's ledger. Expensive, can get VERY expensive but do you really want to live life without them?

Oh....and the most important part. Different models have different operating costs.

At least you don't have to give them a house when you get rid of them.