What’s the cost to do a clutch job on 456/550

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Charlie did you get a quote you didn’t like?

 

Clutch alone, or "while you are in there".

 

May 2nd I dropped off my car for annual fluids and provided Gobble's siren and the Ricambi headlamp gaskets and the while you are in there on my door mechanism and the NLA parts means my garage still has an empty spot.

This situation has not been good for my marriage cause it feels like I have a spot that needs to be occupied by a Mulsanne......

 

Good time for an exhaust system. Nearly all of it will be on the floor anyway.

 

Charlie, you should check out all the invoices from this auction. I ended up building a car specific spreadsheet on this car because it was so well maintained by own of our own Fchatters at Ferrari of Atlanta.

Some of those dealer invoices were eye watering.

https://www.ferrarichat.com/forum/posts/147661561/

 

No one here has so far said they have had a clutch changed. Not surprised. They last a long time for most people.

 

5000 miles for some drivers, 200,000 miles for others.

 

Seriously?

 

I replaced the clutch at about 60k miles. The thickness of the disc compared with the value mentioned in the manual suggested it was ~80% worn out.
I replaced the clutch mainly as the pedal had got too stiff, as confirmed by blowing the seals of the then original master cylinder, and looking through the clutch bellhousing showed superficial rust on all wearing parts so I decided it was just time to dig in there and refresh all I could find. The throw out bearing was not dead but loud to the point it needed replacement.
In total it cost me around €5k in parts, including replacing the rear main seal, the bearing at the back of the bellhousing, hydraulic hard lines with 575 lines that come with heat sheathing, gearbox mounts, having the flywheel lightened and balanced with the new pressure plate, new throw out bearing from Hill Engineering, and small bits and bobs I may not remember.
I did not replace the two rubber joints in the gear linkage as they looked and felt like new, and they seem barely accessible with the torque tube normally in place. Torque tube bearings felt surprisingly fresh.

 

Practically forever if you use it correctly.

I have never worn one out in my life on anything going back to 1985.

 

I have been to your garage.... no way a Mulsanne fits in that spot.

 

I have never worn one out. Ever.

I have replaced some doing some transmission work just because everything was out but they all had life left in them,

I brought my Alfa Spider home in Nov 1996. Same clutch.

 

There is a difference between knowing how to drive a manual and knowing how to use a clutch properly. Two very different things.

 

Charley,

You are being kinda vague on your intentions…. Are you shopping around, does your car need one or just planning on when it may? Are you Just curious? We all know Rifledriver never gives estimates over the internet and doesn’t like to reference the labor guides as accurate info in the working world, but to get to the clutch you have to drop the exhaust from the cats back, disconnect the axles, move the transmission rearward or drop it and disconnect associated parts, then slide torque tube and bell housing rearward. You can get an idea how many hours that may take. There have been some other threads on people who have done them themselves, to get an idea what’s involved.

Part costs are easy to shop on the vendor sites, or would you’d have a shop source everything? Timmo gave you a great price reference that I would assume would be higher stateside, especially in SoCal. I have a
Previous owners reciept from 2010 when Fast Cars, did a gearbox rebuild and associated labor/clutch. It was high, but there was a lot more than just a clutch.

BTW, when did you get a 550? What happened with your 456?

 

I don't mean to play semantics but knowing how to use a clutch is a condition to knowing how to drive a manual, isn't it?
By knowing how to use a clutch I include rev matching when changing the gears up and down, and also double-declutching though that is not necessary with fully synchronised gearboxes such as ours.

 

It should be but it is clearly not. I have had cars that I put over 200,000 miles on and were pretty worn out that still had the original clutch in good condition. I rebuilt the engine in my 328 and reused the clutch. Yet I have known a great many Ferrari owners who wear out clutches every 10,000 miles like clockwork and in the early days of the Testarossa under 10,000 miles per clutch was quite common. I remember being at Ferrari for a school and they asked us if there was a lot of complaints of rapid clutch wear. That was in 87 or 88. A friend had a Testarossa from new. When he passed away the car had 200,000 miles and he had recently installed its 3rd clutch. I had a client with an F1 360. He lived in the hills and it was a daily driver. His first clutch went 90,000 miles. The second I took out at 78,000 because it was oil soaked from a bad transmission seal. He bet me the next one would go 100,000.

How long does a clutch last?

 

I know people that can drive a manual just fine but also use the clutch as a brake on a hill waiting for a light to turn green. That sort of thing.

 

Far easier to remove cats too. In real world drive shaft is usually seized from rust into the transmission coupling so the torque tube has to come out with the transaxle which is a major PIA. Then once its out you very often need to remove the tube and its internal parts to free the shaft.

Operation snowball. Then the clutches have become very expensive.

 

In my case there was rust dust in the coupling of the driveshaft and I could not disconnect it from the intermediate shaft in the bellhousing as the driveshaft is not held tight enough in the TT bearings and can slide a little. That required dropping the torque tube which required moving the trans back enough which required disconnecting the axles from the trans as they would hit the rear shocks. PITA indeed, whilst the WSM says to just move rearwards the trans and torque tube as an assembly to disconnect the driveshaft from the intermediate shaft, but clearly this is not happening.

 

We have had many cases of leaving drive shaft connected to engine and sliding trans and torque tube clear back off shaft and out of car. Then remove tube from trans, shaft from engine, reassemble tube with bearings, spacers, shaft
Its like a box of chocolates. You never know what it is until you take a bite. .

Always, always, always liberally apply antisieze to shaft splines when going together.