First Ferrari, hesitant on F1. Advise/Insight...

I have owned my 360 for close to 5 years now. However, deep down I love the shape of the 430, the interior and hp increase
but not willing to pay the $50K premium for a 3 pedal. For that I would move to a 458.

The 430 is >10 years old so some critical components will start to fail due to wear/age such as the aforementioned brake switch causing the notorious no-start condition. So what, do what I did with my car. Through research right here on FChat make a list of all these components, sensors and replace them one at a time to spread out the cost. Eventually your car will be a 10-year-old new car and reliable as hell. Yesterday I drove my car from where I live to Quebec City 9 hours away.

My other advice to you is that if you really like the 430 then get the newest one you can afford.
There are documented improvements with the newer iterations.

Good luck. My $0.02

 

That's probably your best bet but as others have said, you need to decide what you really want.

I went from a twin turbo C6 Z06 to an F355 and am very happy with the car.

Another possibility is getting a clean F1 430 and convert it to manual if you get tired of F1.

 

That's going to cost around 12-15k with the most difficult part being finding the 430 specific conversion parts.

 

+1 I have yet to see a reliable way of doing a conversion. If it could be done easily I would love to know, but suspect not or the manual premium would have already gone down.

 

The actual process of changing out the components is fairly easy, the hard part is sourcing a) the common 360/430 parts and b) the specific 430 components (wiring harness, ediff pump and I think I'm forgetting something else). A member on here has already converted his 430 and it's working fine. The wiring harnesses were available last I checked but the ediff pump is not so you might have to weld/plug the F1 pump (which on the F1 cars is used for the F1 system and ediff).

Regardless, a factory stick car will always be worth more.

 

A lot of shops won't touch the conversion too, as I found out asking around when I was on my search and considering getting a F1 and converting.

 

Of course. I wasn't trying to make it sound cheap or easy, just possible.

 

I had my F1 360 for 3.5 years. Listening to that car shift at near redline as fast as it could was intoxicating. This was even after suffering a few F1 system issues. I just got a F430. This is even better than the 360. Shifting old school or popping up and down through gears like a Formula car. You can have the clutch pedal. But again to each their own. We all have and love these cars for various reasons.