FF PTU Design Flaw.

It seems logical that the four-wheeled Ferrari's FF and LUSSO have a major design flaw in the PTU concept.
The motor is extra vulnerable to motor destruction when the PTU fails, unfortunately many PTUs are failing but luckily not always with engine destruction.
The PTU is connected directly to the motor and if something goes wrong with the PTU, it is possible that damaged PTU parts will contaminate the motor.
I know at least two cases where the motor was destroyed after PTU failure. My Lusso lost oil on the PTU as it disappeared without a trace and later on the engine was destroyed.
I know several FF owners who had to exchange the PTU.
Can Ferrari guaranty that a malfunctioning PTU is no danger to the motor, i guess not, the PTU concept no matter how genieuce, it is still in infancy.
An other point that puzzles me is that the PTU (in yellow on the foto) is a small box compared with the rear gearbox which is about the size of a V12 motor clearly to adapt to big power changes and loads. It doesn't make sense to have a small gearbox that must be capable to cope with high power loads. Image you are driving manually 120km/h and and by accident you switch in second gear. Do you think this small gearbox is capable taking this load. one could say: This might be the reason that a lot of PTU are going bad after heavy use and some even destroy the motor. I think the Lusso is due to this design a very fragile car.

 

Thx for the list.
But one has to take in account that most Lussos have very low mileage and today there are only a couple of 100 V12 Lussos sold. The problem with the PTU comes when you make at least 20.000miles and you use your Lusso as a real Ferrari not as a leisure car to take your wife to the shop. There are definitely more PTU failures as not all Ferrari owners are aware of this chat site. I know a guy with a FF and he changed 3 PTU's, he's not on this list and he finally got rid of his FF.
And after all 10 cases in 1 year on maybe 200 cars is indicating that it is huge.
The workshop in Belgium said regarding the PTU you are not the only one so be patient.
What worries me is that i use my Lusso daily and sooner or later the problem will come up again and i don't want to miss my car for another 7 months.
yep i am crazy in love with the car but it's like a wife you can't trust and Ferrari doesn't care about customer service as a matter of fact it is one of the worst i ever
encountered. If it was occasionally it could close my eyes but it is over the edge.
i advise 4wd Ferrari owners the following. I you had already some errors on your dashboard telling you that the 4wd is not functioning and after restart everything looks right again or for some reason your battery went bad. I'll guess you are heading for some real PTU misery. Image Unavailable, Please Login
One good advice is when the oil is missing in the PTU change the PTU immediately or you will have to go sooner or later for a motor exchange or change of tappets, be ahead of your problems.
It is a fact that Ferrari tries to hide these problems and with limited cars that is easy to do, the customer always pays.

 

This thread is about the PTU which is connected to the motor and it is a potential danger if the PTU is not a stabilised product. The PTU and the engine have to be hermetically separated from each other and I doubt that it is always like this.
Like in my case and the one of Astenia the oil on the PTU was gone and there was no leakage on the floor or underneath the car. So the only place where the oil of the PTU could go to is the motor.
It seems to me a very bolt design to connect a gear box directly to the motor how can they be sure that the engine is not contaminated if something goes wrong with the PTU.
I went looking in my old invoices of my previous FF and what did i notice. On my invoice there is this item "change gearboxoil" but i could as well be refill oil.
So also with that car there where PTU problems but mostly the customer is not aware of it because in warranty they cover there problems in veils.
And again one dealer in Belgium confirmed me of the record that they change PTUs regularly.
And a worker in the workshop confirmed me that if the oil on the PTU is lost the PTU is faulty.
Image yourself, Ferrari customer care sent me back on the road with a faulty PTU hoping that i had to repair it outside the warranty period, how professional is that. Now they have a damaged motor to exchange.
I also want to point out that 30 FF's & Lusso over a production period of 7 year means they sell only 2 to 3 4wd a year. Taking in to account that there is mostly only 1 Ferrari workshop in every country that brings the total production worldwide only to a couple of hundred 4Wdrives.
Ferrari produces today about 8000 cars a year but mostly of course V8s, some year ago it was only 4000 cars and only 15% of them are V12 (tdf, lusso , italia, GTO). So the calculation makes sense there are little FF and Lusso's out there and specially not with mileages of more than 20.000.
If it was only a PTU one had to change from time to time i might cope with that but that a PTU can damage a motor makes me feel very uncomfortable.
I would not be surprised that a lot of PTUs are in doubtful condition today.
I would not be surprised that the fault reading on the dashboard are due to a shortage of gearbox oil on the PTU , there is no indication on the dashboard that tells the oil is missing.And mostly these errors are coming longtime after the car went in the workshop for maintenance. So i guess a lot of 4WD are going in the workshop with depleted oil on the PTU. When i complained about these errors they where always gone after maintenance.
Changing oil on gearboxes on low mileages is something that indicates the product is faulty this is not wright.
These problems looks very similar to the wobbler engine. They never succeeded to make the motor oil proof.
Maybe everybody should check his invoices. I also recall that not all Ferrari workshops report on there invoices what they have done in repair. For example FMA Antwerp never reported the performed repairs under warranty, the workshop Monza did.
Image Unavailable, Please Login

 

Well , in the case of Ferrari it does.
More than 95% of all Ferraris drive less than 5000km a year. Frankly I don't understand why these guys buy a Ferrari probably to look at or to take there wife to a shop.
It is about the cars which are daily used so these 5 percenters have more than 20.000km on the car each year, it is about these cars. Most probably these 5% are the list jaguar36 supplied. The other 95 percenters don't know what is coming to them, in there case indeed there is no straight correlation.
They even bring there car to the workshop before they reach the maintenance point so they are ignorant, because they have always oil on there gearbox. I also suspect that the don't use the car to its potential.
I guess you are telling to me i shouldn't use the car.
Maybe if somebody could reply on the technical issues that would be nice

 

Sorry Bundy.
20000 miles divided by 7 equals +/-3000 miles a year.
Ever had 4wd errors or F1 errors?