Novitec springs

From my experience with them, Novitec's command of the engineering details is alarmingly low. For the price you pay, you are not getting anywhere near OEM-caliber engineering rigor. As you may come to discover, it's surprising easy to make your own exhaust system, springs, etc as there are many economical private label manufacturers out there. Combine that with a good graphic designer and the willingness to spend budget on marketing, branding, YT videos, and product packaging, and you'll find the dollars are MUCH cheaper than legitimate engineering.

I've found that brands that work together with OEMs tend to have much better alignment in their goals to deliver outstanding products that perform well, rather than targeting their work product to appeal to the cars & coffee / instagram crowd. Akrapovic, Eisenmann, Eibach, Ohlins, etc. Novitec's prices do not necessarily put them in the same league.

 

I’ve not bought anything from novitec so I can’t comment on how much engineering and testing went into the rate specification but I have modified a lot of suspensions and certainly a dramatic change in ratio front to year will have a significant dynamic affect on at the limit grip in all directions (yaw handling, braking and acceleration traction). Whether this is better than stock I can’t say…but given you’re not changing the valving of the stock dampers I would bet it’s not positive. Not sure what you were looking for in purchasing the springs but you do know the car has ride height adjustability in stock form right?

 

Sorry to hear that. Good lesson learned for the community.

 

I dug back up old emails to see how the exchange went.

• HIGH END PRICE TAG MADE ME CURIOUS: Contacted a distributor about a new Novitec valved exhaust with some questions about the silencer section. I spent a considerable amount of time trying to improve the sound on my car and noticed that the Novitec system was MUCH larger than the OEM one. Usually it's the opposite case.
  
• DISTRIBUTOR SALES TACTICS: Distributor assured me Novitec knows what they're doing. No chance they could possibly under engineer their stuff to sound worse, and pointed me to countless Novitec videos online.
• SUCKERED IN: Ordered the Novitec exhaust from the US distributor after the reassurance and prepared for a very lengthy wait based on quoted lead-time.
• EXHAUST HITS THE MARKET: Just over a week after I placed my order, a YouTube video of the exhaust is published by another distributor. It highlighted the concern I had discussed with the distributor: it was a quiet and limp exhaust at best [video below is not from the distributor I purchased from]. I would later learn that in real life, it sounds much worse than the video, and it is shockingly worse than the OEM system.

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• SLIMY SALES TACTICS: Distributor convinces me not to worry, that the video probably poorly edited. As quoted: "All that said, with how misleading that video is and with my previous experience with Novitec products, I'm pretty confident this will be the absolute best sounding option you can do while maintaining valves and not touching the cats." Also passively suggests it's impossible to cancel without a big re-stocking fee to scare me into going away. Makes no attempt to try to cancel the order before it's built despite the lead-time being 8 to 10 weeks. Suddenly the exhaust shows up nearly nearly 1.5 months early.
• EXHAUST SOUNDS AWFUL & CAUSES OTHER ISSUES: Not only does it sound like sh*t, but it causes other, more serious issues on the car that luckily the dealer remedied by putting back to stock. Lots of time, $, and towing the car back and forth to get it resolved.
• ZERO SUPPORT, ZERO HELP: After countless attempts to get help from distributor and Novitec, I ultimately got American Express support to recover my money. Distributor left me out to dry, and Novitec US did not assist or care to resolve the matter. Lots of victim blaming and finger pointing at Ferrari rather than owning up to the crappy design and more important, the safety issues.

Would never put a Novitec part on my car again. I was lucky to walk away with my $13,000 despite the costs to install it, diagnose issues, replace parts, and remove it.

 

It always baffles me when people lay out an enormous amount of money in order to buy a piece of precision automotive engineering and then think that it is a good idea to put aftermarket junk on it...

 

Il s’agissait d’une remarque générale. Inutile d'être sur la défensive, monsieur. J'espère que vos problèmes de voiture seront bientôt résolus.
Cordialement,
Alex

 

Ohlins are almost in a league of own, they are absolutely fantastic imo

 

True.

It is generally a good sign when companies making aftermarket parts are supporting technical automotive journalism & videos rather than making their own showboating videos.

 

I never meant to insult you, dear sir. I have also replied to your personal message and I am sure that we can be good mates from now on. Take care!

Best regards,
Alex

 

How much can the ride height in stock form be lowered without changing the springs and how? Is there a movable spring perch? Thanks

 

I am always suspect on a deal where once the order is made and deposit given, it is non-refundable.

 

Yes, all Ferraris have threaded spring perches. I don’t have my 296 yet so I can’t measure the excess thread but it’s typically over an inch. Probably best to lower around 1/2 inch though for the range of the shock. You can also corner balance it while you’re lowering it which is another great advantage.

 

Guys, just to interject here

Novitec do a lot of white labelling, their springs are made by KW who are obviously a massively reputable business.
Their Ferrari exhausts are manufactured by a boutique German manufacturer called Rudolph Fuchs GmbH who are also absolutely brilliant.

The products themselves are great, but the distribution can be a problem.
You need VERY specific knowledge about what works and what doesn't work when it comes to the exhausts.

You should NEVER have been sold a rear silencer only for the Pista, it doesn't sound good - end of.
Catalyst delete pipes will flag warning lights to do with backpressure which are not cancelled by the Tectronic unit.
The correct setup is 100-cell catalysts, valved rear silencer and Switchtronic remote kit (which is also very particular and requires a high level of understanding to effectively explain how it works to the end user as it differs to EVERY other Ferrari model's valve control system)

If you don't want to, or can't, mess with catalysts in your state you should have been told to leave the exhaust as it is because without downpipes the x pipe in the rear silencer simply doesn't work effectively.

I'm really sorry you had a poor experience, unfortunately because there is a level of separation between the design/manufacture of the parts, Novitec themselves, their US importer AND finally the US distributors a lot of info can get confused/lost along the way.

As for particularly the specs on the springs, this is a decision made by KW and not Novitec. KW would be able to explain why they went for the rates that they did.

 

Agreed (in principle).

As I posted earlier, anyone here can approach some of the highest caliber OEM-supplier manufacturers in the world and have incredibly crafted parts made. The manufacturing design and engineering required to actually make parts needs to be differentiated from the design and engineering that goes into making things that work properly and safely, let alone work well.

The reason I say I agree is that, as you kindly point out, it's just our guess as to how much engineering goes into Novitec's parts.

As an example: as a forum member, if I wanted to quickly provide an offering of 'high end' 296 aftermarket accessories to our community, I could do it in short time, even being the first to market. Here's some examples:

• For springs, as @488gtbmasergt points out, I could do one of two things. The most economical path would be to connect with an owner that is comfortable with me taking measurements on their springs while their car is getting PPFed etc, and count the coils, measure the loaded and unloaded length, inner and outer diameters, widest and narrowest coil, and take some photos. Spring rates are typically printed on the coil or published. As an actual engineer myself, I'd do much more than this, but this would be if a layperson on this forum decided to offer it. With that data, Eibach, KW, Ohlins, Bilstein, etc are all supportive suppliers with the right $ and volume on the order. They will all happily help you private label your springs
• For wheels, it's even more simple. Diameter, width, offset, bolt pattern, and weight are all published data. HRE, Modulare, Champion, BBS, etc are all reputable wheel manufacturers that will support custom wheel design to your hearts content. They will even support regulatory testing like JIE and TUV testing if you want to spend the money.
• For exhaust systems, the work is more invasive to gather the data, but it's all doable. Again a customer car is needed to make the measurements for inlet sizes, geometry, hangar locations, sensor bungs, and look at how the OEM system reads out data from any O2 sensors and flaps that are attached. The later is typically the reason you don't see as many exhausts for new Ferraris just after they're released. Most intelligent aftermarket companies do not want to deal with returns when Ferrari ECUs go haywire from exhaust systems. With the bare minimum data, you can approach exhaust manufacturers in Europe like Akrapovic or Eisenmann, or other ones in North America or even Taiwan, and get some very very high quality built exhausts made.

The issue with all of the above isn't the quality of the part at all, it's the design of it. None of the above contemplates engineering that goes into vehicle design including engine performance, vehicle dynamics, aero dynamics, safety, and even sound design. The later is sometimes done through some limited budget trial and error with exhausts.

I would venture to say that there are some great aftermarket companies out there, but economics of the business need to be sound to justify them staying in business with that model. If you look at how many 458 Speciale's exist, how many would modify their car, and then how many would be resold to be modified again, the value of truly putting R&D into an aftermarket part needs to be in yielding a very very unique accessory that others could not possible duplicate. If your head is going to the idea that the tradeoff is raising prices, even the cost of Novitec parts, wouldn't net you a reasonable margin if you put in real R&D. Now consider designing a boutique exhaust for a 911 GT3. The value to your business is likely much higher. A GT3 is almost certainly modified, put back to stock to resell, then modified again. The cycle undoubtedly happens several times in the life of a GT3. The number of GT3 and GT3 derivatives in existence even for a model year are much higher. Also the changing of hands happens more often. The value to your business to spend time to build a great product there is high as the GT3 owner is likely to spread word in the Porsche community, whereas the Ferrari community is more recluse, which less enthusiasts that would like to modify them.