Those who have “upgraded” from a 360 (F1) to a 430 (F1) - Would you do it again?

I'd never sell my 360 unless I was forced to. Lets not forget that both the F430 and 360 are very similar in many ways and both are getting to be quite old cars (some 360's are now fast approaching 23 years old which is quite hard to believe!). You'd be surprised but I am talking to owners of F430's (who previously owned 360's) who are in the process of sourcing another 360 to replace their F430. If you where to move from a 360 I would say you'd be better to leap forward 2 generations, i.e. to a 458 rather than an F430.

The biggest difference is how you drive the cars, as they are quite different to drive because the 360 is more analogue with less electronics, a mechanical Limited Slip Differential for example vs an Electronic Differential and the 360's brakes in stock form are weaker too. Driving aids do make an average driver go faster but ultimately IMHO the more electronics (and weight) you add the more you rob the driver of an analogue tactile driving experience. Don't get me wrong the F430 is still very good to drive, just easier than an 360 and has more safety nets like ESP (electronic stability program).

A lot of the differences on how they drive actually also come down to how they have been "software" calibrated at the factory. Look at the torque power curves to see how that works. Its a bit like jumping out of a turbocharged vehicle and into a normally aspirated, you need to re-calibrate your brain on how you drive. Many people never get this and think the 360 has poor torque. Actually if its in good shape its not really the case, its more than enough to get the rear end wagging (I can re-calibrate a 360 to allow you to steer on throttle which no standard car can do so torque *is* there) but you need more rev's and ideally a re-calibration of the ecu's to remove some of the over cautious "safety net programming". These characteristics where added to save people who have no appreciation for high performance rwd vehicles from themselves and the very dim witted ABS of that vintage which wouldn't save you either. The ecu and abs system very much blocks your efforts from unleashing the actual torque, even with traction control OFF the electronic throttle prevents you gaining access to the available torque. With the F430 the abs system was upgraded and it allowed the engineers to dial in a lot more torque and still manage the slip safely, also ofcourse the larger capacity engine helps to make more torque freely available at lower rpm's but its really not the only factory at play here as many people believe, a lot of this is programming of throttle characteristics like the "tip in".

Some other reason's often quoted for owners who have gone back to a 360 from an F430 are "Sonics" (the 5V per cylinder head just sounds better, particularly at higher rpm's) and reliability, there are less electronics so less "designed to fail" big ticket priced components to go wrong in earlier cars vs newer. You can ofcourse remap an F430 to sound pretty good too (see the video of Aldous's personal car with a custom remap I did for him.. Sounds very good with the right supporting hardware.



Both the 360 and F430 with some choice upgrades can be excellent drivers cars and both will be sort after in the future as true drivers cars.

 

i have a regular 430, a regular 360 and a CS.

late year regular 430 just shifts a lot better, even than a CS. After driving the Scuderia, I'm always having the impression that my CS has a shifting problem (it doens't)
Stock to stock, the steering of 360 = CS > regular 430.
sound-wise, personal opinion is 360 modena's sound over 7000rpm is better than even the CS, and CS sound is better than a regular 430. I didn't hear scud a lot , so I have no say.

my 430 just felt heavier than my 360 modena. So its really difficult to choose.

remember this opinion comes from a guy who does NOT give a damn about power.

to me, 200hp , 600hp. no difference.

picture shown without my Modena ( engine problem!!)


Image Unavailable, Please Login

 

nice post.

I'm looking into doing the a kit to allow the post F430 '08 upgrade on the AMT to be retrofitted to the 360 Modena F1 and CS which will improve things a lot as it continuously re-calibrates its PIS on the newer software so its always going to be better than a fixed point done a long intervals.

PS. Check your Skype.

 

That sounds very interesting . What changed going to a Scud ?

 

[QUOTE="360trev, post: 148393635, member: 25705"

The biggest difference is how you drive the cars, as they are quite different to drive because the 360 is more analogue with less electronics, a mechanical Limited Slip Differential for example vs an Electronic Differential and the 360's brakes in stock form are weaker too. Driving aids do make an average driver go faster but ultimately IMHO the more electronics (and weight) you add the more you rob the driver of an analogue tactile driving experience. Don't get me wrong the F430 is still very good to drive, just easier than an 360 and has more safety nets like ESP (electronic stability program).

[/QUOTE]
Trev, can't you easily change the F430's electronic differential to a mechanical limited slip differential by using this or am I wrong? https://www.scuding.com/Shop/en/ecu-solutions/126-smart-ferrari-f430-ediff-bypass-ecu.html

 

Great trev on the archaic traction control on the 360. I thought my modena was down on power until I took tc off and there is tq a plenty… enough to break tires free in 1st 2nd….

remember there will always be the casual f enthusiast who equate 430-360=70.. so 430 is 70 internet units better so buy that one!

 

All this does is deactivate the electronics so you effectively have an OPEN diff. You could in theory retrofit a proper mechanical diff back in then but this is just the s/w element of it being deleted. You don't technically need any "gubbins" add on modules to do this, it can all be done in software and then you can delete the e-diff ecu entirely...

 

Base F430 brakes are identical to 360 brakes and the F430 is a heavier car, so I find the opposite is true. With good pads, both braking systems are surprisingly decent, although ABS does not like track pads.

 

All good points.

Its worth noting here for completeness that braking is not just the physical attributes here of the diameter of the steels brakes and calipers, the abs version was substantially upgraded to a whole new different version of the F430 so it does brake quite a bit better under adverse braking conditions and driving surfaces than the 360. It will therefore stop better and handle brake biasing better all things being equal which isn't in reality the case (as you've discovered because most F430's tend to be heavier than their equivalent 360). The 360 (apart from the CS ) was never offered with the optional CCM's (which later became standard on later spec F430's) so many F430's got them so I'm really looking at them as the reference.

 

I would never do a 430 .love my built 360 its so raw

 

I went from a belt Ferrari, not a 360, to a F430. That alone was worth it.

 

let me guess. The TCU has to be replaced with a CFC231 hardware and software. ECU flash, of couse. A pressure sensor added at the TOB. A harness splices or maybe retrofit with a modified 430 harness. Yea?

Just talked to you on skype

 

So far from my reading of the discussion, the only good reason to choose a 360 over an F430 is the sound from the 5v/cylinder. Everything else just seems a stretch to me over real world use. I chose the F430 because its simply faster, the more modern interior and frankly, I like the looks better. Trev knows his stuff, but I've never heard from or met anyone that got rid of an f430 for a 360. None of the discussion has convinced me there is anything other than a niche need to go back in time for the older model.

 

A bit OT. But as I've seen (admittedly not many people), those that have done so do it for the interior and the added power. Those who have done it that I have met also mention the driver feel of the car. Tighter with better driving dynamics.

As 360Trev notes, if one were to upgrade 2 generations to the 458 would do. And as many here know from my obnoxious fanboi posts, I would not upgrade my 3-pedal 360 to a 458.

 

Back in 2015, I did the 430 to 360 "downgrade". But it was a stock F1 430 to a lightly modded 360 gated so not a real apples to apples comparison:


Image Unavailable, Please Login

 

I'm sure Mark and others can comment further on this having done the upgrades on his own personal car. Here's my stab at "technically" comparing F430 vs Scuderia (i am sure there is lots of data points if your search more). I'm sure there are lots of things I've missed in this summary but nonetheless this is a good starting point...

In my opinion the 430 Scuderia had well judged upgrades and is an excellent upgrade to the F430 with improved engine internals and better balancing. If you go back to the "remit" point. All the special edition cars (CS, Scud, GTO, etc.) aim to lift performance by around 15-20% over the base model car but not enough to eclipse the next model in the cycle..

Due to “bean counters” the base model F430's had to make do with conventional steel connecting rods (conrods) because it already met marketing “power remit objectives” without more expensive components, that’s a shame but its life. The Scud took a leaf out of the 360 playbook and reverted back to using the lightweight, strong exotic material (Titanium) - Why? This helps to reduce their weight which when your spinning at 8,000rpm is a huge difference. They also upgraded the pistons with higher compression ratio and some tighter tolerances for the same reasons.

Engine electronics wise it got upgraded (larger diameter) air flow meters to breath through and they also introduced an external (non Bosch) Ion sensing module which was quite revolutionary for its time. This tech also ended up being carried over to 599 GTO too improving its performance. What exactly did it do and why was it a benefit? .... The 430 Scuderia's Ion-sensing ignition module/ecu was used to detect knock before it really got going, so you could says its a much faster reacting and safer system, basically an improved misfire detection/prevention than conventional 'old skool' Knock sensors. What are they? Well knock sensors are kind of sensitive microphones attached to the engine block that to listen for pre-ignition (uncontrolled explosions at the wrong time in the combustion cycle) after the event, this allows the engine management to pull timing to help prevent engine damage or turn off injection altogether to save the engine from damage. With the phenomenon of 'knock', it creates a pressure oscillation in the combustion chamber that is reflected in the current measurement via upgraded ignition coils (yes 430 Scuderia runs different coils for this exact reason). It is therefore more sensitive than conventional knock sensors and faster reacting so it allows the ecu to adapt ignition timing according to live operating conditions without yanking large amounts of timing, it can be more precise and quicker to adapt which improves power. In the presence of a misfire, no electrical ions are created and therefore there is no current flow. This lack of current can be monitored by the ecu with those appropriately upgraded coils. Ion sensing misfire detection is much more stable and more accurate than the more common method of monitoring crankshaft speed fluctuations. This in turn allows the calibration of Ignition timing to be much "closer" to optimum vs a stock F430 so the net result is ~5% more power gained right here from running more accurate and optimal ignition timing than would be possible without Ion sensing alone. So as you can see just the choice of lower weight upgraded internal engine parts and clever knock management it was possible to achieve power gains without altering bore or stroke or anything else so fundamental. In fact the engineers could have gone much further on the Scud (power wise) but then they would have been slapped back by Marketing (again) for producing a car that was too fast, or more importantly faster than the upcoming replacement (now known as the 458) so that wouldn't fly. Same reason why the CS was nobbled to be slower than it could/should have been when up against the F430. You get the idea..

The suspension was also upgraded just like on the CS with improved lighter shocks and titanium springs (although curiously not all scuds had ti springs, many ended up with cheaper steel springs but still upgraded). Still it wasn't as aggressively low as say on the CS with a higher overall minimum ride height (the CS was easy to bottom out) and ran a bit softer spring rate too which probably helped handling actually on everything but smooth race tracks.

The other big ticket upgrade of course was the optimized AMT solution, Ferrari called it F1 "Superfast II" gearbox. At maximum speeds in Race mode it takes 60ms (milliseconds) to complete a gearshifts, compared to 150 ms in F430 and 100 ms in 599 GTB, so quite noticeable. So yes, the 430 Scuderia had quite significant upgrades. And that's before we even talk about the re-calibrated driving modes and larger CCM's and calipers lifted from the 430 Challenge racer. I have these fitted on my 360 and they are phenomenal and many other lightweight parts.

A big upgrade was done to the Bosch ABS too which helped improve the traction control. The only F430 model with this version and finally but not least everyone knows about the weight loss (similar to a CS) but pretty expensive and rare to find a car with all the upgraded carbon bits, etc. In summary, its still a great car and I'm sure it will appreciate more in the future.

 

I guess most people who go back do it for the fact they probably had an F1 F430 and wanted a gated car, since there are many more 360's that are gated it sort of makes sense. They go from AMT to gated. In your case you got the best of both worlds since you have the improvements made on the F430 AND gated with your EAG conversion

 

Agree. Quick question. The tune you did for my car, is it the same tune on Aldous' car in Jay's video? Jay stated that there was some hesitation from the car until it reached a certain RPM. That's what I experienced in the F1 version of my car, but in the gated version, I don't feel the hesitation is there anymore. It seems to pull very well, seems very fast to me. I don't know what the BHP is, but the car just seems much more powerful than it did before.

 

Interesting the OP asked opinions from people who had owned both, You will find that most will sponsor the car they own and justify why.

My thoughts not having both!! but could have bought both:

The F430 is the better car in pretty much every way and yes the F430 does not have a rubber drive belt.
I know a lot say they look similar, but to me they don’t, I think the F430 is the far better looking car. I could never get past the headlights, bumper and softer melted styling, especially after the 355, so it’s never been in my crosshairs.

Both cars drive good, one has a far jerkier gearbox, however Seen as most Ferraris will be sat in the garage looking pretty, get the car that you like the look of, and the interior you like better, because when you do drive it, that’s what you will be looking at!

 

Thanks Trev , interesting about the Ion sensing . Great to know how it works , coils must be expensive . I must be more descriptive in my questions , I was asking about your 430 gearbox software upgrade for the later 360 and was wondering if a Scud gearbox in a CS was ever possible . Possibly the 430 upgrade is enough ?

 

I have had both and heavily preferred the 360. It’s much more fun to drive

 

I went from 360F1 to 430 manual. It's much more fun to drive! Would I have gone to a 430F1,... No.

 

What were the intangibles you liked on the 360F1 over the 430F1? Mechanically, one is clearly superior to the other one, so it must be an intangible.

 

I haven't driven a 430F1 so I don't know. My (expensive) time with the F1 was up. Been there done that. Back to my roots, stick shift. I would have considered a 360 manual but none were available. The 430 manual, when it came up for sale, was a rare chance as there are only 5 in my country. I kinda hit the jackpot.