Aldous Voice

I dropped by an independent specialist on my way home from work today to have a chat with Paul (the proprietor) and to see what was going on.  I ended up seeing something that I had never seen before – a brand new clutch kit with a 3 bolt starter ring gear.  Paul had a 2004 360 in for a clutch and had ordered a full clutch kit from a Ferrari main dealer and was sent an obsolete part!  I didn’t think there were any of these left out there.

In 2002 Ferrari updated the starter ring gear – the old design was fixed with three bolts, the new design doubled this to six.  The switch over happened on assembly number 453022 so if you have a car newer than this you will automatically have the updated design.  If you have an early car then you have a small chance of having the 3 bolt ring in your car but most cars will have had a clutch change after 2002 (when the ring will have been updated).  Having said that, last summer (2011) I pulled a gearbox off a 360 to be met with the 3 bolt design.

And this is why – Ferrari had some failures of the fixings and decided to bolster them up.  Note this is not my picture, I have taken the photo from Ferrari Chat: Link.  Needless to say if this happened when driving the damage would be considerable.

Here’s a picture of the brand new clutch with the old design:

And here’s the correct clutch with six holes:

And lastly a picture of that updated ring gear: