Mocal Laminova oil cooler fitted

While away on holiday this week, I asked Jorrit at Auto Forza if he could install the oil cooler I purchased a few weeks back, along with the take off plate and remote filter mount that I ordered with the cooler.

The inspiration for this upgrade came from Bob (staatsof) on the BiturboZentrum forum, who recently fitted this cooler on his track Ghibli Open Cup and kindly shared pictures of the fitting to the forum members. I was already looking to fit an oil cooler after my experience on the Assen TT track last year where my oil overheated when the car was stationary after completing a couple of hard laps. However, I was looking at installing a conventional oil/air cooler and hadn't considered fitting a oil/water cooler, but after reading Bob's comments it made perfect sense for my application.

The Mocal Laminova oil/water cooler is a heat exchanger that flows oil through the centre of a core and water around the core. The oil is pumped via the oil pump on the engine block and water comes from the engine cooling water system. What makes the system so good for me is that the cooling water quickly warms up to about 60 degrees centigrade in the engine block before it then starts to circulate through the engine radiator. It is at this point that it starts to circulate through the oil cooler and initially it actually warms up the engine oil, meaning that it actually helps warm up the engine quicker. The quicker the engine warms up, the less likely you are to over-stress it. Therefore, when the oil is cooler than the water, it actually helps keep the water temperature down and there's less need for the radiator fans to kick in.

I like the idea of the entire engine block running at an even temperature, rather than having hot spots where different fluid circuits are flowing.



The installation of the cooler went really well. Rather than try and explain this, I've posted a load of pictures with lengthy descriptions that should make it all clear. The installation looks pretty professional, although as Jorrit pointed out, probably four too many tie-wraps used to get away with it looking like a Maserati fitted system.

I've not had the opportunity to give the car a good drive yet, but on the way home I did notice that the engine temperature was running a bit lower than normal, with the water temperature not getting above 80 degrees on the gauge and only once did I hear the fan come on when I was stationary in town. So it appears that in normal use, the oil is actually cooling the water! This is a good thing, since it likely means that the oil before wasn't really getting up to its optimum temperature with normal driving.

One thing I learnt is that my Ghibli (the first non-ABS variant) has a slightly unique sump. The reason it didn't have a cooler is because the sump on my car is a little taller than previous Bi-turbos to provide for a bit more air cooling. But it turned out that the reduced ground clearance led to leaking sumps from the increased abrasion with the road, which is why Maserati went back to the shallow sump and fitted an oil cooler to give the required cooling. Since my car has the taller sump plus an oil cooler, I shouldn't get any problems with cooling now. However, I will be fitting the shallower sump as soon as I get a leak on the current one, since I wish to drop the height of my car a little, but the clearance is a little tight as it is.


I had a couple of other things changed while the car was with Jorrit. The front bushings had worn out and I was getting some play when I pressed the brakes, which wasn't very confidence inspiring. So I had the bushings upgraded to the later Ghibli GT design. The consumable rubbers for these bushings are much cheaper than my original ones so I should recover the cost in the long run. The car's feeling much better to drive now though, much stiffer and less creaky at the front.


Also, still trying to figure out the cause of the stuttering problem, I asked Jorrit to fit a known good distributor to my car to see if this is the cause. He did so and I initially thought that the problem was solved on my drive home until I managed to induce a stutter again by accelerating hard in third gear. It only happened once though so I need to do a few more miles to be conclusive.

Next on the agenda is repairing or replacing the radiator as it has started to leak and it seems to be getting worse. Jorrit knows some guys who can refurbish the existing radiator, essentially by fitting a new core, but this could be an opportunity to install a new aluminium one?

Rubber Update

Following on from my last post, I've explored a few options and spoke with Jorrit at Auto Forza who's been aware of this issue for a while and has been on the look out for a solution.

It seems that Maserati made an adapter kit for the non-ABS Ghibli in order to fit the later designed package from the GT variant. I also discovered that the design of the ABS and the subsequent GT cars are both different, which surprised me.

Fortuitously, Jorrit came across a Ghibli non-ABS subframe fitted with the adapter rings to fit the new parts from a GT car. Since he suspects that the second hand subframe is not completely straight, he's going to remove the adapters from this and fit them onto my good subframe and then order parts 1 to 7 in the drawing below. Since the rubbers from this GT group are cheap, I'll order a spare couple and take some measurements from these and try and get an equivalent poly part sourced.


This set up should make the front of my car feel stiffer and should help prevent rubbing my tires against the wheel arch when I corner hard. Talking of which, I checked my front tire size to jog my memory and indeed I fitted a pair of 225x40 tires on the front. Next time I'll fit some 225x35 which should prevent future rubbing... I went with the larger wall height to try and raise the front of the car a bit, but I think 40 was a little excessive in hindsight.

So, I'll be booking my car in with Jorrit shortly to do the following:

1. Upgrade the front bushings to GT spec.
2. Fit the Mocal oil/water heat exchanger.
3. Replace the pin in the driver's side door hinge.
4. Measure up the exhaust so that I can order some catalysts.

Hopefully I can get this sorted next week and ready for a drive to Mosel in Germany at the end of the month!

Rubber Pads

My car is getting to the age where the rubber parts are needing replacement. Unfortunately, some of these parts are becoming increasingly difficult to source.


The latest parts requiring replacement are part of the suspension set-up and are labelled number 45 in the drawing above and Maserati refer to them as RUBBER PAD Part No. 396650021. The effect of these wearing is primarily felt when braking... the front suspension feels to move a little before, which can be a little un-nerving!

It seems that the non-ABS Ghibli was the only Maserati fitted with these parts, since the group of parts were changed for the ABS and later variants. Although the drawing looks identical for the 2.24v, it has a different part number (BUFFER Part No. 316620110 (Supercedes To Part No. 396650110)).

If the part I need is no longer available, I have a couple of options. First, I need to check whether the 2.24v part and the Ghibli part is actually physically different. If they're the same then I can just get one of those. Another alternative is to upgrade to the ABS parts, but this may not be straight forward and may require changing out some other components such as the subframe, which will turn out to be expensive. Another alternative is to fit some polyurethane generic replacement from Powerflex and then machine some adapter spacers. At least these generic parts will be easier to source in future plus they're stiffer and much tougher wearing, so shouldn't require replacing as frequently!

Blow Off Valves on Shamal

I'm starting to wish that I'd arranged some sort of royalty deal with Forge now... only kidding, since it's great to see people adopting these valves for their Maserati Bi-turbos. They're now making their debut on the superb V8 engine Shamal that you can see pictured above.

Thanks for the picture Mark!

Potential Catalyst Source

I've been keeping an eye open to see if I can find a catalyst that I can use in my cat-less front section. At the moment, I need to replace the entire front section with one fitted with cats when driving on the road (ahem), which involves disconnecting and re-connecting the Exhaust Gas Temperature and lambda sensors.

This is obviously a bit of a hassle, so I've been wanting to find a suitable catalyst that I can install into my de-cat section, so I only have to install or remove the cat and not the entire front section. Well, looks like I might have found something...


It's made in the UK by EEC and the price doesn't seem too bad. I just need to get under my car and measure up my exhaust and beneath the car to get a feel for if it will fit. Looks promising though.

It's not the MAP sensor

On Saturday I put the inside of my car back together (the passenger side foot well has been a mess while I've been installing the PLX R-500) in preparation for my drive to the UK this week. After doing so, I went for a drive to check that everything was connected properly and working.

Despite the boost only getting up to 1.10 bar, I'm still getting a stutter when I accellerate full throttle in third gear. However, the stutter did come later in the rev range. So, this really rules out the MAP sensor and I'm back to trying to find the cause of my problem.

It has to be somethingon the control side of the engine... I suspect it's the ignition timing but to be honest I think it could be anything on the ECU side. I think it's going to be extremely difficult to track this down and this lends more weight to me installing a new ECU, if only to be able to get a better insight into what's happening in the engine. So, I could be installing that Haltech ECU sooner rather than later, depending on how Jarle in Norway gets on with finishing his Haltech installation in his bi-turbo over the next few weeks...

Oil cooler and MAP

Well, I finally ordered the Laminova oil cooler, take off plate and remote oil filter parts from Think Automotive last week and they arrived ready for me to pick up on my trip to the UK next week. When I'm back I'll book the car in with Jorrit at Auto Forza and ask him to fit it all for me along with some custom length hoses. I'd do it myself, but I just don't have the facilities unfortunately.

Also, I think I've figured out the cause of my stutter and drop off in performance around 4000 rpm. Contrary to what I thought, the MAP sensor in my non-ABS Ghibli is the Marelli APS-03 sensor (where as I thought it was an 06 sensor). As you can see from this link, the APS-03 sensor only reads up to 2.16 bar absolute pressure, which is exactly the pressure in my plenum chamber when the car gives a stutter. So I think it's reasonable to assume that the ECU in my car is designed to set the timing "safe" when the MAP sensor reading goes out of range.

I've set the maximum inlet pressure down to just below 1.16 bar gauge pressure now, but I haven't been for a drive yet to see how it performs. But I'll be doing a lot of driving next week since I'm planning on taking the car over to the UK on the ferry, so I can get a feel for how it's performing then.

No other news other than I gave the car a wash the other weekend... it was filthy and I needed four buckets of water to clean it!