Brakes for sale!

I'm selling my old brakes on ebay (click title to see the advert).

Let's see how they get on!

Jonny's Mov'it Brakes

Looks like Google Picasa Webalbums has added a new feature, which means I can show you the full set of pictures of the brakes being fitted to my Ghibli!

Jonny's Maserati with Mov'it brakes (part 2)

Enjoy!

The salt gritters have arrived

Last night I drove back from the airport after dropping off my parents. On the way (driving the Volvo fortunately) we passed a gritter truck salting the motorway. So the Ghibli is now officially off the road for the winter.

Will have to see how long the cold weather stays with us... the temperature has been down to just above zero the last few days, so looks like the winter may be finally arriving. Hopefully, it will only last a month or so and I can be back on the road with the Ghibli soon!

The time has come...

For about three years I've had a big crack on my front bumber. It was caused by an old lady parking her Smart on my bumper. I've been putting off repairing the damage initially because I used to park the car in the street and so the chances of repeated bumper damage seemed pretty high.

For just under a year now I've been privalidged enough to own a parking spot in a private garage and so the chances of repeated bumper damage are dramatically reduced. I'm therefore getting more serious about getting the damage repaired, so last week I popped 'round to a local body shop to get a quote. It's not cheap!

My Ghibli still has the original bumpers, which are old style ones manufactured from quite a brittle plastic (it actually looks like they're made from a sort of fiber glass). The cheapest option would be to simply have the damaged bumpers repaired, by removing all the cracked paint, filling the gaps and having them resprayed. However, like I said, the material from which the bumpers are made is very brittle, so they appear to crack very easily. Therefore, simply having the bumpers repaired probably means that within a couple of years, there will be new cracks... since living in the city means living with other drivers who are not such careful drivers.

As kind of an example of this, I woke up this morning to find my wife making breakfast for us (what a great way to wake up!). She told me to have a look outside, since she'd had to move her car to a different parking spot on the road on which we live. When I looked outside, I noticed that a Renault Espace had its right rear end smashed up. My wife informed me that there was glass all over the road and that about three cars were damaged in the street. It seems that last night someone had smashed their car into the parked cars down the street and then driven off. We felt quite lucky that they'd missed my wife's car and it made me realise how lucky I am to have my car parked in a garage down the street.

As you'll recall from my post last week, it only takes one night being parked in the street to acquire damage. I had a quote for repairing the dent that the car received... €80 plus tax! And that only repairs the dent... they can't repair the scratch unless they respray the entire wing.

So, my dilema is, do I repair the existing bumpers (since there's cracks in the rear bumper too) or do I get brand new bumpers? It takes the body shop about 2 hours to repair the old bumpers before spraying them and I suspect that they charge something in the region of €60 per hour. So that gives me €120 plus tax to find a new bumper. Unfortunately, new bumpers will cost about twice this amount. However, new bumpers are more tolerant to subsequent knocks so in the long run will be cheaper to maintain.

Here's a couple of drawings of the parts that I need.


Item 24 on the first drawing and item 33 on the second drawing.

For some reason, the rear bumper costs about twice the amount of the front bumber?

It's probably going to be spring time that I get these bumpers repaired, since I'm not sure how much longer this warm winter will continue. I'm very suprised with how long the driving season is continuing this year, but I'm trying to make the most of it... I managed to drive the car three times this week!

The brakes seem to be settling in... they're a bit like the turbos to drive I find... the preformance isn't that impressive around town... I'd even go as far to say that the braking performance is not as good at low speeds, requiring heavier force with the braking foot. However, on the main roads and motorways, the performance seems to pick up substantially, although I've still not had to use them aggressively. But, like the turbos, the brakes seem to increase in performance the more that they're loaded. Just like when you accellerate in the Ghibli... you can lightly lift off the throttle and the rate of accelleration continues to increase. You get the same effect with the brakes... lift off the brake pedal slightly and you find that the rate of deaccelleration is still increasing. This is because the brakes are warming up as you use them, becoming more efficient... therefore, as they warm up, you need less brake pressure to achieve the same braking force.

So now, I need to keep one step ahead when braking as well as when accellerating! This adds a whole new dimension to the driving experience... and makes me even more enthusiastic to drive the car.

I have to say, when the Ghibli is performing on song (and it currently is), then it's an absolute pleasure to drive! I walk away from the car smiling and already planning my next journey when I can drive the car again. And driving in this colder weather is also great... the engine is performing with extremely good torque and I find myself quite content to accellerate from 80km/h in sixth gear. I have to put this improvement in torque down to the 3200 GT turbos, the new induction kit and finally setting up the boost controller optimally so that the wastegates stay closed right up to maximum boost pressure... before these modifications, the car would not pick up until about 4000rpm, but now it's picking up at 3000rpm... that's really noticeable when driving the car.

I'd really like another Ghibli driver to have a go in my car to see if they notice any differences. So I'll have to make an effort to join the local Maserati club and attend one of the track days.

Mov'it brakes finally installed!

After initially receiving the wrong parts from Mov'it brakes in Germany (the original parts were designed for the Ghibli ABS and later versions of the car), Mov'it manufactured a new kit for the series 1a Ghibli based on the measurements taken by myself and Jorrit at Auto Forza.


The new parts arrived last week and yesterday I returned with the car to Auto Forza to get them fitted. To the credit of Mov'it, the new parts are near perfect! Jorrit fitted the kit in about two hours... it was pretty much a straight swap of the original parts.

To recap, the new discs are 342mm in diameter and were purchased to fill the huge void left behind the 18" Compomotive wheels I fitted early in the year. However, the original brake discs were also starting to fade, so would have soon needed to be replaced anyway. Here's a picture of the original disc behind the Compomotive wheel... I think you'll agree they look a little bit weeny?

The new brake fits comfortably behind the Compomotive wheels and arguably an even larger kit could have been installed. However, I think this would have been completely overkill given that the Ghibli only weighs about 1360kg... I think once these brakes have bedded in then they'll be pretty damn impressive. Also, the internal diameter of the Compomotive wheel restricts the brake kit diamter such that the next largest size offered by Mov'it would not have fit inside the wheel.


So... I think these brakes look more like they were designed to fit behind the new wheels. First driving impression... well... my very first impression was... oh. However, I soon realised that this disappointment was very short lived, since after applying the brake a couple of times the increase in performance of the brake shot up incredibly. I therefore suspect that the brake needed to make initial contact and maybe burn off some manufacturing chemicals before it started to work properly. I'm going to have to be gentle on the brakes for the first 1000k or so to give them time to bed in properly before I can really try stepping on them, but already, even with light use, they seem to be responding better than the original system.

Looks like I'm going to have to be careful with braking then, since with no ABS fitted to the early Ghiblis, I suspect that it's going to be easy to lock up these brakes! I'll keep you informed of how I get on with them... if they turn out to be as good as I expect them to be, then I'll be very tempted to get some replacement rear brakes too!

Accidents do happen?

I had some problems with my Ghibli's alarm system on Friday night. I parked the car outside my office and popped inside to pick up a couple of things. When I returned to the car, it wouldn't open with the remote control, so I could only gain access with the key.

This on its own wouldn't have been a problem, but since the alarm system wouldn't recognise my remote, it wouldn't disarm the immobiliser. So I couldn't start the car!

I ended up having to leave the car parked in the street overnight while I figured out how to bypass the alarm system. Turned out this wasn't too difficult... as long as you have the original manual that came with the alarm where the magic number is written that de-activates the alarm. Since I recently moved, I had to search around the house for the manual, but once I found it then it was pretty straightforward to disarm the system.

So, I got the car going again on Saturday (I think the problem was caused by the battery level getting low, since once the car was started up again and driven for a couple of kilometers the alarm worked fine again) and drove it 'round to Auto Forza to have the new brake system installed (more on that later).

While at Auto Forza, I noticed some new damage to the car.


I was really annoyed. I left the car out in the street (and not a particularly busy or crowded street) for one night and am rewarded by a dent and scratch to the front left wing of the car. It looks like the damage was caused by a cyclist catching their pedal on the side of the car. I can only assume that they were drunk to have been so clumsy.

So, that's something new to get sorted on the car... it should be realatively simple to get the dent rolled out, but the scratch may be a little more difficult to remove. Will take the car the to body shop and get them to have a look at it when I get the bumbers repaired... if the weather stays as it is then that will be sooner rather than later!

Aquamist have some new toys!

Looks like I've been sleeping on the job! Aquamist have some new products kicking around, like this nice looking guage.



They've also brought out a bracket with all the required components pre-fitted and ready to be wired up inside the engine bay... looks great! So I'm obviously going to be busy doing some researching over the winter.

I need to find a tasteful way of incorporating that guage and my E-Boost guage into the Ghibli's dashboard!

Radio Silence

First of all, apologies for being so quiet recently! I've had a pretty hectic couple of months, but things are quietening down a little now.

The first bit of good news is that the replacement calipers and brackets have arrived from Mov'it! I've got an appointment booked at Auto Forza to get them fitted on Saturday, so I should have some good news and pictures to post on Saturday evening (fingers crossed)! Since we're still yet to have our first ice here in the Netherlands, the Ghibli is still on the road, so I should still get the chance to try out the new brakes before the end of the year (fingers crossed for this too).

I've also got some disappointing news. I drove to Antwerp a few weeks back, which was great fun (although I'm not sure my wife sat in the passenger seat will agree, since she is of the opinion that the Ghibli brings out the aggressive driver in me... but I can't resist making the most of the Ghibli on the long straight road to Antwerp). Whilst driving around on Antwerp's unkept roads, I had to drive up close to the pavement to avoid being hit by an oncoming car... but a little too close. I ended curbing the rear wheel.

The impact didn't feel too severe, but when I returned home later that evening, I had a quick look and a feel and the damage to the wheel looked disproportionate. The lacquer on the wheels seems very brittle and looks like it's flaking off and propagating. I've written to Compomotive for some advice but they've not responded. I'll take some pictures of the damage and post them at the weekend.

Blow off valves on Enrico's pages

I got mentioned twice recently on Enrico's Maserati Pages! It certainly feels good to think that I'm giving something back having been helped so much by the Maserati community.

First of all... good to see that Yannick and I (and Jarle in Norway, who has something similar fitted to his 224) are in agreement with racing teams as to the proper location of the blow off valves! The picture below from Enrico's pages shows what appears to be a racing version of the Open Cup, with blow off valves located on the underside of the inlet piping leading to the throttle body.


But what drew my eye is that on this Open Cup, the boost control solenoid valve has also been replaced? It looks like it's that blue part to the right of the intake manifold? This suggests to me that, as I suspect, the OEM solenoid is not that reliable and perhaps is a bit lacking in performance. This replacement solenoid appears to have a screw adjustment on top of it... perhaps to control the boost setting, indicating that this solenoid is mechanically adjusted, which seems a bit odd for a racer?

Of course, I could well be talking rubbish, but it would be nice to find out!

On the Mov'it side, the new components are set to arrive next week. This is unfortunate since I'll be away on business next week, so the earliest possibility to fit the brakes will be the following week... I just hope the cold weather holds off until then, otherwise it's going to be early next year before I get to fit them!

Mov'it update

I received an email from Mov'it today confirming that new brackets have been manufactured and that these, along with a new set of calipers, should be dispatched next week, as soon as the brackets come back from being laquered.

So a pretty quick turn-around! I really hope that I can get them fitted before the icy weather hits!

Boost problems?

I've had a couple of emails over the past few weeks regarding problems with boost pressure on the Ghibli.

A lot of people don't actually notice when they're getting reduced boost, since even in fail safe boost mode, the Ghibli produces about 0.7 bar inlet pressure, which is good for around 270 hp on the 2.0 liter engine (which is still a pretty impressive amount of power from the small engine). However, the tell tale sign is that the boost gauge needle on the dashboard only makes it to the first half of the amber section, even during hard acceleration and high revs. The needle should go round to the top of the amber section, falling just short of the red section to give around 1.1 bar inlet pressure.

I've also heard reports that the reduced inlet pressure is accompanied by restricted engine speed, with the engine cutting out at around 4500 rpm.


So what's the culprit? Invariably, it's the boost control solenoid valve. This is a small, brown, plastic housed three way valve. On later ABS and GT Ghiblis, this valve is located on the front of the engine block, where the distributor used to be located on the older series 1a Ghibli. On these earlier cars, the valve is located behind the plenum chamber, beneath the fuel pressure regulator. The valve is labeled as item 3 in the drawing above. These valves are pretty standard in the automotive industry, so a Google search will yield some relevant background reading. Also, Enrico has an article on boosting a bi-turbo in his Maserati pages.

In summary, a signal is sent to the solenoid valve by the engine control unit. This signal is a series of pulses that control the amount of air reaching the wastegate valves on the turbos, (by controlling how "open" the solenoid valve is).

The solenoid is fed pressurised air from the outlet of the turbo via port C (there's little labels on the vacuum hoses that connect to the valve). If the solenoid is not working, this pressure is fed directly to the wastegate valve via port W. The wastegate requires about 0.7 bar to open, which is why when the solenoid fails you still get some boost. If the solenoid is working, then instead of letting air reach the wastegates straight away, it will direct the air instead through port R, which effectively vents the pressurised air to the atmosphere (so the end of this vacuum hose is not connected to anything!).

Once the desired boost pressure is reached (around 1.1 bar), the solenoid starts to direct the air to the wastegate via port W. This prevents the turbos from increasing the inlet pressure further by allowing the hot exhaust gases from the engine to bypass the turbochargers (it's these hot gases that make the turbochargers spin, so preventing them from passing through the turbos prevents the turbos from spinning).

The stock solenoid valves appear not to be too reliable. If it stops working then it needs replacing. Fortunately, this is a pretty simple job... disconnect the vacuum hose and the 2 wire connector and unscrew the fastening bolt to remove and the reverse to install a new one. The valves aren't too expensive and can be picked up second hand. However, given the reliability issues of the valve, I'd recommend getting a brand new one. Alternatively, consider getting a 3rd party replacement valve, as there are some far more reliable valves on the market. Since I fitted a new boost controller on my car (Turbosmart e-Boost 2), it came with its own replacement solenoid valve which appears to be very robust.

While you're replacing the solenoid valve, you might want to consider removing the little restrictor that is located in the exhaust port R. Removing this restrictor allows more air to escape to the atmosphere, which means there's less air reaching the wastegate via port W. Since there's less air reaching the wastegates, they stay closed a bit more, hence increasing the inlet pressure a little. Removing this restriction will increase the inlet pressure by about 0.1 bar... see if you notice any difference in power?

So, keep an eye on that pressure gauge! The gauges are there for a reason, so get familiar with where they normally operate so that you can see when something changes. Don't rely on the engine warning light popping on (in my experience, it doesn't come on that much, even when there are problems). Also, don't rely on your mechanic to pick up these problems, since unless they takes your car for a decent drive they won't notice such things.

Maserati Ghibli V8

I was talking with Jorrit last week while he was trying to fit the new brakes on the car. We got 'round to the subject of fitting the Maserati 3200 V8 engine in the Ghibli.

I know that Modena Performance in Germany can make this modification and Jorrit knows of another person in Germany that can make the change. Enrico also has the upgrade documented in his pages (which is where I got the picture from) and he's lucky enough to have drivent the car!

I've always been put off the idea primarily by the thought of the engine sump on the longer engine resulting in further reduced ground clearance on the front of the car. However, after talking with Jorrit, it appears that the V8 engine actually has a thinner engine sump. Therefore, ground clearance at the front of the car with this engine shouldn't be any worse than on the standard Ghibli.

The other thing that puts me off this modification is the weight. The Ghibli is a pretty balanced car, but I imagine that with the extra weight at the front of the car then it would start to understeer a fair bit? Jorrit commented that the extra weight would be more than balanced out by the extra performance of the car and I suppose that if the car was set up well, the understeer could be balanced around fast corners with oversteer controlled with the right foot.

The 3200 V8 is a lovely sounding engine... if you've heard a 3200 GT fitted with a nice exhaust, you'll know what I mean. However, I've heard stories that it's not the easiest or cheapest engine to maintain, even compared to the V6 engine in the Ghibli, which has to be well maintained else it's not very forgiving.

It's got me thinking again though. I came across a low mileage 3200 GT engine a couple of years ago going for a very good price. It was from an insurance writen off car, but the engine was in perfect condition; it was the rear of the car that had been smashed up. I was only after 3200 GT turbos at the time, but they wouldn't break the engine for me, instead prefering to sell the entire engine as one piece. I've always had a tinge of regret that I didn't buy that engine. For double the price I paid for the 3200 GT turbos that I acquired, I could have purchased the entire engine! Admittedly, it would probably take a couple of weeks to fit the engine into the Ghibli.

Maybe if this opportunity presented itself to me again I'd be less quick to dimsiss it.

Mov'it developments

Seems that Mov'it are keen to rectify my misfitting brakes. They've asked for measurements from which they can design new adapter brackets. They're also talking about supplying me with new caliper billets; seems that they make two designs of calipers, one that's a single piece like the ones I've been supplied, the other a split two-piece caliper.

The one piece caliper mounts to the adapter bracket on the underside of the caliper. In this specification, I don't think the kit will fit to the Ghibli series 1a. However, I suspect that the two piece caliper mounts on the inside face, which means that there should be sufficient clearance to fit to my Ghibli.

I'm very interested to see what they come up with!

In the meantime, I thought I'd mention fuel. I've been running my car exclusively on 98 octane super unleaded fuel for the past few weeks (as opposed to Shell V-Power, which is 97 octane). The car appears to drive much better with the 98 octane fuel, particularly BP Ultima. I've just put a tank of Texaco 98 in, which doesn't appear to perform as well. I'm yet to try Total's offering, but will keep you posted, but my preference is for BP.

It's nice driving the car in this colder weather... it certainly seems to perform better with nice cold air entering the engine and flowing over the intercoolers, so I'm making the most of it before the snow and ice comes!

Mov'it developments

I've been corresponding with Mov'it this morning by email and it appears that they're going to make some new adapter brackets and send me some different caliper billets for my car. So sounds promising...

So far they've been very good following up. I just hope it continues... but for now it looks like their very good looking product is backed up with excellent service!

Mov'it anticlimax

Yesterday I took the new Mov'it brakes 'round to Jorrit at Auto Forza to fit to my car. The disc fitted perfectly, but unfortunately the calipers sit in the wrong position, approximately 18mm too high above the disc, as you can see in the attached picture.

It seems that the kit has been supplied with adapter brackets designed for the later ABS and GT versions of the Ghibli and not for my Series 1a version. The mounting bracket on my car is different to the ones used on the later cars (which Jorrit confirmed by removing the front wheel off a Ghibli GT that he had in his workshop and having a look).

It's a real shame, since the kit is of excellent quality; even Jorrit was impressed! I have no doubt that the kit will fit on the later versions of the Ghibli and would look absolutely fantastic, but unfortunately it doesn't fit on my car.

I'm currently talking with Mov'it to determine what to do next... I'll keep you posted as to the outcome. I hope that they can come up with a solution for fitting them, since I really want them to work!

Mov'it brakes have arrived

The brakes were delivered on Monday afternoon to my office. Damn they're heavy! I generally cycle to work since it's only 5 minutes away from my house, so there was no chance of taking them home with me on Monday night. So I picked them up in the car last night (Tuesday) instead.

I've not unpacked them, although I did have a quick peak. Everything looks good, but will have to see if they'll fit OK, which will be tomorrow when I pop 'round to Jorrit at Auto Forza at lunch time to get them fitted. I'm hoping that it will be a direct fit with no modifications required... I'll take my camera with me, record the event and post some pictures.

I drove to Amsterdam in the Ghibli yesterday. It's running pretty good at the moment, with plenty of torque since I reset the E-Boost controller; there's certainly far more torque than there ever has been, requiring less gear changing when driving on the motorway, although I typically still drop down to 4th to overtake or to make some space between me and whoever is tail gating me (which seems to be increasingly common).

I've noticed a couple of things different on the car since I fitted the BMC air boxes. First of all, the noise. The induction noise is very noticeable. I don't mind this, but some people might. It's generally on throttle lift off that you hear it... a growly sucking noise. The spin up noise from the turbos is also more noticeable. The roller bearing 3200 GT turbos that I have seem to make more of a whistling noise than the stock Ghibli turbos?

The really interesting thing though with the change in air boxes is related to temperature. To install the the replacement air boxes, I decided to vent the carter hoses to the atmosphere instead of re-cycling this hot, oily air back into the induction system. As a result of this, the engine takes longer to warm up. It also appears to run considerably cooler according to the temperature guage on the dashboard. Where before I typically ran around 90 degrees, it now seems to hover below this mark. I'm very suprised that there's such a large effect and can only imagine that if recycling this air has such an impact on engine temperature then it must be having an impact on performance too? With such warm air no longer entering the cyclinders, there should be an increase in power?

The climate control inside the car has also been effected. Since the engine takes longer to warm up, so does the warm air entering the cockpit. In fact, there's no warm air entering the cockpit for about 10 minutes after starting up the car, so it's probably a good job that I don't drive the car in the winter, otherwise it would be damn cold driving to work in the mornings! Even when the car has been running for some time, unless the engine is working reasonably hard, the warm air entering the cockpit is generally much cooler than it was before the modification.

The other noticeable effect is the smell. When the car is stationary, particulary when coming to a standstill after the engine has been working hard, there's a very distinct smell of oil/fuel that briefly enters the car through the cockpit ventilation system. Again, I don't mind this since for me it makes the car feel more like a sports car and less like a modern convenience product, but I can imagine that some people would not be too happy about this.

I'm not sure where the heat exchanger is located to warm the air into the cockpit, so I'll have to check to figure out why there's such a big change. I'll try looking into it at the weekend and post my findings.

Mov'it brakes dispatched today!

I've just had an email from Per at Mov'it Scandinavia to inform me that my brakes have finally been manufactured and are being shipped from the German factory today! So hopefully they should arrive within the next couple of days and I can get them fitted and tested out before wrapping my car up for the winter...

Diesel Power

Although this has absolutely nothing to do with Maserati or my Ghibli, I found the article below quite interesting. I've often found myself intrigued by the performance of modern diesel engined cars on the road and wondered how long it would be until diesel powered cars would be outperforming petrol powered ones.

Although the top end performance of my Ghibli is far superior to that of the majority of diesel powered cars, I've found myself often having to drop a couple of gears to keep up with even the most ordinary of modern TDI hatch backs. The top end power of these cars is nothing special, but the low to mid torque that these cars offer is pretty impressive; you really have to drive a petrol engined car hard to compete!

Shell V-Power diesel fuels Audi to historic American Le Mans Series victory

Shell and Audi completed a perfect season on Saturday with a convincing triumph in the American Le Mans racing Series (ALMS), the latest win in a very successful year for Shell V-Power Diesel.

The Audi team’s two diesel-powered R10 TDI race cars produced a string of victories since this year’s ALMS season began with the 12 Hours of Sebring race. Drivers Allan McNish and Dindo Capello’s eighth win of the season on the Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca in California, is the feather in their champion’s cap.

McNish drove 64 of the 159 final laps on the same tank of fuel, testifying to diesel’s fuel economy.

"There is no way we could have made that number of laps without the diesel," McNish said. "The team gave me all the info I required in terms of distances required to make sure we could get to the end. I'll tell you it was right at the limit."

“I had to work quite hard on fuel saving in the closing stages but without the TDI technology, we’d never have made it without another pit-stop,” McNish said. By contrast, competitors had to refuel once more during the final hour.

Earlier this month, with two races to go, Audi’s R10 TDIs already had an unbeatable lead over their nearest rivals. Audi has now become the first manufacturer to win all races in a season in the LMP1 class (Le Mans Prototype 1) of the ALMS.

Exhaust notes

I noticed the other day that Larini have added a section to their website with videos sent in by customers of their cars fitted with Larini exhaust systems. If you have some free time, it's always good to have a listen to some exhaust notes.

Unfortunately, there's currently only one Maserati listed, but it is a very nice one though!

On a more technical note, if you're thinking of upgrading or replacing your exhaust for a stainless steel one, then it's probably best to do it sooner rather than later! The price of stainless steel is very high at the moment since it's in high demand throughout the world. From what I've seen, it's unlikely that prices are going to come down soon, if at all. I suspect that they'll continue to rise in fact, especially for small volume consumers.

Where's Jonny?

In case you're wondering why my blog is so quiet, I'm currently away on business in the middle of nowhere with limited access to internet (and more importantly, no access to my Ghibli!).

I'll be back in a couple of weeks and will continue posting then!

Traction control

Oh no... one of my friends back in the UK has a BMW M Coupé and mentioned to me that he's ordering a traction control kit from Racelogic.

Of course... this has now got me thinking about how I'd fit this to my Ghibli... something else for me to lay awake at night thinking about! I do think their digital adjuster would look good fastened to the Ghibli's dash though!


The installation would be a bit trickier on my Ghibli though since it doesn't have ABS fitted, so I'd have to fit speed sensors on all the wheels. Wouldn't be too tricky though I think. It would certainly make driving the car in the wet much safer and the with the launch control I suspect that sub 5 second 0-100km/h sprints would be pretty attainable.

Ghibli track day

I received an email from Jarle in Norway this weekend with some links to video footage shot of his Ghibli on the track.



This second clip shows his Ghibli behind a Ferrari 308 and an Alfa...



...but by the next lap, he'd overtaken them both and made quite some distance on them...



...and by this clip, he was starting to get pretty confident, with a power slide coming out of the chicane! He manages to hold onto it though.



Jarle seems to have been quite pleased with his Ghibli's performance on the track, indicating that it easily kept up with a Ferrari F355 Spider (being faster out of the corners and even on the straights). Jarle has a 2.8 liter Ghibli which has superior torque to my 2.0 liter engined model and he suggests that it's this torque out of the corners that the Ferrari struggled to keep up with. Looking at the stats, the Ferrari should be a quicker car, with more power and a better balanced chassis given that it's mid-engined... although the 2.8 liter Ghibli does indeed have considerably more torque. I suspect that Jarle was just a better driver than the Ferrari drivers though!

Maserati Ghibli fuel economy

Call me sad, but I do like to keep my fuel receipts every time I put petrol in the Ghibli. The idea is that I use the information to see if there's any problems happening with the car which might show as a reduction in fuel economy. However, this takes far too much discipline, so in reality I only update the stats about once every two years!


As you can see from the chart, on average I've been getting 7.6km per liter of fuel (the gradient of the line). Expressed in more familiar terms, this is approximately 13 liters/100km or 22 miles/gallon (UK gallons), or 18 miles/gallon (US gallons).

Seems that my fuel economy has been getting a little worse recently, so I'll continue to monitor it and update it more frequently, particularly since having the big service performed and running on higher octane fuel (which should run less rich).

More Jonny Maserati videos...

Here's the short videos I took at the weekend during my photo shoot with the Ghibli! Unfortunately, I don't have a video camera so was just using the video function on my old digital camera... hence the quality is not great. Still, gives a decent enough impression though.

The first one is a standard rear shot of the car with me revving the crap out of it. Compared to the video I took a couple of years back when I just installed the Larini exhaust, the car now sounds a fair bit louder. I therefore think that the Larini silencers have opened up a bit... which isn't a bad thing since I think the car is sounding good!


This second video is taken in the engine bay... there's quite a lot of background noise since the radiator fan was working a fair bit (since I had the car parked and idling for a while), but when I open up the throttle you can still here the engine! You can also see the Forge blow off valves opening and closing, but unfortunately since there's no load on the engine then there's no inlet pressure building up, so you can't hear the valves blow off any pressure. I'll have to take a video from inside the car one day when I'm driving it hard so that you can hear all the noises that it's now making.


Hope you enjoy them!

How's your German?

Mov'it have this video feed on their website which is quite interesting. It would probably be even more interesting if I could understand German!

If I fit a big brake system to my Ghibli then I will no longer be able to fit the original 16" wheels. Which means there's no point in keeping them. Which means that I may as well sell them and put the money towards the new brake system!

Where's my credit card...

Determining disc diamter

I got the opportunity to measure the smallest internal diameter on my wheel today. As indicated in the picture below, it's approximately 390mm measured from the front.


The diameter does taper out behind where I measured this diameter, but from what I can feel with my finger, only by about another 10-15mm increase in radius.

With reference to the Mov'it measurement guide, in order to fit a 370mm diameter 4-pot kit I need 418mm internal diameter to accomodate the disc and caliper. I'm not confident that I have this much space inside the wheel... it would be a very close fit!

I'm therefore convincing myself that the 342mm kit will suffice and that 370mm would be overkill anyway. The largest disc size I've seen fitted to a Ghibli is around 330mm. Generally, the largest I've seen fitted to a 3200 GT is 350mm. Bearing in mind that the 3200 GT weighs about 300kg more than the Ghibli, fitting the 342mm kit should provide more than sufficient braking power! In terms of aesthetics, it should look fine too... you'll just be able to see the full caliper through the spokes, where with the 370mm discs the caliper would be slightly hidden behind the rim.

In terms of axial clearance, I measured at least 80mm clearance between the spokes on the wheel and the current disc, so there shouldn't be any issues there.

Getting technical... the disc braking area currently on my car is approximately 42,312mm2 (300mm by 190mm disc diameter). With the new disc, the braking area is approximately 63,478mm2 (347mm by 190mm disc diameter). Therfore, the effective increase in disc braking area is 50%. I think that's good enough!

Photographic weekend

The weekend turned out to be a relatively quiet one. I did manage to get a couple of drives in though and yesterday took the car on a bit of a photo shoot... Compomotive wheels informed me that if I took some decent photos of my car then they'd include them in their new website. So here's a couple of choice pics!


I took a couple of quick videos of the exhaust note and in the engine bay which I'll post as soon as they've been cleared by Google video.

The car's running good! I played around with the wastegate opening pressure on the E-Boost and now have it set at 1.15 bar. This means that the wastegates now do not start to open until this pressure is measured in the plenum chamber. The idea is to generate full boost from the turbos for as long as possible in order to attain maximum torque. The boost pressure is currently set to around 1.19 bar, but keeping the wastegates closed until 1.15 bar results in the boost pressure spiking to 1.22 bar in low gears. What I'll probably do is trim this back slightly to around 1.13 bar and then start playing with the sensitivity.

The result is that indeed, the car is feeling pretty torquey and the pressure is zipping up to high boost nice and quickly now. I'm also running BP Ultimate 98 RON fuel which seems to help also! The car's also making a fantastic amount of noise!

Coolingmist water injection

I was just having a look on Coolingmist's website at their water injection system, since it's significantly cheaper than the Aquamist system. What caught my eye is this water tank that they sell, which is designed to sit in the boot of the car AND accommodate the water injection pump. I quite like the idea.

However, I'm not overly impressed with their control system. As far as I can make out, it does not monitor the duty cycle of the fuel injectors like the Aquamist 2d system does; it only measures boost pressure and inlet temperature (and/or exhaust temperature). Although you can set up the system to follow maps, these appear to be relative to boost pressure.

I don't think this is a good idea. From what I've read, there's not much to be gained running water injection below 1 bar inlet pressure... you're better off running a high octane fuel. So in my mind, there's no point even running water injection unless the boost goes above 1 bar. Once above 1 bar, it seems that World War II research shows that best results come from following a fixed ratio of water to fuel. Therefore, the more fuel you inject in the cyclinder, the more water you inject, but in a fixed ratio (in the order of 10%).

I know on my car that I don't need to have my foot hard on the throttle to attain 1 bar boost. Therefore, the water injection system needs to be able to monitor the amount of fuel that is being injected into the engine in order to know how much water to inject. The Aquamist system does this by monitoring the control signal sent from the engine management system to one of the fuel injectors (and multiplies this by six (well, three actually, since during one revolution there's only 3 induction strokes) for the Ghibli, since it has six cylinders. From what I can make out, the Coolingmist system doesn't do this. I'm also not too impressed with the blocked nozzle detection that they offer... it has no automoated fail safe if water stops flowing. With the Aquamist system I can set it up to trigger my E-Boost to run safe boost pressure if water stops flowing.


So, despite the cost difference, I'm going to stick with the Aquamist system. Regarding the tank, the Coolingmist boot mounted option is nice, but I've been giving some more thought on this and I think that the Ghibli's windscreen washer tank should be accessible enough to utilise instead. I'm therefore now thinking that I'll mount the pump in the engine bay instead of the boot. This will necessitate running thick, heavy duty cable from the battery in the boot, but I don't suppose this is too much of an issue. Since manufacture of the water tank for the boot was one of the barriers for me ordering the system, then bypassing this requirement means that I'm one step closer to ordering the kit! I just need to check that I can indeed access the windscreen washer tank (item 35 in the drawing above, located between the body panels in the driver's side front wing, hopefully accessible from the wheel arch), since I'll probably have to remove it in order to install the barb connection for the supply hose to the pump and in order to install the float switch to warn when the tank is getting empty (and to switch the system to fail safe). To get to the windscreen washer tank I'll have to remove item number 22 in the drawing below.


The other barrier to ordering the Aquamist kit is the location of the water injection nozzles. I would like to use two, one on each of inlet pipes where I have the blow off valves fitted. This means sending them off to Forge to have some flat spots welded on and then holes drilled and tapped. So instead, I'm thinking of using a single nozzle located on the Y-piece just infront of the throttle body. I think there's a flat, thick walled section on this piece already which would be suitable for locating the nozzle.


So a couple of things for me to try out, maybe this weekend?

Ghibli strut brace news

I wrote to the owner of the Ghibli that I mentioned yesterday and he replied indicating that he purchased the car with the strut brace already installed.

He said that the previous owner had the Ghibli modified to 1996 Open Cup Evo specification. You can read about these specs on Enrico's pages, but essentially the consist of new exhaust system, larger brake discs, larger 18" wheels to accommodate the larger brakes and improved front suspension. He obviously didn't have the body modifications added like the front spoiler and rear wing... fortunately, since I think these look absolutely awful!

I was not aware that Maserati manufactured a strut brace as part of the Open Cup Evo spec, so I suspect that the previous owner of the car had this brace specially made.

Looking at the spec of the Open Cup cars, I think I'm on the right track with the modifications I'm carrying out to my car. I've already got some more efficient roller bearing turbos fitted, I've increased the rev limiter to above 7000 rpm, I've got a more efficient (and louder) exhaust system fitted and I've got the larger wheels fitted in order to accomodate larger disc brakes (which is my next project). So I just need to work on the suspension, although I'm a bit reluctant to, since I want to keep the car practical to drive on the streets, which means I don't want to lower the ride height.

Ghibli strut brace spotted!

I remember a few years back stumbling across this website when I was doing research into buying a Ghibli. I've just stumbled across it again... a Ghibli owned by a German fella by the looks of things.

Anyway, looking through the pictures of his nice looking silver Ghibli GT, I noticed that he's had a front strut brace fitted. Taking a closer look, it's definitely not a Sparco one, so chances are he had it custom made? I'll see if I can drop him an email and get some more info on it.

Maserati Ghibli review

This review has been on the web for quite some time, but I thought I'd put a link to it here anyway... just for completeness!

It's interesting that they only give it three out of five, but give it four out of five for value? Still, I'm not complaining... one of the good things about the Ghibli is that it's exclusive... so I don't want people going 'round saying how good it is and then lots of people wanting to buy one... I want it to remain a secret!

An example of what I mean is the older BMW M3s (against which the Ghibli was pitched). Technically, these are very good cars (although I'm not so keen on the aesthetics of them), but they're really common and all sorts of unscrupulous characters own them! Also, since the M3 is essentially a hot version of a mass produced car (the BMW 3 series), you inevitably get people who think that simply sticking an M-Power badge on their crappy 318 will transform it into a racing machine... or at the very least trick people into thinking that they indeed possess the real deal.

At least with the Ghibli there's no risk of this happening, since a Ghibli is a Ghibli. In my humble opinion, there shouldn't be different versions of a car. It should be designed for a specific engine... specific suspension... if a car manufacturer thinks that they can improve a car model, then they should do so and then only offer that car (which is how the Ghibli evolved). When BMW bring out an M version of their car, what they're really saying is that the "normal" car is sub-standard. A car should be designed for a specific purpose... a Grand Tourismo (GT) car is designed with one objective... to get from A to B as quickly and as comfortably as possible. This is what the Ghibli fulfils. A classic Fiat 500 was designed to be small and cheap... and this is what it is. It's not designed to be small, cheap... and fast. So don't buy a tuned Fiat 500 and think that you're cool.

Think of a Fiat 500 and you think of a little bubble car with skinny little wheels. Think of a BMW 3 series and... well, you don't instinctively think of the M version... you think of a four seater saloon. Think of a Ghibli and you instantly think of a fast car.

Blimey... this has turned into a bit of a rant!

Update on V-Power

I did some research on V-Power and came across the following:

V-Power in the Netherlands is a 97 octane fuel. Officially it has a 95 label because 97 just doens't exist. And since it is not a 98 octane, they can't call it a 98 octane fuel.

In Belgium it is 98 and in Germany even 100 octane. The decision to use a 97 octane was based on a market search. For that reason, we get different kind of fuels in different countries. It is unlikely that V-Power in the Netherlands will be adapted in the short future since it has just been introduced.

It is also true that not all cars run good on this 97 octane fuel. There is a small number of modern cars and older cars that simply run better on an higher octane. Unfortunately, Shell can't help them out since they don't have the 98 octane fuel anymore.

Most cars however run even better on V-Power. It all depends on the motor of the car. The additives are very good in cleaning out the motor which ends up in a better performance an fuel economy. That can sometimes take a bit of time since a motor is not clean again after just 1 time of taking fuel.

I'll continue to run some of my own tests to determine which fuel is best for the car.

I do Ron, Ron, Ron...

When I picked up my car from its big service the other week, it seemed to be running pretty good. I dropped of the car at the garge with the fuel tank almost empty, but when I picked it up I noticed that there was a bit more fuel in the tank, so I presume that Jorrit had topped it up a bit (I'm sure I'll find out when I receive the bill, since he will undoubtedly charge me for it).

I think Jorrit uses either Texaco or Total fuels... mainly because he has a discount card for his local petrol station, but also because they offer 98 RON in the Netherlands. For various reasons, I've been using Shell fuels. Until about a year ago, Shell also offered 98 RON fuels in their petrol stations, but this has since been phased out and replaced with V-Power. V-Power is 95 RON in the Netherlands and as far as 95 RON petrol goes, I have no reason to believe that it's no good. In fact, I have a bit of insider knowledge so I know that it's better than 95 RON fuel and it's also better utilising our hydrocarbon resources (but I won't go into that here).

Since Jorrit only put a splash of fuel into my car, I've since refueled on V-Power. Not long after doing so, the car seemed to feel a bit flatter... a bit less responsive. Also, if I think back to the recent dyno runs carried out with my car, they've been with 95 RON V-Power rather than the 98 RON fuel that I used to use. So I'm starting to think that using 95 RON V-Power in my car is not the best. High octane fuel offers resistance to engine knock, as you can read about on Wikipedia. What I've seen on recent dyno runs is that my car is running very rich. A rich mixture may be symptomatic of a poor setup, but it can also indicate that the engine management system is detecting some engine knock.

If the engine management system detects knock it can do a number of things. It can retard the spark or it can increase the air/fuel mixture, making the engine run rich. I have a strong suspision that when I run 95 RON V-Power in my car I loose power... the car feels more sluggish and on the dyno it seems to run rich. I'm therefore going to try running on 98 RON fuel for a while (maybe try out BP Ultimate) and see how it feels before taking the car back to the dyno. It will be really interesting to see if there's a difference in output between the different fuels. Given that my Ghibli runs with a decent amount of boost and that the intercoolers are not as effective as they could be (i.e. the charge is both high pressure and high temperature, both of which increase the tendency for knocking), I suspect that the fuel's octane rating could have a significant effect on the engine's output, maybe as much as 10-20hp?

I'll keep you posted on the results!

Good news on the Mov'it front

I just received an email from Mov'it... they can make a brake kit for my Ghibli!


Given that I now have 18" wheels fitted to my Ghibli, Mov'it are proposing to go with a 370mm x 35mm disc on the front with 4 pot calipers, as fitted to this Alfa 156 GTA pictured above. This Alfa actually has 19" wheels fitted, so with my 18" wheels the discs will completely fill the rims!

I enquired about fitting 6 pot calipers, but Mov'it considered this a bit overkill given the weight of the Ghibli... I tend to agree if I crunch the numbers. The original brakes on the Ghibli are already pretty good for street driving. Although I've not been on the track with the car, I can imagine they would fade pretty severely unless racing discs and pads were fitted. However, my main reasons for changing out the brakes are primarily that I need new discs and/or pads anyway (the ones currently fitted are fading badly for some reason), plus, with the new wheels the aesthetics of the small discs do not fit in with the new wheels.

But back to the number crunching, increasing the discs from the stock 300mm to 370mm is already an increase in area of 50 per cent! That in itself will yield terrific performance increases, since there will be more contact area between the pads and the disc (since the new caliper and brake pads are also scaled up in size). Also, a larger disc acts as a bigger heat sink, which means that the brake is a lot less likely to overheat in normal driving conditions. And if the brake does get hot, the larger surface area of the new disc means that it will dissipate heat quicker to the atmosphere, which again means that it should run much cooler than the stock brakes and hence overcome the problem of insufficient cooling with the original set up.

To make things better, Mov'it can also manufacture a rear brake kit for the Ghibli! Not only does this look great (so vane!) but it potentially would further improve the braking dynamics of the car, preventing the back from becoming too light and trying to overtake the front! I'd have to see how the car performed with the front kit (and also save up for a few months, since the rear kit is almost as expensive as the front kit!) before entertaining the idea of fitting a rear upgrade kit... it's very tempting though!

Movit Brakes for Maserati Ghibli

I happened to stumble on another brake manufacturer today, the German company Mov'it. I did a bit of research and their brakes seem to be quite highly regarded... from what I can make out they're the OEM for Porsche?

So I sent off an equiry to them for my Ghibli and I got an immediate enthusiastic response. So good initial impression. I informed the sales guy about my Ghibli being an early model and that I wanted larger discs to make the most of my new wheels... so he should be getting back to me soon after conferring with the technical chief in Germany. Sounds promising...

Water injection

I was pointed towards an interesting article written by AutoSpeed about water injection by one of the guys on the Dutch Maserati Club web forum.

I've been toying with the idea of using water injection on my Ghibli for some time, as I've described in a previous post. I actually discussed this topic with Jorrit at Auto Forza last week... he's always been a bit anti water injection, since he says it's curing the symptoms and not the cause of the problem. He's right... the problem is predominantly related to charge temperature and if good sized, efficient intercoolers are utilised that are located in at the front of the car with plenty of airflow potential across them, then a water injection system should become pretty redundent.

However, the problem with the Ghibli is that the intercoolers are pretty small, not particularly efficient and not particularly well located with respecto to air flow. Redesigning the intercoolers is not an easy task... even the likes of Modena Performance resort to only slightly increasing the size of the intercoolers and directing a bit more air across them, rather than installing a large single intercooler across the entire front of the car. So my dirver to go down the water injection route is that I think it will yield more "bang for buck" (please excuse the Americanism) than changing out the intercoolers.

I don't think just installing water injection alone will increase power though. What I do think it will enable is greater inlet pressures to be run.

As I've hinted in my previous post, I think this winter I'll purchase the kit and get it installed while my car is off the road. Once the injection system is installed and running OK, I'll then start to slowly increase the boost pressure and see what happens!


Here's quite an interesting story of a mad baron who fitted an Aquamist system to a Maserati Qattroporte... it's quite inspiring I find!

Interesting brake...

I decided to take a closer look at the Brembo site and came up with the following...


Looking on the EurospareS site, I attained the Maserati part number for the front brake disk and cross referenced it with the Brembo product number... interestingly, if you then look up this part number on the Brembo site it returns the Maserati Shamal disc, which means that the Shamal and the MY92-93 Ghibli shares the same front discs!

New brakes for Jonny's Maserati?

Now that the wheels are sorted on the Ghibli, it's time to start looking for new brakes! After doing some initial research, I'm not suprised to find that there appears to be no off-the-shelf upgrade kit for the MY92 Ghibli, although there are kits for the MY94 and later cars. So again, this is going to mean having something custom made, or at least having an adapter made so that an MY94 Ghibli kit (or maybe even the 3200 GT kit since I now have 18" wheels) can be fitted to my car.


The brakes that I'm after are these Tarox 10 pots. The ones pictured here have a 330mm diamter disc, but I might be able to install 350mm discs behind my new wheels. This would transform the braking capability of the car enormously!

If you do any research on the Ghibli (Enrico's pages are a good start) then it soon becomes apparent that Maserati recognised that the brakes were a weak point in the design of the car. Every time they bought out a new version of the car then they upgraded the brakes. Fitting larger wheels to the later cars was probably driven as much by the desire for increased braking performance as it was the ground clearance problem. Also, if you look at pictures of the Ghibli Cup racing cars, you'll notice that lots of ducting hose was installed on the cars to improve cooling of the brakes... on the Ghibli Cup Evoluzione cars they brought out a new front bumber/spoiler to facilitate routing more air to the larger brakes.

So the idea is to fit larger, more efficient brakes. If the brakes are more efficient, then for daily use they shouldn't run as hot and therefore should be more effective and not fade under heavy breaking. An alternative of course would be to fit some carbon breakes, which actually work better the hotter they run! But they're a bit expensive and I think a bit wasted off the track? But I should be honest and say that the upgrade is also for aesthetics, since the original brakes look terribly inadequate behind the new wheels.

So... where to get an adapter made? Modena Performance along to the rescue! This German company that specialises in tuning Maserati cars has accepted the challenge to design and manufacture an adapter for my car so as to enable their Tarox brake kit to be installed. Initially, they wanted to keep my car for a few days in order to get the dimensions off it and check clearances, but this is not practical since it's a 5 hour drive to their workshop. However, they've agreed that they may be able to carry out the work if I send them one of my front wheels.

So, assuming the price is right, I'll plan on sending them a wheel in the winter when I've taken the car off the road to avoid the salt. With the car off the road, I might get round to fitting that Aquamist kit too!

New wheels for Jonny's Maserati

After a long wait to have the wheels finished to my Ghibli's peculiar specifications and then another wait before finding out the tires that I originally wanted were not available... and then another wait while I got my holy throttle body fixed... I finally got to fit my new wheels!


I have to admit to being a little nervous when I turned up at Korst Banden. Despite doing lots of thorough research to determine the existing wheels specifications and getting a good idea about what will fit in the Ghibli's wheel arches, listening to the guys at Korst express doubts that the tires I wanted to fit wouldn't... well... fit, I did start to doubt myself! So I was extremely happy when first a rear wheel fitted OK and then the tighter fitting front wheel slotted in OK.

Once the right side wheels were fitted, we went for a quick drive to check that the wheels weren't fouling in the arches when turning and driving over speed bumps. We didn't hear a thing... so success! Everything had turned out as planned!


All four wheels were then properly fitted, with the wheels balanced and installed with new bolts. Once the wheels were all fitted, the young mechanic who carried out the fitting joined me for a quick spin on the motorway, just to check that everything was fine.

I'm happy to report that it is... and that he was very impressed with the car. He was quite categoric in stating that the Ghibli was the quickest car he'd been in. He has a marker on the motorway where he checks the speed after accellerating hard off the slip road... and despite the wet road surface, he claimed the speed that I achieved at the marker was quicker than any of the Subaru Imprezas that he'd been a passenger in. So that made me happy!


I'm really happy with the new wheels. I purchased them predominantly for functional reasons... to increase the ground clearance of the car. However, I think the aesthetics of the car have improved with the new wheels. I like the way that the wheels fill the arches now and I think the proportions of the car are less slender and a bit more chunky, giving the car a more aggressive look. The ground clearance has certainly improved... I can now get over speed bumps without the underside fouling. I'm even tempted to consider some new springs to lower the car slightly!

Handling does not seem to have been adversely effected. I think traction has been improved, since I was not getting any rear wheel slipping on hard accelleration. I think the new Toyo tires are slightly better than the previous ones I had in the wet... since they were holding traction on the damp road on the drive home.

If I were to get some new wheels, or perhaps as advice to anyone else who goes down this route, I'd probably be a bit more adventurous on the offset on the rear wheels. It's now much better than before, with the wheel much more flush with the body, but there's still scope to push it out a little further. On the front however, I think it's looking OK.

Next project is to source some replacement brakes. The OEM discs look a little skimpy behind the new wheels, so I need to investigate getting some 330mm or even 350mm discs fitted. Seems that Modena Performance in Germany might be able to help me out.

Another Ghibli video

CarAreOK.com Maserati Ghibli


I was having a look through the Dutch Maserati Club notice board and saw a link to this video. I thought it looked quite interesting...

Ghibli tested OK

I picked the Ghibli up from Jorrit at Auto Forza late Friday afternoon. As usual, we spent an hour or two chatting about our favourite topic... cars. We eventually got 'round to the subject of my Ghibli and he started to ask some questions about the new intake system I'd fitted.

The thing I like about Jorrit is that he's a genuine enthusiast and always concerned about doing things properly. So the first thing he asked me was whether the hose joiners I'd used had the proper profile to prevent the hoses from slipping off. Ahhh... sweet!

From previous conversations that I've had with Jorrit, I know that he's not a huge fan of aftermarket race filters since he believes that they let through more particles than the OEM paper filters. He bases this on the observation that he sees more junk in the engines of cars fitted with aftermarket filters. I was therefore quite suprised with his enthusiasm regarding my latest upgrade. He'd taken the car for a drive and wanted to test out the accelleration and brakes. He seems to be quite impressed with the results, stating that the car feels quicker than a new Ghibli and one of the hardest accellerating Ghiblis he's driven. Given that the last time he drove the car he thought it was a bit flat and not driving so well, this is quite a turn around! He also said that he thought it was very torquey, that it pulls from much lower down the rev range than a normal Ghibli, which finally convinced him that swapping the turbos for the 3200 GT ones was a good idea.

I explained to him why I'd changed out the inlet tubing and when I said that one of the nice bi-products was the interesting noise it makes when lifting off the throttle, he grinned and agreed, saying that there's quite a few people who can confirm that since he tested it out in quite a busy area... he said a lot of people turned around and had a good look.

Although the car was performing pretty decently the last time I drove it when it was working OK, I was still a bit suprised at how enthusiastic Jorrit was being, so I was pretty keen to give it a drive. Unfortunately, it was pissing it down with rain on the drive home, plus it was rush hour so the traffic was averaging about 20 km/h. I'm a bit reluctant to say too much until I've taken the car back to the dyno, but... it seems to be performing even better now! It may be the result of the big service, with the timing reset and everything running a bit tighter, but I have a sneaky suspicion that I might have been running on only 1 turbo for a while. The car is now pulling really hard from as low as 3000 rpm and the really strange difference I noticed is that when I back off the throttle, I hear both pop off valves blow with a slight delay between the two... so I hear "pst, pst" instead of one "pssst". The spool up of the turbos is now also much more audible... I can really hear the bearings race up, much louder than they were before. I think this might be because it was the left hand one that wasn't working and now that it is I can hear it much more clearly on the drivers side (since my wife says that she's always heard it on the passenger side). There really is a philharmonic orchestra performing under the bonnet now... although I had the radio fixed (Jorrit installed a neat little new aerial) I turned it off and just listened to the engine working... it had me grinning all the way home! I'll have to see if I can record and post a video of it, since it's hard to describe. On pushing the throttle, you can hear the turbos start whirring and whistling as they spool up and then when you change gear you hear a combination of engine roar and a distinctive double blow off noise. I think passengers in the car will be as intrigued by the noises as they will be impressed by the accelleration.

I need to reset the E-Boost again now... Jorrit's tinkering has resulted in the boost pressure increasing up to 1.24 bar (I had it set at about 1.19 bar before) so that implies that something is working better! I'll call Rica on Monday and arrange another trip to the dyno. I'm interested to see if we can get the car performing better, since the emissions appear to be back under control, with the car now through the road worthiness test. Hopefully now we can get the car running a little less rich.

First thing though is getting the new wheels fitted... I've an appointment arranged for Tuesday afternoon. I hope that all goes to plan!

Ghibli through first big service

I spoke with Jorrit this afternoon and the Ghibli is through its first big service! Jorrit had systematically been through my list of actions and sorted most of them out for me.

• The windscreen washer nozzle is now pointing in the right direction.
• He's left the fuel pump since he thinks it's OK... it is indeed making a noise but he think it sounds OK.
• He's fixed the switch for the courtesy light in the boot.
• He's performed the big service, changing out the timing chains and resetting all the clearances and timing.
• He checked the Lambda probe and confirmed that it's working OK (as we observed on the rolling road a couple of weeks back).
• He's going to order some lamps to fit to the buttons on the center console after he confirmed they don't illuminate at night... he worked on my car 'til midnight last night and probably drove home in it... think he's feeling a bit guilty about making me wait so long for the service!
• He's going to fit a new aerial so that I can receive radio signals!
• He's tightened up the alternator belt, so hopefully no more squealing!
• He's told me to hold off trying to remove the leaf from the A/C ducting, since apparently this involves removing the dashboard. He's advised to try and ignore it for a while and see if it works it's way out.
• He fitted a new volt meter, thinking that the original one was faulty. Turns out that this did not solve the problem. It was instead caused by some short circuiting at the back of the instrument cluster; he re-soldered some of the connections and tightened things up a bit and it appears that this has sorted the problem!
• He oiled the clutch pedal , despite not being able to get it to squack.
• He's fixed the handbrake and tested it on his brake testing machine... he reports that I now have a very good hand brake!

You'll remember that while last at the dyno, we discovered a hole in the throttle body which we thought was the cause of the lost boost pressure. Well, turns out that it wasn't! After changing out the throttle body (he agreed that it was worth changing given the circumstances), the lack of boost pressure persisted and he tracked down the cause to a disconnected wastegate control hose... it had apprently popped off somehow. He re-fitted it and reported the boost pressure now up to 1.23 bar (so I need to get the boost controller reset again!).

While testing out the car, he tried out the brakes (by braking really hard) and thinks that they're not quite up to scratch. He says they're looking a bit blue which is probably an indication that they're getting too hot and fading. So I need to start looking into a new brake system I think... although I think the cause is that I simply don't use the car enough and that the brake discs are oxidising which is making them perform badly.

He also checked out the CO emisions. Seems that the catalyst on the right hand side is not 100% since CO on the left bank reads 0.25% (which is below the maximum 0.3% for my EURO2 car), but on the right hand side it reads 0.46%, which is obviously over (this is at 3,000 rpm). Seems at some point a new catalyst will be required.

If all goes to plan then I should be able to pick up the car tomorrow and hopefully get the long awaited new wheels next week!

More bits delivered

Yesterday I received the windscreen washer bottle part that I ordered from EurospareS as described in a previous post.

The part came well packaged in protective bubble wrapping and a plastic envelope and is a genuine Maserati part... so I'm pretty pleased witht he purchase!

Will fit the part when I get the car back from the garage, hopefully this weekend!

Car in safe hands?

I dropped the Ghibli off at Auto Forza this morning, taking it very easy so as not to aggrevate the holy throttle body any further (but still leaving the wife standing at the traffic lights (driving the Volvo), despite short shifting and the wet road conditions).

Since it was early, Jorrit was not around when I dropped the car off, but I called him this afternoon to confirm that he got the keys and that the car was OK. He'd just come back from his holidays and was describing to me how his turbo (he's got an Alfa) had blown up 300 km before arriving home. Fortunately, the car still managed to make it back to his house, albeit with a decent amount of smoke coming out of the exhaust.

I informed him that I hadn't had time to fit the replacement throttle body and he gave a chuckle before telling me that it was only a 10 minute job... I explained to him that it would probably take me about an hour.

So, the car should be ready maybe at the end of the week, but most likely the beginning of next week...

Busy weekend...

Unfortunately I didn't get time to fit the replacement throttle body this weeknd... as you can see from the photo below, I was busy getting covered in paint while painting our new house instead.


So instead I'll hobble the car along to Jorrit at Auto Forza and ask him to install the replacement for me while he's doing the big service tomorrow... he can probably do the job in 30 mins when it will probably take me about an hour!

Parts delivered

I received the throttle body in the mail yesterday from David Askew. I just need to get some gasket sealant (I'll pop and get some this lunchtime) and I'm all set to install it at the weekend.

Hopefully everything will go to plan, the leak will stop AND my CO emissions problem will be solved! I'm kind of hoping that the high CO has been the result of the leak, with the engine running richer than it should due to this leak in the throttle body. It seems that the Ghibli ECU is not set up to vary the fueling map based on actual measured inlet pressure, but that it only varies fueling based on throttle position and temperature?

Since the car is scheduled for its big service on Tuesday, if there's any problems or fine tuning required then I'll ask Jorrit at Auto Forza to sort it out. To be honest, I'm tempted just to ask him to install the replacement throttle body? I'll see what the weather's like this weekend... since I also need to paint the new house!

Alternative supplier for throttle body

Unfortunately someone's beaten me to it for the 2nd hand throttle body. I just received an email from EurospareS informing me that when they went to take the parts off the car they discovered that they'd already gone!

So it's over to David Askew to provide the parts. Unfortunately, they're considerably more expensive here, but they are definitely in stock and still much cheaper than getting new parts. I've also dealt with David in the past (I got my 3200 GT turbos from him) and he's reliable and very helpful!

Despite the set-back, I should still hopefully receive them before next weekend!

Another parts supplier!

I've just received an email of Enrico informing me of another parts supplier that I was unaware had a website. They're Meridien Modena in the UK.

Unfortunately, you still have to fill out a parts enquiry form, email them or give them a call to order, unlike EurospareS where you can order online for most items. However, I'll have to see if they're cheaper, since convenience only gets you so far!

Throttle body ordered

After contacting EurospareS, a replacement throttle body is on its way. I went for a second hand one, since it's less than half the price and as long as it's in good condition (if it's not been over-tightened then it will be) then it will be more than adequate!

I've attached a picture of the donor car below:


It's a 1999 Maserati GT with 53k miles on the clock. I don't know what's wrong with it, but it actually looks in good condition!

I'm busy this weekend so unfortunately won't get to fit the parts until next weekend. Unless it's nice one evening during the week, since it shouldn't take more than an hour to do? Which reminds me, I'll have to get some gasket sealant...

Holy throttle body!

I've just spent the afternoon at Rica Engineering. The intention was to remap the fuel (since the car was running too rich) and to set up the boost controller.

Things we're looking a bit peculiar from the start. First we checked that the Lambda sensor was working OK by monitoring the exhaust O2 with another probe. The car seemed to be responding OK, adjusting to throttle responses by enriching and then making lean the mixture. However, we started to notice that the car was runnning very rich, with mixtures of Lambda 0.6!

Before even looking at the fuel map, we had a good look at the new intakes to see if they were working OK and to check that they weren't pulling in hot air from the engine bay. We concluded that everything seemed OK.

A couple of remaps were tried out, but something very strange started to happen. Suddenly the car was only producing about 230 hp (and continued to run rich). We then checked the boost pressure... about 0.2 bar! Something seriously wrong was going on since the fail safe pressure for the boost system is around 0.7 bar. This implied a big leak!

We both covered the inlets with our hands and straight away we saw and heard where the problem was... the connection between the throttle body and the Y-piece connecting to the two hoses from the intercoolers. We disconnected the Y-piece and found that the rubber gasket was damaged and worse still, there was a big hole in the throttle body in the grove that locates the fastening screws. You can see it in the center of the picture below (please excuse the poor quality... I took it with my phone):


It appears that someone's been a bit over enthusiastic when tightening one of the bolts. It also looks like the gasket may never have been in the right place, since it appears it may have been damaged during installation when tightening the bolt that caused the damage to the throttle body.

So, before I can proceed any further, I need to purchase and install a new throttle body! So that's items 23, 24 and 27 in the picture below:


And item 20 in the picture below (I'll probably get a couple of these):


Of course, this now delays me picking up the new wheels, since I don't want to drive the car with such a big leak in the inlet system.

The parts drawings are courtesy of EurospareS, from who I'm getting a quote for the required parts.