Maserati Ghibli V8

Today I had a holiday and so took the opportunity to visit Buddy at Wereld Auto.

I went there to find out more about the KMS, but spent most of the time discussing Ghiblis. He had two in the workshop. one was a MY93 series 1a (but had Mistral style wheels). It was having some problems with a seized turbo, but Buddy has been having trouble trying to source a replacement. So he's working on manifolding a small Garret turbo; designed to flow 180 hp and with a good bearing package, it should be spooled up by 2000 rpm and offer very good low rpm drive-ability (which is what the owner of the car is after).

Buddy says that if he can get the Garret turbo mounted satisfactorily onto the Ghibli's exhaust manifold then he plans to make a kit that will offer a bolt on replacement for Ghibli owners. He also says that by using the Garret turbo, there's lots of scope to play around with compressor sizes to open up tuning possibilities. He thinks he can come up with a kit for around €800 per unit, which is far cheaper than getting a Maserati original part! I'll keep you posted if he managed to pull it off!

OK... the other car was a a very special MY92 Ghibli, but with a Maserati Evoluzione engine and running gear from a Quatroporte, running on a KMS ECU and with larger intercoolers (actually from a Golf Mark IV TDi... they're twice as thick as standard Ghibli units, but the bottom (outlet) manifold needs removing and a new one welding on). Buddy took me for a drive in the car... I've not had that much of a buzz since being in the passenger seat with Top Gear's " The Stig" at the wheel. What a fantastic performing car! The brakes and handling could be improved, but the engine performance is very impressive indeed... the car felt like it had a huge normally aspirated engine, with bags of torque available at low revs... no having to wait for the turbos to spool up like on my Ghibli or having to drop the gears to get the engine revving in it's power band, just stick your foot down and away you go! Buddy's not had it on the dyno recentyl but thinks the performance is around 380 hp with a little under 600 N.m torque. He's set up the KMS pretty conservative so as not to stress the engine too far and make the car very driveable... for example the boost pressure is mapped against throttle position to avoid the big spikes in torque when accellerating out of corners that the car was previously delivering and catching the owner off-guard. It seems that Buddy has a fair bit of track driving experience and he said that the torque spikes were occuring too quick for him to reliably control.

Very, very impressive... kind of gets me tempted to try and source a Maserati V8 and have it fitted in my car! It's a bit tight in the engine bay, but it fits ok and there's actually more ground clearance underneath the car since the V8 has a shallower sump. Plus, since this Ghibli was registered in '92 it doesn't require cats which helps out too.

Regarding the KMS... Buddy still needs to find out if it can run an odd fire engine, so i promised to send on the info that I've acquired and he'll ask the manufacturer. So, lots to report back, but not much yet on the KMS!