Jonny's Maserati Ghibli

Back in Nederland to find Ghibli Damaged!

2010-08-14T14:40:00.003+02:00

As some of you may be aware, there's not much activity on this blog lately since I've been living in Damascus, Syria for the past two years and had to leave the Ghibli behind in the Netherlands. However, an enthusiastic fellow Maserati fan kindly keeps the car ticking over for me while I'm away and on the occasions that I do return to the Netherlands I try and visit the car and take it for a quick spin.

This time round I was furious to discover that the guy who parks his car next to mine in the underground parking where the Ghibli is stored has recently taken to systematically banging his door against mine when he gets in and out of his car! I now have lots of dents and chips on the driver's side door which I will have to get fixed and try to claim the costs back against the other driver's insurance.

Just in case anyone was thinking that I was being rude not answering comments to this blog, I can't access it (at least not formally) from Syria since Blogger is banned there.

Jonny's Ghibli Valued!

2008-07-31T12:09:00.002+02:00

The nice folks at Kröller insurance here in the Netherlands have agreed to insure my car as an old-timer after I made them aware of a quote from one of their competitors. This is good news for me since it will more than half the cost of the yearly insurance premium!

In order to calculate the new premium, the insurance company requested that I have the car inspected and valued by an independent assessor. So on Monday I met up with Rob from Hofkamp Projects. I received his report yesterday, in which he marked the overal condition of the car as 8.5 out of 10 and gave the car an insurance value of €22,000. This is higher than I anticipated since the market value of the car is probably more like €15,000, but he included the value of the modifications made to the car, so the indicated value is what he thinks it would cost to replace the car.

So, nice to see a high value for the car, but not so good for the insurance premium calculation!

Updated Fuel Economy

2008-07-27T16:27:00.003+02:00

Another year or so has passed so I thought it was about time to update the fuel economy chart for the Ghibli (and empty the glove box of petrol station receipts!).

As you can see, the car is returning an average of 6.8 km/liter, which according to an online converter is equivalent to an American 16 mpg or a British 19 mpg, which is pretty awful for a 2.0 liter car, but great fun though!

Summer fun

2008-07-25T10:48:00.002+02:00

After spending a couple of weeks in Syria at the start of the month, it was great to get back home and have the opportunity to drive to work everyday in the Ghibli. Without fail, I step out of the car with a big grin on my face and I'm simply loving driving it!

Following on from the discoveries in my last post, I've trimmed back the sensitivity setting on the E-Boost controller and voila... the stuttering during hard acceleration has stopped! I've now increased the gain setting slightly to compensate and to set the boost pressure right at the end of the amber section on the dash boost gauge (I need to check but this should be just over 1.20 bar).

I'm also now slowly increasing the gate pressure setting, which is the pressure at which the controller starts to open the wastegates. It's currently set at 1.05 bar, but in third gear at least there's scope to increase this. Since my 3200 GT turbos don't spool up very quickly, there's less risk of over boost so the gate pressure can be set reasonably close to the desired boost pressure.

I'm really happy with the way that the car is performing now. Acceleration is nice and steady, with a kick in the arse coming around 4000 rpm. Keep the revs below this and the car is very civilised, above this and its nice and aggressive with a quick throttle response.

The warm weather is testing the new oil cooler. Now that I'm driving it more I'm noticing how it performs. It's obvious that when being driven with decent speed, the oil temp is being kept pretty low as the water temp is maintained below 80 deg C and the oil pressure stays just below 5 bar.

Slowing down or stopping when driving through town, the water temp is elevated and stays between 80-90 deg C with the fan coming on alot. Also, the oil pressure drops to 2.5 bar. But as soon as you get some speed up and get air flowing across the radiator, the temp is straight back below 80 deg C and the oil pressure to just below 5 bar.

So my conclusion is that the oil cooler is working well. It has no problem keeping the oil temp low when driving at speed (with good flow across the radiator) and it manages to take the edge off the heat when the car is stationary, which is where the problems occurred on the track.

There's some noticeable additional load on the engine at idle though, particularly when the engine is cold. It's only small, but the engine is more prone to stalling now and a dab of revs is required to prevent stall when reversing with full steering lock. I will get this sorted though when the car is dropped off at the garge next week end... the idle needs setting a fraction higher I think.

The car is going for the annual APK (road test) next weekend and also to have a few things done:

Re-fit the original distributor; it was replaced with a new one to check whether this was the cause of the stuttering, but since it isn't then the original can be refitted.
The volt meter has stopped working completely, so the wiring needs to be checked.
The idle needs resetting.
Maybe fit the new springs. I'm in two minds about this though as the ground clearance around town is good at the moment.
See if it's possible to modify the left wheel arch to increase the clearance a little and prevent the tire from rubbing on fast or tight right hand corners.
Perform small service (oil change).

I'll try and capture some log data to show the changes in the boost pressure... I expect that the boost curve will be much flatter now at the top end instead of oscillating up and down. I think the top end is now performing much better as a result. Feels like the car is back at 330 hp, but I'd need to take it back onto the dyno to check this...

Water plumbing for Laminova oil cooler

2008-06-28T13:50:00.004+02:00

I was asked last week to show some more details of how to connect up the Mocal Laminova oil cooler to the water side of the Ghibli's engine. Well, hopefully this hand sketch I made will help?

Engine Inlet Temperature

2008-06-20T19:32:00.004+02:00

Looking through the visitor stats for this site, it seems that lots of people are interested in upgrading the intercoolers on the Ghibli. I have to admit that this is something that I looked into myself, since the stock air/air coolers seem a bit small compared with the huge aftermarket coolers that can be purchased for the likes of VW Golfs and Mitsubishi Evos.

So, I pulled up one of the data logs from my PLX Devices R-500, since I have it tapped into the air temperature sensor on the throttle body. This sensor measures the temperature of the charge air entering the engine, after it has been cooled by the intercooler. I have to admit that I expected the temperature to be in the range of 70 to 90 degrees since after going for an enthusiastic drive, the throttle body and plenum chamber are too hot to keep my finger on.

The picture above is a screen grab of the PLX Logger software charting the data in 2D. It's a bit rough... I've been having trouble getting reliable RPM data from the engine speed tap and so this needs to be multiplied by 5 to give the correct engine speed (I think I'm going to tap into one of the ignition timing wires instead). The MAP values are also a little bit out. However, the chart gives a good enough idea of what's happening and the temperature values are correct.

What you see is that at idle, when the car is stationary and no cooling air is flowing across the intercoolers, the inlet temperature is up around 50 degrees Centigrade. It's important to realise that the ambient temperature when these reading were taken was around 5 degrees Centigrade, so pretty cool. As soon as the car starts moving, the inlet temperature rapidly starts to decrease to a steady state around 30 degrees above the ambient temperature. When the car is driven hard at around 380 seconds, there are significant peaks in the inlet temperature. The temperature is quick to fall back to a steady state less than 40 degrees Centigrade.

I still need to capture some log data for summer temperature, but I suspect that steady state with an ambient temperature around 30 degrees Centigrade will be about 70 degrees Centigrade. This is less than I expected and my conclusion from this is that, unless the car is going to be raced on a track where the engine is kept at full load for a long time, then there's no huge benefit to changing out the stock intercoolers if the car is being run with 1.20 barg inlet pressure. Bear in mind that if the car is run on the track, there will be a good flow of air all the time over the intercoolers helping to keep them cool. The highest inlet temperatures are occurring when the car is stationary or moving slowly and increasing the intercooler size is not going to help this.

What I'm therefore thinking of doing is adding a cooling fan behind each intercooler, connected to the water radiator cooling fans. These fans generally only activate when the car is moving slowly or stationary so would be a good control for the intercooler fans. This should then keep the intercoolers at a relatively low temperature when driving around town for example, or when the car is cooling down after a hard drive.

It's official... the Ghibli is a classic

2008-06-15T20:34:00.004+02:00

It feels like I've been neglecting the Ghibli of late, since I've not spent much time or effort on it recently. So in an attempt to make amends, I've spent most of the weekend giving the car a good clean an a thorough polish and to prove it I took some pictures!

Jonny's Polished Maserati Ghibli

While in the process, I had several neighbours and passers by comment on the car and pass on positive comments regarding the car and the condition, which is always nice to hear and a real charm of owning the car. Two of the passers by commented that the car is a collectors item and a rare classic... so there you have it! It's official... you can't argue with the word on the street!

Anyway, apologies for being so quiet... despite there having been plenty of stuff going on in my life recently, non of it has really revolved around the car, other than the Spax lowering springs that I ordered from the UK have arrived, which I'll get Jorrit to fit next time I take the car to Nordwijkerhout (probably in a month or so).

Mocal Laminova oil cooler fitted

2008-05-03T09:28:00.003+02:00

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

2008-04-01T08:43:00.005+02:00

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:

Upgrade the front bushings to GT spec.
Fit the Mocal oil/water heat exchanger.
Replace the pin in the driver's side door hinge.
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

2008-03-31T08:56:00.003+02:00

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

2008-03-27T21:59:00.005+01:00

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

2008-03-19T21:31:00.003+01:00

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

2008-03-17T14:38:00.004+01:00

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

2008-03-11T21:17:00.003+01:00

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!

Preparing for the spring

2008-01-20T13:39:00.000+01:00

A few weeks back, I received an email from an old friend who was asking whether I'd be interested in joining him for a drive down to Germany and onto the Nürburgring. Of course, I'd love to, but after my last experience on the track I really need to install some oil cooling before venturing back.

I've therefore been researching into oil cooling. Initially, I was looking into fitting an efficient air cooler and locating it in front of the engine cooling radiator, in a similar fashion to the Modena performance air/oil cooler pictured here (from Enrico's Maserati pages). It's the large silver coloured one in the centre. I actually think this cooler is a bit over the top, since an efficient cooler of half this size should be sufficient, although I think this Modena prepared car is awaiting a V8 engine conversion. Also, I don't think it's very efficient mounting the cooler with such a large gap between the rear of the cooler and the front of the water radiator, since the exhaust flow from the oil cooler will not flow nicely through the radiator.

So, I was researching into fitting an sandwich adapter between the oil pump and the oil filter to facilitate fitting hoses to the front mounted oil cooler and had managed to source a second hand Maserati part with built in thermostat, pictured here. This little device only sends oil to the cooler after it has reached a certain temperature (around 80 degrees C) in order to warm the oil up to operating temperature as quickly as possible, otherwise the oil will be too cool and hence quite viscous.

While discussing my options with the Bi-turbo forum on Yahoo, one of the members talked about the oil/water cooler he has fitted to his Maserati Ghibli Cup and subsequently sent some pictures of the cooler fitted to his car. After researching the cooler (it's a Mocal Laminova cooler), the benefits, particularly for my application, were clear.

A water/oil cooler does not need a thermostat and warms the oil up to operating temperature much quicker than an air/oil cooler. This is because the water/oil cooler is actually a heat exchanger and the water cooling is very effective at taking heating from the engine and therefore warms up quickly. The water/oil cooler then transfers this heat into the oil, hence warming it up quickly. I often drive drive reasonably short journeys in my car (twenty minutes) which is only just long enough to get the engine properly warmed up. Therefore, anything I can do to warm it up quicker is certainly a bonus.

Although the water warms up the oil quickly, the water cooling on the Ghibli is very effective at maintaining the water temperature at around 90 degrees C, even in extreme use. The idea of the water/oil cooler is that the fluid temperatures of the oil and water remain about the same, which means that the oil temperature should be maintained around 90 degrees, which is about perfect!

In order to fit the water/oil cooler, I'll have to fit a remote oil filter and an adapter plate to the oil pump to facilitate running lines to the remote filter. The cooler itself will be mounted behind the water radiator, spliced into the line that takes cool water from the radiator back into the engine block. In the drawing, this will mean rotating part 34 clockwise about 90 degrees, fitting in the Mocal cooler, then installing a new 90 degree elbow to face upwards, then installing part 6 (will have to flip it round) up and into part 5, which will have to be rotated 90 degrees anti-clockwise.

The parts are made by Think Auto in the UK, who are not proving to be the most effective with e-mail correspondence. However, I have managed to get a quote off them for the parts I require... the water Laminova is not cheap, but the other parts are pretty reasonable and Jorrit at Auto Forza can get all the hose and fittings tailor made for me.

I'm hoping to get it installed within the next couple of months.

Squeaky brakes

2008-01-05T01:16:00.000+01:00

I was just looking through my photos and came across this video of Jorrit driving my car back from a test ride. It's only a short one, but I think Ghiblis look much nicer on the move than they do in photos and it gives a much better feel for the proportions of the car.

The front brakes squeak a bit... but I'll let them off given how well they perform! I'm tempted to fit some new springs and lower the car a bit though...

Sneak preview of PLX Devices R-800

2007-12-27T12:56:00.000+01:00

As you may have read, I'm not particularly impressed with the PLX Devices R-500 unit that I'm currently fitting to my car. The screen is awful and it's not particularly user friendly, plus it's a pain to mount in the dash since it's a bit on the large side and the thick cable that extrudes out the side of the device is not very malleable and is therefore hard to route.

However, searching around on the internet, I've seen references to a replacement that PLX Devices are about to bring out, which annoys me even more since I only bought the R-500 this year and it's already being replaced. However, reading on the PLX Forums, it seems that they may offer some rebate to customers of the R-500, so I might try and upgrade it.

It's Christmas

2007-12-23T14:19:00.000+01:00

I've not been very active recently on this blog. That's mainly due to it now being winter and the car being officially kept off the road since they've started salting the roads.

I was actually surprised how long the good weather held out for though, since I kept driving the car into late November. Durig this time, I almost got the installation of the PLX Devices data logger installed. The only things still to be hooked up are the speedometer and knock sensor, which will then enable me to get some on road dyno testing done, since I installed the optional G-meter.

I have got some results from the data logger already though. There's definitely something odd going on with the inlet pressure. At first I thought the pressure sensor in the engine bay was not calibrated correctly, since according to this the inlet pressure was going off the scale. However, I'm now starting to think that the boost controller may not be reading the correct pressure and that there's a leak in the vacuum hose to the controller.

I've been slowly reducing the inlet pressure using the boost controller and indeed, if I keep it low then I seem to be able to work out the hesitation that I'm getting around 4000 rpm. So I definitely think the stuttering problems are inlet pressure related.

I've been logging the inlet temperature also. This has been quite insightful, since it is typically running at around 50 degrees C and only when hard pushed does it get up to 70 odd degrees. So it's much less than I anticipated, which means I can stop worrying about changing out the intercoolers and save some money there.

The strange and slightly worrying thing is the engine speed signal. It routinely drops and runs lower than the actual speed. This is worrying since I've tapped into the signal from the engine speed sensor, so if I'm getting an unreliable reading then it's likely that the ECU is also, which may mean that the ECU is not operating the engine as well as it should be.

I've also been monitoring exhaust gas temperature and been pretty surprised here also. The normal operating temperature is around 200-300 degrees C and you have to push very hard to get it up to around 700 degrees C. I've not had it anywhere near 900 degrees C, which is when I start to worry a bit.

I also hooked up the wideband lambda probe to the ECU via the data logger and have been keeping an eye on the mixture. I think that the wideband actually responds too quickly for the ECU since at idle the engine revs have been swinging up and down a bit. Also, the mixture may be a little too lean at idle, since the car seems to stall a bit easier. But that could be to do with the colder weather also?

I still need to tidy up in the cockpit, since there's wires running everywhere in the passenger foot well. I've left it messy until I complete the installation of the data logger. I also need to figure out where to mount the device. It's pretty ugly and the screen is pretty crap too since it's almost impossible to read it on strong daylight. I wouldn't recommend anyone buying this data logger... I'm not particularly impressed with it to be honest.

In the long term, I'm planning on changing out the ECU. Jarle in Norway is currently updating the one on his bi-turbo with a Haltech ECU and if it all goes to plan then I think I'm going to go the same way. May be a job for 2008.

Wheel Spacers Fitted

2007-10-22T20:48:00.000+02:00

Apologies for not posting for a while... that doesn't mean that I've not been busy with the car though!

A couple of weeks back I had some wheel spacers fitted. This was primarily driven by the fact that my front tires were rubbing a little on the suspension and inside the wheel arch, so I decided to push the front wheels out by an additional 3 mm. It doesn't sound like much, but it turns out to be about right... the rubbing seems to have stopped and there's not much space to push the wheels out anymore.

As you can see in the picture above, these front spacers are very slim and as such there is not need to make them hub-centric. I also purchased some new wheel bolts all 'round to accommodate the extra width... now 45 mm in length.

The spacers are specifically made to fit the Ghibli and therefore align perfectly with the PCD and also the centre bore.

The wheel is then mounted to sandwich the spacer... you should be able to make out the shiny spacer in the picture above.

On the rear I decided to be a bit more brave and pushed the wheels out by 10 mm. This extra width necessitates a hub-centric spacer, which you can see in the picture below means that there's a hub machined to stick out of the spacer. Inside the hub fits the male hub from the car and the wheel then sits onto the spacer's hub.

It probably makes more sense in the picture below where you can see the new spacer mounted onto the car's hub.

I'm happy with the end result. The car looks more aggressive and much more sporty, especially viewing it from the front three quarter, where the width of the rear tires is now much more noticeable. The car seems to handle a bit better too... I'm sure I'm getting a bit more traction now at the rear when accelerating hard out of corners.

If I can just get some more power to the back wheels, then there's space now to fit some 265 mm tires on the back! I'd also love to drop the car down a couple of centimetres, but I'm concerned that the engine sump would then be a bit too exposed?

Missing exhaust bracket fitted

2007-10-07T11:44:00.000+02:00

Last week the replacement bracket to fix the new exhaust to the gearbox arrived. I ordered the part from David Askew and as you can see it's brand new from the factory, still in the original packaging.

I got the part fitted yesterday. As you'd expect, it didn't line up perfectly with the attachment points on the exhaust, but it's good enough!

I had to order two parts, both of which are different to the original ones from the MY92 variant of the Ghibli. The triangular part that attaches to the gearbox is not offset like the old one was and the long part is about 3-4 cm longer than the original part.

So, that's the fitting of the new exhaust finished. After driving around with it for a bit now, it's not massively louder than the original system, but there's certainly a sweet spot... around 3000 rpm it sounds like a proper Italian engine!

Picture of Jonny's Ghibli found on the web

2007-09-23T22:06:00.001+02:00

Seems some more pictures from the Maserati event at the TT Circuit Assen are making their way onto the web. Below is a picture someone took of me driving down the start/finish straight with the ANWB roadside assistance mechanic that changed my hose clamp in the passenger seat!

The car is squatting a far bit more at the rear than I thought it was... it didn't look like it was so much on the video. I noticed that the Shamals on the track were squatting a fair bit too, so I wonder if it's to do with the springs used on these cars or maybe the rear axle set up, which was changed on the post ABS variant Ghiblis?

Replacement front section exhaust

2007-09-22T19:07:00.000+02:00

Ok, I'm finally writing up the fitting of the replacement front section exhaust.

To recap, I originally ordered a replacement from Larini, but unfortunately it didn't fit so I sent it back and Larini gave me a full refund... so hats off to them for customer service.

Instead, I ordered the Maserati OEM de-cat front section, made by the factory for cars sold to Saudi Arabia. I'd heard on the Maserati Bi-turbo forum (thoroughly recommended by the way... it's a very active forum) that this OEM part is made from stainless steel, although not particularly well finished. However, it's considerably cheaper than the 3rd party replacements available on the market, so I figured what the hell and ordered one.

As you can see, the design of the OEM replacement is very simple and what I'd expect for a straight through design... just straight piping in place of the cats. Not only is this cheaper to manufacture, but it also helps minimise exhaust back pressure, since every bend results in a pressure drop. Also, the OEM replacement is made from a larger diameter tubing... it appears to be 50 mm in diameter versus about 40 mm for the original tubing and the rear section that I have fitted. Again, this is good for minimising back pressure.

Finishing of the OEM replacement indeed isn't great. Where this is particularly noticeable is in the fitting of the small diameter cross flow pipes that joint the left and right side pipes to maintain equal (positive) pressure on both sides.

The picture above shows the inside of the piping and you can see on the left hand pipe there's a considerable sized "burr" sticking out into the inside of the pipe. Essentially, the factory never took the time to clean up after welding in the small pipe. It's not a major thing though.

So, everything was looking OK until the replacement section was positioned against a similar part to that which it was replacing... it was about 7 cm longer! It turns out that when the ABS variant of the Ghibli was introduced in 1994, Maserati decided to lengthen this front section exhaust. This is reflected in the part numbers, where the part numbers for this section subtly change. But the strange thing is, the rear sections didn't seem to change, so I can only assume that the rear section remains the same length for all variants of Ghibli. Therefore, the additional length of the front section must be taken up in the bends of the rear section on the post ABS variant cars.

This explains quite a few things, in particular why the Larini part didn't fit. It now seems obvious that there part had been modelled on a post ABS variant Ghibli and therefore should fit these cars no problem at all.

However, this realisation didn't help me!

Fortunately, Jorrit at Auto Forza who was fitting the exhaust for me discovered that there's a steel workshop not far from his workshop that specialises in forming stainless steel, particularly stainless steel tubing... a lucky break! What they did to shorten the exhaust was to cut it and then enlarge one end of the cut with a mandrel which fits inside the pipe and expands it from the inside. Sufficient length of pipe was expanded such that the other cut end could be inserted inside the expanded end, such that they overlapped by the required shortening length. You can make this out in the picture above.

The nice thing about this technique is that it keeps the inside of the pipe flush and smooth, since the weld of the pipes is made against the outside of internal pipe, which is good for gas flow.

The next problem was that this exhaust replacement was meant for a post ABS variant Ghibli and therefore came equipped with two lambda ports, one on each pipe. However, my car is equipped with a single lambda probe and on the original exhaust this is mounted on the front cross flow pipe in front of the cats, as you can see in the picture below.

I could just have installed the probe on one side with the assumption that both banks run about the the same, but I had another driver, since I'm looking to install a wideband lambda so I therefore want to measure average values from both banks.

The solution to this was to drill a hole in the cross flow pipe and weld in a nut with the appropriate thread for the new sensor. This turned out to be easier said than done, since we didn't have the right sized nut to had to make one, plus the diameter of the cross flow pipe is quite small, so the face that was being welded onto it had to be profiled.

However, the end result turned out fine. We made sure that there was sufficient space to install the probe (get at it with a spanner). It looks like it sticks up a lot in the picture above, but it fits under the car fine without touching the underside, as you can see in the picture below.

Next, I wanted to install an Exhaust Gas Temperature sensor onto the replacement exhaust. This needs to be placed as close as possible to the outlet of the turbo. Unfortunately, I only have one sensor, but it turns out that installing one on the drivers side pipe would be tricky since there's not much space. So we decided to install it on the passenger side.

As you can see from the picture above, we drilled another hole and welded on a nut with the appropriate thread pretty close to the flange connection that joins the exhaust to the turbo outlet manifold. The picture below shows that the location turned out to be spot on, with sufficient space for the sensor and to run the stiff cable into the cabin.

When it came to fitting the replacement section, we realised again that the mounting lugs didn't align with the mounting bracket that is attached to the gearbox housing. The picture below shows the OEM exhaust, but it seems when Maserati changed the design of the front section they also increased the distance between the two pipes around the gearbox. As a result, I've had to order a new mounting bracket to attach the replacement section to the gearbox housing. Fortunately, it's quite cheap!

Once the replacement front section was installed, the rear section needed readjusting to align the outlets in the rear bumper... we ended up having to get the gas out and heat up the rear section to try and get a bit more bend in it (but stainless steel is not as malleable as carbon steel). In the end, a tighter rubber hanger did the trick.

As you can hear on a previous posting, the new front section leads to a much more aggressive rumble from emanating out of the back of the car and slightly louder, although not half as loud as I expected it to be. Performance wise, it's hard to tell if there's any benefit since there's something not right with the engine set up at present... but I'm working on that. Once that's sorted, I may be able to better gauge the value of the replacement.

The new fixing bracket should arrive within the next, along with some wheel spacers that I ordered. I return to Jorrit to get these fitted and while I'm there I'm planning on doing a couple more tests... a cylinder leak test and a change of spark plugs and if we get time I'd like to test the mechanical timing.

Maserati Event at the TT Circuit Assen

2007-09-17T09:38:00.000+02:00

On the 8th September there was a Maserati event held at the TT Circuit Assen (Netherlands) organised by the Maserati Club International.

I was fortunate enough to receive an invite in the post a couple of days before the event and prompty re-organised my schedule to attend. I'm glad I did, since there were plenty of classic Maserati cars there to admire and I even got the opportunity to race against a few on the track!

I've posted some pictures from the event which you can view by clicking on the picture below.

I also managed to capture some video footage of the cars out on the track which you can view below.

And my wife captured a bit of footage of my car driving down the start/finish straight which you can see below:

It was great to drive around the tight and twist TT circuit and gave me the opportunity to test out my car on the limit. My first lap was a warm up to get accustomed to the track and I was joined by my wife in the passenger seat. But unfortunately she only lasted one lap before politely asking to be excused since she was feeling a little motion sick... unfortunate because I'd liked her to have taken some in car video footage around the track!

With my wife out of the car, I really got to give it all around the track and found my car handled very neutrally around the bends. As I expected, the car has a high tendancy to understeer on tighter corners, but this is soon compensated with some extra throttle, upon which the car can be made to drift relatively easily and in a very predictable and controlled manner. About one third into the course is a very tight second gear corner where I nearly lost the rear end... but the skid pan training that I had a couple of years ago paid off and I was able to catch it by applying considerable opposite lock. I wish I'd caught some video footage of that!

Twice I blew off the inlet piping connection to the throttle manifold (the one on the left side) which resulted in me having to do a lap with no boost. This made me realise what a huge effect the turbo chargers have on the performance of this car... with no boost I struggled to keep up with an old Citreon that was on the track!

The second time the inlet blew off I asked an ANWB roadside assistance guy for help and he kindly replaced the clamp with a new one. He then timidly asked if he could sit in the passenger seat, so I ended up doing my final three laps with him smiling and giggling alongside me. I don't think he knew what he was getting himself into, but he certainly seemed to enjoy the experience!

I was very impressed with my Mov'it brakes. They performed extremely well with not a hint of fade. I even suspect that I was out breaking the Ghibli Open Cup and Barchetta that were also out on the track; although these cars were undoubtedly quicker on the straights and around the corners, I felt I caught them on braking, although admittedly I was getting a little too confident towards the end and found myself carrying more and more speed into the corners.

I need to do something about my front wheel arches, since around the right hand bends there was a fair amount of fouling occuring, particularly with the additional weight of a passenger. Maybe the wheel spacers I've order will sort this out?

Also, after completing my laps the engine oil pressure gauge dipped low and the warning lamp lit up. I immediately checked for leaks and measured the oil level, but both were fine. I therefore suspect that my oil got a bit too hot, which doesn't surprise me given that my car doesn't have an oil cooler like the later versions.

Driving the car on the track was a great experience and one that I'd love to repeat some time soon. However, it wrecks road tires... my fronts especially over heated and show signs of damage. If I'm to take my car on the track more often then there's a couple of ugrades that I'd invest in... an oil cooler and some stiffer suspension springs would be on the top of that list.

Back at the Dyno

2007-09-10T19:21:00.000+02:00

I know I haven't posted anything new on the exhaust yet, or on the Maserati Club International event in Assen, but I'm getting 'round to them.

In the meantime, I've been back to the dyno and to prove it I made a very short video.

The dyno results are below, with the bold lines the new results overlaying the previous results.

As you can see, I've dropped the boost pressure a little which results in a lower peak torque and less agressive ramp up. However, as a result I now have a longer flat section from 4000 rpm to about 5,500 rpm.

Overall performance can be determined by calculating the area beneath the curves... in mathematical terms, if you integrate the curve you'll calculate the actual work done. So although the new curve is not as peaky, across the rev range it's more effective, which should translate as being quicker on the road.

I think there's still some scope to tweak the inlet pressure a little, but it won't yield any big improvements. There's something fundamental preventing me from getting more power out of this engine and I can't quite put my finger on it. Fuelling is not the issue... if anything it's running too rich at the top end, but the chip tuner prefers this since it's much less likely that the engine is going to fail. But it shows that the current injectors are more than up to the job.

So if there's enough fuel, is there enough air? Air supply to the compressors is not the issue, since last time I was at the tuners I did a run with no air filters and there was hardly any difference (so I think the air filters I have fitted are more than good enough). So, maybe I'm getting a significant amount of pressure leak between the compressors and the inlet manifold? To check this I'll need to place a pressure gauge near to the outlet of the compressor and compare this with the pressure at the plenum chamber. It could be that the turbos are having to work very hard to maintain 1.20 bar, which is effecting their efficiency.

Another simple thing to try is to connect the stock boost solenoid... although it won't be controlling the inlet pressure, it's absense may be alerting the ECU and knocking it into safe mode. I don't think the Ghibli ECU has an error check circuit for this like modern cars, but I don't know, so it's worth checking it.

If it's not air supply then it has to come down to timing. I certainly think this is what is preventing me going above 1.20 bar, but I think I should be getting better performance at 1.20 bar, so I'm not going to go down this route yet. I think I should be able to get 360 hp out of this engine at 1.20 bar, so I need to find out what's preventing this before looking at changing out the distribution system.

So... the sooner I install the PLX data logger the better I think.

New exhaust fitted

2007-09-06T17:44:00.000+02:00

Well, I got the new mid section fitted on Tuesday. I'll write a longer post over the weekend, but in the meantime, here's a short "before and after" video.

Maserati in the Press

2007-09-02T10:20:00.000+02:00

The Maserati brand appears to be drumming up some excitement among the press. I've just been on a business trip overseas and paid my usual visit to the newsagent at the airport to pick up some reading material for the long plane journey. It was a pleasant surprise to find not one, but two car magazines featuring Maserati, both of which mentioning the Maserati Ghibli!

The first I picked up was Classic Car magazine, which had a two page feature on the Ghibli (both the new and the old version!). The second was Car magazine, which had a page rating all the Maserati cars to date as "Good, Bad or Ugly". I'm happy to say that the Ghibli was assessed by both magazines as a great car! Although I'm happy to see that others are starting to appreciate this car, I'm also keen to keep it a secret! However, such good publicity can only be positive with respect to pricing.

Alternative exhaust sourced

2007-08-26T08:09:00.000+02:00

Well, following the disappointing news from Larini (they're currently developing some products for the Maserati 4200 so don't have time or see the value in refining the Ghibli cat replacement products) I've ended up ordering an OEM Maserati exhaust.

Maserati made a de-cat version of the front exhaust exclusively for cars being shipped for the Saudi market and there's still some units remaining in stock at the factory. Seems there's not a high demand for these parts, since the price is very reasonable... I'm saving almost 50% over the Larini system. It won't look as nice as the Larini system, but it's still made of stainless steel and since it sits beneath the car you don't see it anyway. So hopefully it will arrive while I'm away on a business trip and be ready for me to have installed when I return in a week or so.

I've also had a quote for the wheel spacers from a German supplier. However, I've changed my mind on the front spacers, where I'm only going to install 3 mm spacers, since the wheels are already pretty flush with the arches. But at the rear, I'm going to install 10 mm spacers since there's plenty of spacer there. It should help the grip at the rear a little too.

Exhaust problems

2007-08-21T11:11:00.000+02:00

Well, as you're aware I ordered a replacement cat section for my Ghibli from Larini, which arrived a couple of weeks ago. Unfortunately, it didn't fit, so Larini paid for the system to be returned to them, I thought for modification.

However, they now want to refund my money and pull their range of cat replacement systems for the Ghibli since they can't gaurantee that they can offer a direct replacement system. It seems that there's large tolerances in the Maserati design and so the chances of the replacement system fitting without needing significant modification is too low.

Therefore, I need to source an alternative supplier. This is a real shame since I'd prefer to have had a complete exhaust system from a single source, but seems that the only way of getting the replacement cat section from Larini to fit would be to take the car to their workshop.

I should stress that the Larini rear section system does fit however, since the design of this section enables sufficient flexibility to line it up properly beneath the car.

So I'm now waiting for a response from Tubi Style's European distributor Italparts to see if they can provide me with a system, as listed on Enrico's pages. The part number for the cat section is 03029311030. I sent them an email yesterday and gave them a call this morning and they should be getting back to me this afternoon. Fingers crossed!

Home at last

2007-08-16T20:18:00.000+02:00

I finally got my Ghibli back this weekend after what seems an eternity. The last couple of weeks have certainly been eventful! As you can see from the picture above, I no longer have a large crack in the center of the front bumper, so now there's nothing to distract the eye from the fabulous shiny trident!

The replacement bumpers are of the new variety, made from a flexible plastic material versus the stiff fibre glass used for the old bumper that proved itself to be pretty brittle. As you can see in the picture above, the new bumpers are without the black rubber insert for protecting against scratches from minor nudges, but instead the new ones are a single tone. I think the new ones look nicer for it.

I also had the rear bumper replaced as the corners on the old ones had cracked as well as starting to flake a little around the exhaust outlets.

The new exhausts, given that they're much more flexible, require a steel plate to be installed across the width of the car onto which to bolt to provide some rigidity to the bumper. The factory was out of stock for the rear bar, with the part on back order and not available until September some time. I therefore purchased the part from David Askew instead, since he had it in stock. Despite being brand new and still in the original packaging, the part still required bending into shape before fitting. Maserati obviously did not have a tight tolerance on this part!

For the front stiffening bar, the factory did send a part, which was labelled as being for the front of a Ghibli. However, when Jorrit came to fit it, it turned out to have been mislabelled at the factory; it was in fact the rear bar from a Quatroporte. Although the factory said they had the proper part in stock and would send it immediately, after a couple of days it turned out that the part was also on back order at the factory and would not be available until September. I therefore ended up driving to visit David Askew, since I was over in the UK this weekend anyway visiting my parents. He had a used part in decent shape, which although required a bit of bending into shape, looked like new after Jorrit gave it a spray of paint.

The paint shop also removed the dent from the left front wing. They even touched up the paint, which is more than I asked for, but I'm not complaining since they did a good job! I'm sure I'll pay for it though.

Unfortunately, I'm still waiting to get the new front section exhaust to get fitted; the replacement needs a bit of refinement, but should be sorted soon.

It's great to have the car back since I've really missed driving it. I did have a bit of a scare today though... I was watching the voltmeter and noticed it slowly dropping from 12 volts, down to 11 volts and slowly less less. I was sure the alternator had packed in, so hurriedly drove back home before the car shut down. When I got back I got the multi-meter out and measured the voltage across the battery... 12.7 volts. Then with the engine running... 14.3 volts. Seems that the volt meter circuit has some problems... the voltmeter has been playing up for a while, intermittently on and off, but I've not seen it misreading before. Something new to look into!

Service delays...

2007-07-24T16:06:00.000+02:00

Unfortunately, it doesn't look like I'll be driving to France in my Ghibli this weekend. I dropped the car off with Jorrit on Wednesday last week and seems that it's still at the body shop having the new bumpers installed and a couple of dents rolled out.

Since Jorrit has a reasonable amount of work to do on the car when he gets it (hopefully this afternoon), it doesn't seem likely that it will be ready for me to pick up on Friday afternoon. So that means I won't get to pick it up until a week on Monday, since I'll be away on holiday all next week.

That's a real shame since I was really looking forward to giving the car a long drive, hopefully with it back on top performance and kicking out 360 hp. So will have to wait until I drive back to the UK in a couple of weeks time... that's still a good drive though, so should get to test it out then.

Can't wait... I miss my car!

Lamborghini Diablo

2007-07-21T21:51:00.000+02:00

You may recall that my wife booked me a drive in a Lamborghini (I posted it a few months back). Well, today was the day that I finally got to drive it!

From Lamborghini D...

As you can see, it wasn't the Gallardo as my wife thought she'd booked, but instead a Diablo. To be honest, I was far from disappointed at the news, since the Diablo was the last of the true Lamborghinis, with the evolution of the classic V12 engine and the rough and ready feel coupled with extravagant styling. There's more pictures if you click on the link below the picture above.

The first thing I thought when getting in the car was "Oh no... there's not enough space in here for me!". The car simply wasn't designed for people of my height, so I had to seriously bend my head down and squeeze my legs around the steering wheel to get to the pedals. Although the car is far larger than a Lotus Elise, the driving position and effective space is about the same. But the owner of the car who was to be my passenger for the hour drive convinced me that I'd be OK, so I started up the engine and was introduced to the V12 engine... what a beautiful sounding thing that is!

The first thing you notice when driving the car away is how heavy the clutch and steering are! This is not an easy car to drive at low speeds. Also, the gearbox has the dog leg 1st gear at the bottom left of the fabulous polished gear gate... what a fantastic sound that thing makes as you clunk through the gears! The gear shift is a little tricky, with a fair throw distance and 1st and 2nd gear being a bit tricky to engage, requiring a little blip on the throttle and some confident pressure to persuade these gears to engage.

To be honest, I drove the car very timidly for most of my journey. I am always weary of these cars at first until I get a feel for them, since they pack so much torque and power that it's easy to get them out of shape. But my biggest concern was having the owner sat next to me, who would only allow me 20km/h over the speed limits and to utilise only 5000 rpm of the available 8000 rpm range. So I really didn't want to upset him. But by the end of the journey, I was starting to feel more confident in the car and certainly would have liked to continue driving the car longer to really get to grips with it. But my hour was too soon over when I found myself back at the starting point.

It was a great experience to drive this car, which is pretty rare with only 2900 made, or which only about 30 are in the Netherlands. I'd love to try the car on the track, since the speed limits and excessive enforcement of these in the Netherlands mean that you can't really try out the car properly. So it really needs a trip to Zandvoort or across the border to Germany.

If anyone's interested in trying out this car for themselves, here's the website of the owner.

So... all that remains is to say a very big thank you to my wife for organising this for me!

Wheel spacers

2007-07-19T08:28:00.000+02:00

Since fitting my Compomotive wheels, I've been very concious of the fact that, on full steering lock, the tires are interferring with the suspension geometry... the rubber of the tire is rubbing against one of the uprights.

It's not a major problem and only occurs at slow speeds when parking or turning round tight corners, although on one occassion I was making a reasonably hard turn at a decent speed and hit a bump in the road, which also cause the tire to knock against the upright, but this has only happened on one occassion.

I could just leave it, since it's not causing any damage. However, I know it's there so it's always a nagging concern when I'm driving, so I'd rather get it sorted. One solution would be to fit some narrower tires on the front. I'm currently running 225mm width tires on the front and I'm very happy with the way that these are performing. I certainly don't need bigger tires on the front, but the car is handling significantly better than it used to with 205mm tires on the front. So I don't really want to go down this route.

The alternative is therefore to decrease the offset of the front wheels a little, to make the wheels stick out a bit more. This can be achieved by installing wheel spacers. Since the front wheels are already pretty flush with the body, I don't have a lot of space to push them out further, so I'm limiting the decrease in offset to 5mm. This should be sufficient to prevent the tires touching the suspension geomety and as long as the wheels are protruding less than 20mm from the body, the car remains street legal.

It's important to maintain a hubcentric installation for the loading of the wheels onto the hub, which means that the wheels must be located onto the hub via the shaft that extrudes from the hub. This then transmits the load from the wheel to the hub and wheel bearing via the shaft rather than relying on the bolts to transfer the load, which means that the wheel bolts are only loaded axially to pinch the wheel onto the hub rather than taking any shear force; the weight of the car is supported is transferred to the wheels via the central shaft.

For a 10mm spacer, this would mean purchasing a hubcentric spacer, which is machined with a shaft that mates with the center bore of the wheel, which has a diameter of 58.6mm. However, for 5mm spacers, the existing shaft should be sufficiently long to still mate with the wheel center bore, without having to extend it with the spacer. So it's important that I check that this is the case when I install the spacer, otherwise I risk shearing the wheel bolts, which could be quite messy!

Since there's still plenty of space between the wheel arches and the tires at the back of the car, I'll also install some 5mm spacers on the back of the car to keep the track of the wheels in line. I could probably go with more than 5mm at the back, but I've two reasons not to do this. The first is the cost. First, a hubcentric 10mm spacer is about twice the cost of a 5mm spacer since it involves considerably more machining to manufacture. Second is that I'll probably install wider tires on the back of the car when the current ones have worn out, increasing them from the curren 255mm to 265mm. Therefore, if I install 5mm spacers on the back then, after fitting 265mm tires the net result will be a decrease in offset of 10mm at the back, which will fill the rear arches better. On the inside of the wheel, the net result will be the inside of the tire will be at the same location as the current setup, which I know will fit; if I fit 265mm tires on the current set up there's a risk that I'll get interference on the rear wheels.

After emailing with Compomotive wheels to try and source some spacers, they referred me to a very useful websit of a German spacer manufacturer called SCC Fahrzeugtechnik. They manufacture spacers specifically for Maserati cars, so it's a very useful link for anyone wishing to decrease the offset on their Maserati car. Unfortunately, they don't support consumer purchases, so buying the spacers has to be done through a local distributor. After emailing the Dutch importer (EFCA Import), I'm now waiting on Henze Autobanden in Den Haag to get back to me with availability. Hopefully don't have to wait too long, but seems the German manufacturer are about to close down the factory for their summer holidays, so might have to wait a couple of months?

Latest parts have arrived...

2007-07-18T22:41:00.000+02:00

I dropped my car off this afternoon with Jorrit at Auto Forza for him to work on the list of jobs I listed a couple of posts ago. Hopefully it will be ready before the end of next week so that I can drive down to France in it with my wife for our holiday!

The new front section Larini de-cat sports exhaust was unpacked and waiting at Jorrit's workshop. As you can see below, it's seems overly complicated for a de-cat exhaust, with all the original bends in of the Maserati OEM exhaust and even the flange connection between where the two cats are located on the original exhaust. No wonder it wasn't cheap!

So both Jorrit and I are wondering why they've not just made a single, straight pipe section? I suspect it has something to do with them making it as a modular part, that can be used to build up any of the exhaust options... either sports cat, de-cat muffled or straight through pipes like I have. If they're really advanced, it might be to make the sections equal length or maybe to minimise resonance in the exhaust? I'll have to ask them...

Also arrived are my replacement bumpers. These are the new style ones fitted to the ABS Ghibli and later models, essentially made from a much more malleable material that is less prone to cracking as suffered by the bumpers currently fitted on my car.

Since they're much less stiff than my current bumpers, they require a steel plate to be installed behind them to keep them in shape and offer some resistance to impact. As you can see, they need spraying, which should get finished tomorrow.

There's always something interesting going on at Jorrit's when I visit... I arrived to find him playing with a Quatroporte V8 Evoluzione engine that he'd dismantled, which he seemed to take pleasure talking me though and explaining what he was doing with it... which of course I found extremely interesting!

I couldn't help but notice the black Shamal that he had in there too... I recognised it instantly as belonging to Mark... there's not many Shamal's around after all, so it was a fair bet. It was great having a look around the engine bay... there's so many parts common to my Ghibli. Jorrit treated me my starting up the engine so that I could listen to the warbling V8... hope you don't mind Mark... but it sounds great with a pretty smooth idle compared to my Ghibli.

Anyway, can't wait to pick up the car and try out the new exhaust... I really hope it will be ready next week!

On the road again...

2007-07-07T18:26:00.000+02:00

After a couple of weeks of rain, there's been a break in the weather and a spot of sunshine today (my cat Boris can vouch for this... as you can see he loves to sunbathe), so I took advantage of this and took the car for a drive.

I primarily wanted to try the brakes out, since they've now covered well over the bedding in 1000km distance. I therefore got some speed up and gave them a good warming up by seeing how fast I could go from 200km/h down to about 80km/h. They seem to work well, with no sign of fading. I didn't push them so hard as to lock them up, but I certainly had the rear end of the car lightening up and giving a bit of a wiggle. I was also getting a bit confident around the corners and approaching opposite lock territory, but since changing the wheels and fitting much wider tires on the back, the car adheres to the road far more than it used to (going from 225 to 255 width on the rear) so I have to push it quite hard to get the rear out. Traction from stand still is also much better than it used to be, which I'm sure improves the 0-60km/h sprint times.

After picking up the wife, we decided to drive to the beach for a coffee and enjoy the warm weather for a while. On the way back, we stopped off at a travel agent to see if we could organise a holiday in a month or so's time... walking or cycling in France, driving down there in the Ghibli. This kind of puts the pressure on to get the car running good and reliable before then, which is going to be tighter than I thought since Jorrit is having trouble sourcing one of the parts for my new rear bumper.

Since I have a non-ABS Ghibli, it needs adapter brackets fitting in order to install the ABS and later car's bumpers, as you can see from the drawing below.

Part 11 on the drawing is the bit that is missing. Apparently they have it on back order at the factory, which means that it will likely take some time to get delivered. Since I don't mind getting a second hand part (you don't see this part), I wrote to David Askew. Turns out he has a new part in stock, so hopefully I can get this delivered and fitted within the next couple of weeks!

Talking of factory parts, Jorrit was telling me that Maserati have now honoured their 10 year commitment to maintain spare parts at the factory for the Ghibli, but since they have no obligation to keep these for more than 10 years (production stopped around 1997 to 1998), they're likely to let the parts run out now and not replace them. This means that parts for the Ghibli will start to become harder and harder (and likely more expensive) to source.

Garage appointment booked

2007-07-03T11:53:00.000+02:00

Not much to report other than the new exhaust should be delivered by the end of this week (Larini seems to be a bit stretched at the moment, since they told me two to three weeks delivery but are taking more like four to five).

All the parts for changing out the bumpers have arrived at the garage except for some of the the adapter fittings (since the new bumpers are designed to fit on an ABS Ghibli, which has a slightly different fitting to the non-ABS cars), but hopefully these will arrive before the end of the week. I also noticed that the rubber elbow pipe leading to my driver's side intercooler was looking a bit cracked and have therefore ordered a new one... which is still yet to arrive, but Jorrit has a decent second hand one in his store which he'll fit if the new part hasn't arrived in time.

Here's a summary of the work that's hopefully getting done:

Replace bumpers front and back (including re-spray).
Roll out dent on front left wing.
Roll out dent in floor in driver’s side foot well.
Change out cracked rubber elbow into left intercooler.
Fasten boost solenoid valve (the original screw has fallen out).
Fabricate and fit new fixing brackets for air boxes.
Get the car APK tested (road worthiness test).
Fit new exhaust.
Fit wide-band lambda probe (including resistor) and wire in data-logger to ECU wiring harness (just the power and lambda probe for now). I need the pin diagram for non-ABS Ghibli (think it's the same as for a 224?). Once I have the pin diagram then I can wire in the other signals. Install the exhaust gas temperature probe on the exhaust and run the cables into the cockpit along with the lambda probe cables. I think there’s a spare port on the exhaust, otherwise will have to drill a hole and weld one on? It’s a 1/8” NPT fitting.
The voltmeter still stops working so will see if it can be fixed? Maybe a faulty earth connection?
Check engine timing; the car is loosing power above 4000 rpm, which may be an indication of problems with the distributor or valve timing. I’m convinced the car is loosing 10-20% power above 4000 rpm and since the fuelling looks fine from the last dyno (although the wideband lambda will be able to confirm this) the likely culprit is either air flow/temperature (changing the exhaust will help determine this) or timing (I’ve no reason to suspect that the ECU timing is incorrect since it’s not been re-programmed since the car was running well and producing 330 hp). So I think it’s a mechanical problem (unless one of the sensors to the ECU is malfunctioning, but if I get the data logger setup then I should be able to check this).
Determine amount of offset required to prevent front wheels from fouling suspension bars on full steering lock; I’ll have some wheel spacers made front and back (additional 10 mm would probably solve the problem?) once I know the required offset.
Fit new pin in passenger’s side door hinge. The old one has fallen out and now the door makes a loud cracking noise when opened due to the spring force in the hinge.
Check the clutch… the position that the clutch is engaging feels a bit high on the clutch pedal travel (i.e. the clutch pedal is almost fully out before the clutch feels to fully engage). This may be caused by the steep ramp I have to drive up in order to get the park out of the garage where I have the car parked?

If all this is sorted then the car should be running great, plus I can start getting some engine data to play with and use to focus my future upgrading efforts. Plus, once I install the accelerometers then I can get some road dyno results instead of having to go to the dyno all the time.

New exhaust is coming...

2007-06-21T12:06:00.000+02:00

Apologies again for not writing for so long... been away on business and then took a short holiday. However, I did manage to order a new mid section exhaust from Larini before heading off on my travels, which should arrive at the garage in the next week or so.

Before playing with the cooling, I want to get the car running how I think it should be with the modification that I've carried out to date. I've also spent a bit of time reading back through this blog and seeing how the car used to perform and I've come to the conclusion that it should be performing better than it actually is at present. That's what prompted the decision to change out the mid section exhaust (coupled with me getting a bonus from work)... I've long suspected one of my cats to be plugged, so changing out the mid section will show whether I'm right or not. The reason I think this is that the car simply doesn't seem to be flowing air at high revs. I know that it's not on the inlet side since the car is running much less losses on the inlet side than a stock car and I know the turbos are in good shape. So the restrictions have to be either on the headers or in the exhaust.

Alternatively, there's something amiss with the timing of the car... and this is something that I'll also have checked out when I take the car to the garage to get the exhaust fitted and to have a few cosmetic maintenance done to the car (changing the bumpers and rolling out a coupe of dents). I'll see if I can also get the data logger installed at the same time.

In the meantime, I've been seeing a few more Maserati around the last couple of weeks. There was a nice looking dark grey Ghibli GT in Den Haag last Friday which looked like the springs had been changed out for lower ones. I also saw a nice 3200 GT in Barcelona a couple of days ago, dark blue with beige leather, exactly what I'm looking for! There's also a silver Ghibli GT that parks outside the royal stables in Den Haag that I see pretty regularly... I think the Ghibli looks good in silver. A couple of weeks ago I also saw a youngish couple drive past in a dark blue Ghibli (again, with what appeared to be shorter springs), again in Den Haag. Seems there's more and more of them around!

Maserati 3200 GT with Gull-Wing Doors?

2007-05-20T22:33:00.000+02:00

I was just checking the second hand Maseratis for sale and came across this...

Have to say, I've not seen this before and can't think of a reason why someone would want to do it, but it certainly is unique!

Intercoolers

2007-05-19T17:23:00.000+02:00

I've been doing a bit of research on intercoolers having recently found out a couple of things.

First was from Buddy at Wereld Auto who informed me that intercoolers from a VW Golf mark IV TDi will fit on the Ghibli, although the one manifold has to be removed and a new one constructed and welded on its place. The good thing about this solution is that it's cheap (these intercoolers can be purchased on ebay for less than €100) and they offer good performance since they're twice the thickness of standard Ghibli units. However, I don't like the idea of having to modify them.

The second option was hinted to me by Jorrit at Auto Forza. He informed me that the intercoolers on the V8 engined Quatroporte is about 30% thicker than the units on the V6 cars. I then happened to stumble upon a picture of a 3200 GT being sold for parts and noticed the intercooler... the location is identical to that of the Ghibli and Quatroporte and the configuration of the ports looked the same.

So I wrote to EuroSpares and enquired as to whether they had any second hand 3200 GT intercoolers and if they could check whether they fitted a Ghibli. They wrote back to inform me that they'd been informed from the factory that the Ghibli intercoolers will fit the 3200 GT (wrong way 'round but by definition, the 3200 GT intercoolers must fit the Ghibli (although the ducting may require a bit of modification)).

Above is the parts schematic from the 3200 GT. Compare the size of the intercoolers with those for the Ghibli in the schematic below.

So I'm tempted to try and source some 3200 GT intercoolers and get Jorrit to try fitting them when he's fitting my new bumber (when it arrives... it's been on order from the factory for about 2 months now!).

As usual... I'll keep you posted of any updates.

Maserati Ghibli V8

2007-05-18T18:03:00.000+02:00

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!

ECU Upgrade

2007-05-11T14:06:00.000+02:00

Following a lead from Jarle in Norway, I started to investigate Kronenburg Management Systems as an option for upgrading the engine management system on my Ghibli to overcome the limitations of the OEM system installed by Maserati.

The Magnetti Marelli system installed by Maserati is very old compared with today's technology. To put it into context, this system was installed in Ford Sierra Cosworth cars back in the late eighties and early ninetees. The clock speed for this system is around 4MHz. Compare this to a modern laptop or desktop computer, which runs with a clock speed an order of magnitude quicker at 4GHz. In fact, you'd be luck to find a microprocessor that runs less than a hundred times quicker than that utilised in the OEM engine management system.

The effect of this is that the engine management system currently installed in my Ghibli makes significantly less decisions per second than the systems installed on typical modern street cars. Things happen and change very quickly in a car engine, particularly when it's reving at 7000rpm. That's over 100 revolutions of the crank every second, which is 25 detonations per second per cylinder.

The way an engine management system works is by taking a snapshot of the engine, which means recording the values of certain engine parameters at a moment in time by reading the output signals being sent from the various sensors located around the engine. The key sensors on the Ghibli are the inlet air temperature and the inlet air pressure for example. In order for the engine management to make decisions, it needs some reference data. This reference data comes in the form of look-up tables, which is just how people used to make complicated calculations in the days before electronic calculators. These are called maps.

A 2 dimensional map allows you to look up an answer if you know two numbers. Let's say that the inlet temperature is listed across the top row of the look-up table and the inlet pressure is listed along the left column of the table, the answer can be found by drawing a line down from the top inlet temperature value and a line across from the left inlet pressure value. Where the two lines cross is where the answer lies.

The answer tells the engine management system to perform a certain task. However, this answer is only applicable to the moment in time when the two input values were recorded, so if the system is too slow, by the time it carries out the response, it will no longer be applicable... a delayed response.

If there are more sensors, then the management system needs more look-up tables in order to know what decision to make, which takes more time. Also, the decision may require more than one response... for example the amount of fuel that is required and the time at which to ignite the fuel may need to be adjusted. Each additional response takes additional time.

My point here is that the quicker the management system can make decisions and respond, the more effective it is. In the Ghibli, it's obvious that the speed of the engine management system is not optimal, simply by virtue of the fact that TWO management systems are required, one to control the amount of fuel being injected and one to control when the fuel is ignited. So even when the Ghibli was being manufactured, it seems to have been recognised that processing speed was a limiting factor. Therefore, increasing processing speed should have a significant effect on the performance of the engine.

The next issue with the OEM management system is its lack of diagnostic capability. The only real way of determining if the system is making the right decisions is by measuring the performance of the engine, either by having a feel for the car or by sitting it on a dyno. The system does not have an easy way of monitoring what decisions are being made, except by taking the car to a specialist who can tap into the system and monitor what it is doing, which requires a degree of skill, technical knowledge and the appropriate equipment.

Modern management systems however offer a convenient way of monitoring what is happening. They generally have a convenient port into which you can plug a computer and with special software, you can record and review what decisions are being made.

Finally, if you recognise that sub-optimal decisions are being made, you need to be able to change the decision making process, which generally means altering the look-up tables or maps. Again, on the OEM management system, this is not a trivial thing to do and requires removal of the system and some special hardware to reprogramme the memory chips on which the data is stored. Also, the way this data is stored is not very user friendly, as it is stored in a way that is convenient for the microprocessor to read and not the car owner.

The beauty of a modern system is that all these things are possible. With modern software, you programme the data in a form that is easy to understand (using decimal numbers instead of hexidecimal or even binary code required for older systems) using a laptop computer. You can also record data from the engine, review it at a leisurely pace, determine what changes you want to make, update the look-up tables and see straight away the results... without having to go to a chip-tuner!

So, after contacting Van Kronenburg and discovering that they're a Dutch firm (much to my delight, since it means that they're local), I was a bit downheartened that I never heard back from them and it is then that I ordered the PLX Devices R-500 datalogger. However, I subsequently received an email from Buddy at Wereld Auto who informed me that he had been forwarded my enquiry from Van Kronenburg. Buddy is located pretty close to where I live (about a half hour drive) and can install and setup the KMS system on my Ghibli.

Above is a picture of the hardware which would replace the two OEM ECUs. He's given me a quote for fitting the system and I'm going to see if I can integrate the PLX R-500 into the installation to give me realtime feedback on the road. I've a feeling that the lambda probe that came with the R-500 is the same as that utilised by the KMS (a Bosch wideband probe) and I'll also see if I can integrate the Exhaust Gas Temperature (EGT) probe into the KMS, with maybe some feedback to prevent the exhaust gasses getting too hot and damaging the turbos.

The KMS can also control boost pressure, although I'm uncertain if it can tie into the TurboSmart solenoid valve. This would unfortunately make my E-Boost redundant, but I think the KMS would offer greater control over boost pressure with the added advantage of being able to tie in boost pressure maps with fueling and engine load.

I'm waiting to hear back from Buddy with answers to a couple more questions that I have, but if the price is right then I think I might go along with this option. The KMS is certainly much cheaper than MoTec and I like the idea of it being local, since if it stops working then I can go 'round the manufacturer personally to get them to sort it out!

Also, Buddy appears to have worked on a number of Maseratis, including a Ghibli fitted with a V8 engine from a Quatroporte in which the owner wanted the KMS system fitting. He also told me something interesting about the intercoolers from a Golf Mk4 TDi...

Ghibli prices on the up

2007-05-11T13:39:00.000+02:00

I received an email recently from a Ghibli owner in France who had sold his MY93 car and was looking to purchase another Ghibli here in the Netherlands. He informed me that Ghibli's are relatively uncommon in France and as a result, the trend in prices had bottomed out and were now on the up.

This is probably spurred on by the recent introduction of the new Maserati GranTurismo and the ongoing success of the Quatroporte raising the profile and perceived value of the Maserati brand. The result is that more people are becoming aware of the Maserati brand and are now considering Maserati as a viable option. Unable to afford the high prices of the new cars, people start to look at second hand purchases, increasing market demand and hiking up prices.

So I just had a quick look on AutoTrader's Dutch website and indeed, although you can pick up an older Ghibli for a pretty low price (this red MY93 Ghibli (with interesting graphite coloured wheels that have obviously been painted) can be picked up for about €11,000), general prices seem to have remained at least stationary since last year and for more recent versions of the car they do indeed seem to be increasing (this dark blue MY99 Ghibli is listed at €22,000)!

It would therefore appear that now is a good time to purchase a Ghibli and that the car is set to become a classic!

Boost contoller sensitivity

2007-05-07T19:43:00.000+02:00

The last few drives I've been playing with the boost controller sensitivity setting. It was set to 20 (not that this means anything since it's application specific), so I tried increasing it to 30 (although I was a bit weary since this is quite a big step).

I drove to Amsterdam on Saturday evening so got a good opportunity to load up the engine on full boost on the A4, keeping a close eye on the TomTom for cameras. I noticed that sustaining full boost gave the tell tale signs of a too high sensitivity setting, since the pressure gauge needle "wobbled". Before switching off the engine when I arrived at the first port of call, I quickly checked the maximum boost attained during my journey (my boost controller records the highest achieved boost level) and noticed it was high at 1.26 bar.

On one occassion during the drive I noticed a distinct hesitation during accelleration at maximum boost. It lasted a fraction of a second and I'm pretty sure that it was the ECU cutting the fuel supply to the engine after detecting a condition that it considered a bit on the extreme side.

While driving, the boost seemed to be responding very quickly to the throttle, which was nice. However, the wobble at full boost and the pressure spike are not really sustainable if I want longevity from my engine. Therefore, I reduced the sensitivity down to 25 before my next drive. This time, I no longer observed the wobbling needle at full boost, although when I checked the maximum attained boost level at the end of the drive it was still a bit high, indicating that the car was over boosting, I think in the lower gears where the revs ramp up quickly. I've therefore trimmed a little more off the sensitivity to prevent the spike a little, down to a setting of 23.

I very much doubt that this will have an impact on my ultimate power rating from the car, but soon I will be able to get a better idea since my PLX Device R-500 data logger arrived today! I'm not exactly sure when I'll get to install it and will probably have to do so over a few weeks (after first buying a solderer... I've not done any soldering since I was at school so I'm a little anxious about tapping into the car's wiring). I'm looking forward to seeing the data though... should give quite an insight into what's happening with the car...

Chasing the performance gap

2007-04-29T21:28:00.000+02:00

I've been thinking some more about the strange performance that I've been getting from my car. I had another read throught the manual that came with the E-Boost boost controller and figured that I might not have the sensitivity set up correct, so I'm slowly increasing it each time I drive the car until I notice some "wobble" on the boost pressure, at which point I'll knock the sensitivity back a little.

It could be that the boost controller is not responding quick enough with the wastegate control to maintain effective operation of the turbos, but I doubt this since I'd expect to see the boost pressure drop off in this scenario. But I'll try adjusting it nonetheless.

To see if my modifications make and change to performance, I've ordered a G-Meter to do some on the road diagnosis. Hopefully this should arrive in the next couple of weeks and I won't have to make frequent trips to Rica anymore.

I also had a look in the engine compartment yesterday, seeing if there would be space for charge coolers or increasing the size of the intercoolers. Looks like there's a couple of options that I could persue... including something interesting I read about candle wax... But whilst looking I noticed that the hose to the left intercooler has deteriorated quite badly with some nasty crack in the ninety degree elbow. It could be leaking, so I'll ask Jorrit to change it out when I next see him.

Ghibli versus BMW M3

2007-04-20T16:11:00.000+02:00

I was sent this article a while back from Jarle in Norway, but never got around to posting it... until now!

Click on it to make it bigger.

Latest dyno results

2007-04-20T14:30:00.000+02:00

I finally returned to Rica Engineering yesterday to get my car back on the dyno to see how it's performing. If you recall, I have previously mentioned that the car feels to be driving well, with good mid-range torque. Well, here's the results (appologies for the faint colours... seems the printer at Rica is running out of toner), which you can enlarge by clicking on the picture:

To be frank, I was a little disappointed with the results. The good news is that, as I suspected, the mid-range torque has improved significantly since the last time I was at the dyno, with power and torque shifting down the rev range and maximum torque now accessible at 4100rpm (where before it was at 5000rpm). This performance correlates directly with the set up of the boost controller, with the boost limit of 1.20 bar achieved at 4100rpm and held steady to the rev limit at 7200rpm.

But what happens after this is a little odd and I'm finding it difficult to determine what is causing it. From 4000rpm onwards, the rate of increase in engine power drops significantly and the torque curve drops away. The result is that the maximum engine power is 30hp less than it was previously, peaking at just under 300hp, where in the past I've had it running at just under 330hp.

I asked Roel at Rica to plot the air/fuel ratio, since I know from the last time I visited them that the mixture was running a bit rich. Indeed, at high revs the ratio was running below 0.8, so after a bit of convincing, I got him to lean it out a little. As you can see from the chart, the ratio is now maintained above 0.8 throughout the high rev range, but unfortunately this made no significant difference to the curves. As a side note, Roel seems reluctant to run the mixture any leaner than this, preferring to err on the side of caution and keep the mixture slightly rich so as not to over stress the engine and to help cooling a little at high revs.

I discussed the curves with Roel and it was his opinion that either the exhaust or the inlet temperature are constraining performance. I've given this some thought overnight and I'm not convinced.

On Enrico's pages there's a chart of a stock Ghibli torque and power curve (the torque is in different units, but just multiply by 10 to get approximate Nm values) which I've attached above. On these curves, there's no sudden change in gradient that I'm seeing on my curves. There seems to be a bit more inertia with my turbos spooling up too... mine have a bit more lag, but once they start spooling up they do so much quicker than the stock ones appear to do.

So, things are looking ok up to 4100rpm. At this stage, the boost controller opens up the wastegates and starts bypassing the compressors and suddenly there's a drop in the rate of power increase and a drop in torque. On the stock curves, the torque stays flat until about 5000rpm and on the Ghibli Cup, this is extended further to 6000rpm with more efficient bearings, as illustrated below.

I'd expect my results to be more akin to the Ghibli Cup ones, since my turbos have roller bearings and are "geared" for greater flowrates and should therefore be more efficient with higher revs. I also have a sports mufflers fitted which should flow better with high revs over the stock car.

For reference, here's an old dyno chart.

You can see that the car used to spool up much slower, which has been rectified by installing a free flowing inlet system and optimising the boost controller settings. However, the car used to produce considerably more power at the top end?

I don't think the inlet temperature can be the cause for the change since nothing has changed that could have increased the inlet temperature unless the efficieny of the intercoolers has changed since last time, which is unlikely. There may be a problem with the exhaust since I know one of the cats is not working and may be causing a restriction? But then I'd expect this to effect performance through the entire rev range, not just from 4000rpm and above?

I was thinking that it was maybe the timing that is out, but this hasn't been changed since the last dyno run. So I'm confused now to explain the difference. Any ideas?

Zagato's Maserati GS

2007-04-18T12:10:00.000+02:00

I received an email from Enrico this week with pictures of Zagato's concept Maserati GS with the following text:

"Fashionable Italian custom car builder Zagato, which is based in Milan, is to unveil a dazzling two-seater at the Concours d'Elegance Villa d'Este.

The Maserati GS by Zagato is set to be a real showstopper.

It is based on the Maserati GranSport Spyder but is about 25cm shorter.

According to Zagato the GS has "excellent handling and stability on curves, with extraordinary torsional rigidity".

The car is striking with its all-aluminum bodywork and prominent logos: the trident on the bonnet and the Z on the wing.

Zagato said the vehicle was commissioned by Italian entrepreneur Paolo Boffi. The company said it proposed a vehicle "that evoked the historical Maserati A6 G Zagato of 1954."

I read in a magazine article the other week an interview with Maserati's chief designer, who hinted that Maserati were going to releas a third car in their line up which would be of a more sporting nature, to complement the GranTourismo and the executive Quatroporte. Could this be it?

It's certainly a stunning looking car, with a nice blend of creases and curves, but it doesn't sit well with the current family styling shared by the Pininfarina designed GranTourismo and Quatroporte. My guess is that the third car will come from Pininfarina, since they seem to have forged a bit of a relationship with Maserati of late, with the two current cars and also with last year's concept Birdcage 75th.

Leather Care

2007-04-18T10:08:00.000+02:00

Following some advice I received from a fellow Maserati enthusiast, I decided to perform some maintenance on the interior of my Ghibli at the weekend (plus it was a good excuse to get outside and enjoy the sun!).

Last week I purchased some AutoGlym Leather Care cream (there's a local AutoGlym stockist and if it's good enough for the British Royals, then it's good enough for me!). I was a bit hesitant, since the interior of my car has been pretty well maintained and is not exposed to heavy use or to prolonged exposure to ultra-violet light. However, I soon realised that after 15 years the leather had dried out considerably and was sucking up the cream as I applied it liberally throughout the interior of the car. It also drove home the abundent amount of leather that is utilised in the interior of the Ghibli... it took me a good couple of hours to treat all the leather surfaces in the car!

Overall, I was happy with the results. There's not a big impact on the appearance of the leather, but it certainly feels much better, leaving a much smoother surface texture!

The manufacturer recommends re-applying the cream every two months. I think this is a bit overkill and will probably do it once a year instead. It was a pleasant way to spend a couple of hours though... it's doing things like this that really help you appreciate and acquire a better general understanding and feel for the car.

Record sales for Maserati at AutoRAI

2007-04-15T12:21:00.000+02:00

My wife was browsing through the Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf and spotted a short report on Maserati, reporting that they sold thirty-two cars at the motorshow this year, twenty-nine of the new GranTurismos and three Quatroportes.

Looks like the future's looking rosy for Maserati!

Jonny's Ghibli is on the map!

2007-04-10T11:27:00.000+02:00

I noticed that the Maserati community has started tracking the loction of its car owners on the internet, so I couldn't resist adding my car to the list.

Why not add yours!

Ghibli nice and clean

2007-04-09T22:01:00.000+02:00

Since moving house last year, I have to admit that I've neglected the Ghibli a little. Well, today was a holiday, so I took the opportunity to give the car a wash. It certainly needed it... I was pretty suprised how quick the water in the bucket turned black. But it was well worth the effort... it brought a smile to my face to see the car looking so good... the car's coming up to it's 15th birthday this year and the car is still on its original paint, but it still has a nice deep shine. In fact, one elderly gentleman cycled past and commented that it looked as good as new!

Here's a picture...

To dry the car off a little before putting it back in the garage, I went for a quick drive (well, it was a good excuse to go for a quick drive... I'm really enjoying driving the car at the moment since it's running really well since its 60k service). On the way I drove past another Ghibli driver in a silver GT. Needless to say, when I gave him a flash of my lights he responded with an enthusiastic wave... It's great being a member of the Maserati community!

Anyway, I'm getting some new bolts for the wheels tomorrow (longer ones on the front and maybe some locking bolts all around to stop the temptation for anyone to steal them) and in a week or two I'll be getting new bumpers and the bumps rolled out. So plenty to keep me busy for a few weeks...

Amsterdam AutoRAI

2007-04-08T23:39:00.000+02:00

Of course, there were some other cars at the Amsterdam AutoRAI motorshow apart from the Granturismo, such as the oh so pretty Alfa 8C Spider pictured below, which the soft top version of probably my favourite modern production car.

I've uploaded some pictures of non-Maserati cars (including the lovely Alfa) which you can view below. I should take this opportunity to thank my lovely wife for getting me a free ticket to the show, since I probably wouldn't have gone otherwise (instead putting the money in the piggy bank for either a new GranTurismo or an Alfa 8C, but most likely the former since the Alfa is limited edition and I think they're already sold out).

AutoRAI

Enjoy the pictures!

Maserati at the AutoRAI

2007-04-07T15:40:00.000+02:00

Well, I managed to get onto the Maserati stand at the Amsterdam AutoRAI... rather easily in the end. I asked if I could enter the stand and was told it was by invitation only. So I told them that I'd been invited the Geneva show but couldn't make it and they let me straight on!

I'm glad I did... since the GranTurismo is far nicer in the flesh than it looks on the pictures! Maserati have come a long way in build quality and the car looked and felt very solid and well put together. The car is a little larger than I anticipated, much wider than my Ghibli and certainly a lot longer. I think the majority of this extra length is at the front of the car, with that very long bonnet. The front wheels are set very far forward, leaving very little overhang at the front of the car.

Inside, there's undoubtedly more space than in the Ghibli, but not as much as you'd be led to believe from press articles. Since I'm pretty tall at 1.99m, I had to have the seat all the way back, which only left 15cm of so behind the driver's seat and the rear paseenger seat. Still, that's 15cm more than in my Ghibli, where the drivers seat is right up against the rear passenger seat!

When I first saw pictures of the new Maserati, I was a little uncertain as to whether I liked it. I left the AutoRAI with good impressions of the car though and if I had the money I'd certainly be considering getting one. It's a class above a Porsche 911 and offers much more value... it's an exclusive brand and won't fail to turn heads when driving down the street. I'd love to have heard the engine... will maybe have to pay a visit to the dealer just for that I think.

Anyway, as promised, here's some exclusive pictures of the car!

Maserati GranTurismo

Bumpers Ordered

2007-04-05T10:36:00.000+02:00

I phoned Jorrit at Auto Forza a couple of days ago and arranged for him to order me some new bumpers. So as soon as they arrive I'll book the car in and get the bumpers replaced and have a couple of dents rolled out of the body. The car will then be looking as good as new, so I'll be able to post a few more more pictures, hopefully within a couple of weeks time.

In the meantime, I've been looking again at installing a data logger on the Ghibli, probably PLX Devices R-500 unit, pictured below.

I'd like to tie this into some of the Ghibli's electrical devices so that I can get a snapshot of the car's current performance so that I can monitor it and get an early indication of when things are not running smoothly. I'd also like to use the data as a reference for making future alterations to the car, in order to gaugue more accurately the impact that they're having on the performance of the car.

However, I need to find some "current thief" devices that I can use to clamp onto existing electical lines in order to prevent having to break the insulation on these wires to tap into the electrical signals. So I'm doing some research on this... but if anyone has any experience on this I'd love to hear from you!

AutoRAI

2007-04-03T12:43:00.000+02:00

Appologies for not writing for so long! Things have been a bit hectic and I was away on holiday for a couple of weeks.

The bad news is that I missed the Geneva motor show and the unveiling of the new GranTurismo last month. The good news is that it looks like I'm off to the AutoRAI in Amsterdam this weekend, so I'll take my camera along and see if I can get some good pictures of the new car to post here. Assuming that Maserati will let me on their stand that is... I've written to them asking for access, but I've not heard anything back yet. So I'm hoping that if I take my keys along with me that they'll see that I'm an owner and let me in!

I have managed to drive the Ghibli since my last posting. It's running well, but there's a couple of things that I need to get sorted over the next month or two. First of all... the bumpers still need replacing. Might just give Jorrit a call and ask him to sort it all out, including rolling out a couple of dents.

Also, the pin that sits in the hinge mechanism of the door on the passenger side of the car has fallen out, which means that the door makes a lound crack/bang noise when it is opened. It's not causing any damage, but it worries me so I need to get that sorted.

And I stil need to get some new bolts for my front wheels. The current ones are a bit too short and are on the limit with only a couple of threads (the minimum amount) holding the wheels to the hub. Assuming that the local wheel dealers are open on Friday (since it's Easter holidays), I'll try and get this sorted then.

In the meantime, one of my friends did make it to the Geneva show and managed to get a few pictures of the new car, which I've attached below (thanks Martin).

He also got a picture of what is probably my favourite car at the moment, the Alfa 8C (although he seemed more intent on photographing the ladies on the stands rather than the cars).

I actually saw the concept of this car unveiled at the Frankfurt motorshow a couple of years ago (a deep red colour) and fell in love with it then... I have a picture of it somewhere that I'll have to try and dig out.

Maserati GranTurismo

2007-02-20T13:21:00.000+01:00

It's official! Maserati are to exhibit their new car at the Geneva Motor Show.

I'm gutted that I won't be able to go the show!

New Maserati

2007-02-19T14:52:00.000+01:00

I received an email the other day from Maserati inviting me to the Geneva motorshow. The email indicated that Maserati will be revealing a new car at the show. I also received these two pictures from a friend of mine illustrating a Maserati concept car.

Could this be the new car? Unfortunately I will be on holiday in March so won't be able to visit the show to find out... will keep my eye on the press though!

Happy Birthday!

2007-02-19T14:33:00.000+01:00

Today is my birthday and what a fantastic present I received from my wife... she's organised a drive for me in a Lamborghini Gallardo!

I just need to organise a date and I'll be sure to post my driving impressions...

More Blow Off Valves

2007-02-14T14:22:00.000+01:00

It's nice to see that my blow off valves are being adopted by other Ghibli owners. Here's a picture of another Ghibli with the valves fitted, this time by another owner (Mark) in the Netherlands and fitted by Jorrit at Auto Forza.

Mark seems pretty happy with them, particularly with the distinctive noise!

If anyone else is interested in fitting these valves then drop me an email and I'll be more than happy to give you the details!

Updated Fuel Economy

2007-02-13T11:29:00.000+01:00

I've updated the fuel efficiency graph for the Ghibli... economy has gone down a little, which I suspect is a direct result of the intake system I fitted and a heavy throttle foot, which looking at the dates seems to tie together.

So I'm currently getting just over 7 km/liter, which according to this convertor is just shy of 20 mpg (British), or 16.6 mpg (US). That's pretty poor from a 2.0 liter engine, but good fun though!

Brakes still for sale!

2007-02-12T11:02:00.000+01:00

Unfortunately, no one was interested in my brakes, so they're still for sale if anyone is interested.

They're currently boxed up and tucked away in my cellar, so if you're after a set then just drop me a line.

Brakes for sale!

2006-12-29T13:57:00.000+01:00

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

2006-12-28T16:19:00.000+01:00

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

2006-12-28T10:59:00.000+01:00

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...

2006-12-17T12:20:00.000+01:00

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!

2006-12-10T14:56:00.000+01:00

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?

2006-12-10T14:30:00.000+01:00

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!

2006-12-05T15:38:00.000+01:00

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

2006-12-05T14:12:00.000+01:00

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

2006-11-17T10:56:00.001+01:00

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

2006-11-10T15:51:00.000+01:00

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?

2006-11-06T09:22:00.000+01:00

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

2006-11-05T14:39:00.000+01:00

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

2006-11-04T12:32:00.000+01:00

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

2006-11-03T14:58:00.000+01:00

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

2006-11-03T10:46:00.000+01:00

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

2006-11-01T10:22:00.001+01:00

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!

2006-10-25T09:33:00.000+02:00

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

2006-10-25T09:17:00.000+02:00

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

2006-10-05T14:37:00.000+02:00

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?

2006-09-13T02:01:00.000+02:00

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

2006-09-05T17:20:00.001+02:00

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

2006-09-05T09:52:00.000+02:00

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

2006-09-04T11:45:00.000+02:00

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).

How's your German?

2006-08-29T14:07:00.000+02:00

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

2006-08-29T12:15:00.000+02:00

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

2006-08-28T09:31:00.000+02:00

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

2006-08-25T11:45:00.000+02:00

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

2006-08-25T10:09:00.000+02:00

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!

2006-08-24T10:26:00.000+02:00

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

2006-08-24T09:05:00.000+02:00

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

2006-08-22T17:47:00.000+02:00

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...

2006-08-22T14:41:00.000+02:00

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

2006-08-22T09:39:00.000+02:00

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

2006-08-21T22:02:00.000+02:00

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

2006-08-18T12:04:00.000+02:00

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...

2006-08-17T17:17:00.000+02:00

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?

2006-08-17T10:21:00.000+02:00

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

2006-08-15T17:36:00.000+02:00

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

2006-08-14T15:55:00.000+02:00

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...