Back in Nederland to find Ghibli Damaged!

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!

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

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

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:

1. 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.
2. The volt meter has stopped working completely, so the wiring needs to be checked.
3. The idle needs resetting.
4. Maybe fit the new springs. I'm in two minds about this though as the ground clearance around town is good at the moment.
5. 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.
6. 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

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

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

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).