Service delays...

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

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

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...

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...

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

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:

1. Replace bumpers front and back (including re-spray).
2. Roll out dent on front left wing.
3. Roll out dent in floor in driver’s side foot well.
4. Change out cracked rubber elbow into left intercooler.
5. Fasten boost solenoid valve (the original screw has fallen out).
6. Fabricate and fit new fixing brackets for air boxes.
7. Get the car APK tested (road worthiness test).
8. Fit new exhaust.
9. 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.
10. The voltmeter still stops working so will see if it can be fixed? Maybe a faulty earth connection?
11. 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).
12. 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.
13. 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.
14. 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.