All Diablo owners - spareparts for traveling

A flashlight, fire extinguisher, usb charging cable for my phone and the phone# of a tow company I trust. My 6.0 has never let me down, but if it did I wouldn't try to fix it on the side of the road.

Here are my tips:

I've heard that the alarm/immobilizer can act up and that some owners have removed it as a precaution.

Respect the fuel gauge (its not very accurate). Once mine goes below half-full I look for a filling station.

Open the engine cover when parked if you can to cool off the engine bay.

 

My Diablo's are extremely well sorted by Steve Gleaner/Driven Exotics. I have no fear/worries about cross country (500+ miles in a day) trips. In fact I really look forward to them. Each year, in May I drive one of the Diablo's from Phoenix to Edwards Air Force Base for a show with the troops there. Sunday after the weekend with the Troops I drive from Edwards to Gilroy for Steve to do his "annual" on whichever car. Use the car for Monterey Car Week, give it back to Driven for fine tuning. In September drive from Gilroy to Vandenberg AFB for a great weekend with the troops there. Sunday of that weekend drive from Vandenberg to San Diego and put the car in storage foe 3-4 weeks until Jack Lambo's San Diego weekend. Sunday of that weekend, drive her back to Phoenix. Most important thing I carry is a detail kit to get the bugs off the front. If the car is truly well sorted, and has been driven/exercised regularly, not every 6 months, no problem. Yes as I've indicated, I put miles on the cars, that with impeccable maintenance, makes them as reliable as a Honda or Toyota. As Steve Gleaner asks, "What are you doin', saving miles for the next owner?" Drive em!!!!
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Clutch rod, unless you have the Custer upgraded one, seem quite a popular failure.

some oil - think I've only topped mine up once in 6k miles

re. fuel gauge - couldn't agree more, even though it does say you have 10 litres when the fuel warning light comes on, I still never trust it.

 

My 91,water reppelent/dry out spray for dist cap,never liked heavy rain,my 01 clutch arm/rod also my car had a big missfire,barely ran issue, was thought to be the 15k computer,but traced to bad corrosion/short in main vire harness,located on top of engine,below the cosmetic cover,very frusterating, if your car all of a sudden start running like crap, pop of the cover and check,easy temp fix,til you get back from the trip, by the way,i drove my 01 every day to work,should never have sold it,its the one that got away.

 

+1 on all of the above, my immobilizer has been acting up as of late, works great 9/10 times then try to start car with zero spark. Don't panic, just keep unlocking or disarming system it eventually disengages.

My Diablo has been solid on very very long runs, always have extra oil incase and power steering fluid, you never know when the Koni struts fail.

Fuel gauge is a guess at most times, terrible system. I fuel up whenever I get the chance.

 

Without question, a spare coil/amplifier set (early Diablos). Those are prone to failure.

Second is a spare set of underpants.....

 

LOL

 

Yes, yes... those too,

Amplifier is more important and that I keep with my Testarossa (uses same ones) coil itself is very rare to go bad.

 

In 15+ years owning a '99 roadster, only had 1 problem that totally stopped me - a "no warning" clutch slave failure. I'm in California and would drive it to Florida tomorrow if needed without a worry. At the same time, like Kevin (above), Driven Exotics also does my service and maintenance - which its due as I need a smog cert.

As far as the clutch rod that's been mentioned, I continue to believe that these only fail when the clutch is (or was) EOL. So keeping an eye on the clutch wear is more important - IMO.

-mick

 

Agree 110%. Steve has taken care of my 2 Diablo 6.0SE cars from birth...my #19 has almost 40K and my #12 13K...have driven them multiple times, multiple miles....solid cars..PERIOD.

 

Credit card for the gas and you're done!

 

A fresh or recently purchased can of fix a flat.
Leave the one from your toolkit at home.

 

Not surprising.

I do carry a small OBDII reader - just in case a code is thrown. I started doing this after I got them during massive changes in altitude (Tahoe) - which is normal reporting of dramatic fuel trim changes. Still like to know what they are if they happen. And yes, a can of fix a flat.

-mick

 

What's a coil amplifier??
Is it different from LM setup with a single coil?

 

What Is The Ignition Amplifier ? - Engine Related - Articles - Articles - Home Page

Two coils/amplifiers, one for each bank on the early diablos prior to coil on plugs. Shared part with jag v12 good to have one as a spare. Not sure what causes them to fail except they get really damn hot mounted on the coils

 

Ah okay, sometimes they are known as "ignitors".
A friend was struggling with his FI LM002 cutting out one bank, originally we thought it was ignition related problem, but it turned out the wires were out. Despite looking great, the actual condition was pretty bad. So an experimental hook up of old DD LM wires proved the point - the car ran fine, with both banks at all RPM. It seemed that his FI wires had worse/different quality of conductor wires.
So be sure to change your wires from time to time, this might help you avoid changing the ignition amplifiers.

 

I had both problems, just as you describe. In addition to new coils and amplifiers, I replaced all the connectors in the engine bay, including the coil, amps, H2O, TPS, O2, Manifold pressure, air temp, rad switches, additional air valve, etc. The connectors were all so brittle they literally disintegrated. The wires tested good, just stripped back the cooked part to fresh wire. Lots of heat in the engine bay cooks things over time.....

I am hunting a spare wiring harness when the day comes for a full rewire....
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That's a great step forward!
Luckily, Lambos don't suffer from bio/heat-degradable wiring insulation as early 90s Benzes do. That would be a nightmare to change.

 

I echo what other posters said and will add some detail. One alarm issue you might see is with the alarm system and fuel pump lock. The car has 2 fuel pumps, one for each bank, and when the alarm is on, it cuts both of them. Over time, the lockout can get stuck closed so even when you disarm, there's no fuel. On mine it happened to one engine bank so I was running on one engine bank. The cars engine is basically 2 6 cylinders bolted together so you can actually run on half the engine, the performance is just crap. If you lock/unlock the car multiple times, the jacked up lockout can free itself. That's what I did to drive the car down to the shop.

When I had the problem and described it to Steve at Driven Exotics over the phone, he knew was it was immediately and the solution was to just remove the fuel lockout completely (override it). Really, who needs it, it can just cause issues.

I'd also add I had the Custer clutch rod installed when I got the car and have never had an issue with the clutch rod because of that. The stock clutch rod is a hot mess. Just from looking at it, you can tell it tapers to a point where it will likely break eventually. You'd need an act of God to break the Custer clutch rod. I actually ordered a new Lamborghini OEM clutch rod at one point to see if the problem was fixed. It wasn't.

Oh one more. if you live near the ocean, the switch under the brake can go that tells the back brake lights to shut on and off when you push the brake. The brakes work fine but your brake lights don't light up. Dangerous to drive like that because the people behind you don't know you are slowing down when you come to a stop. Solution is to replace the switch if that happens. To drive it down to the shop to get it fixed, what I did is hook up a manual switch to turn on and off the brake lights while the foot switch was broken. The switch I used was a toggle wall light switch. When I came to a stop, I'd flip it on. When I drove off, I'd flip it off. It was ridiculous but it worked. LOL

Other than that, keep it maintained and it will run well.

 

Either replacing or upgrading the coilpack/amplifiers on the early cars.

Rad fan switch and wiring is subject to extreme heat, suggest replacing all.

Same with engine bay fuse box, gets a ton of heat and the fan relays get cooked. A few of us have rewired these

I put a computer fan under the coils triggered by a temperature switch to prevent cookage.

 

One thing I changed on the '99 Roadster is that the force of the gas struts to hold up the engine cover was too high. It can cause problems when the engine gets really hot because the gas expands and the struts can push on the engine cover too hard and eventually warp it. If you pop open the engine and look at the struts, you'll see they are right next to the engine and even closer to it on one side.

I did some calculations (which I have lost) and figured the force required to lift the hood cold and to prevent it from being too strong when the engine is hot. When the engine is cool, I now have to lift the lid by hand. It stays up. When the engine is hot, it lifts by itself. Before changing the struts out, on a hot day when the engine was hot, the hood would fly open when you opened it. This is the engine hood in the back of the car I'm talking about. I'm guessing the force of the gas struts I put in was 1/2 to 2/3 the force of the stock ones.

If you look at the engine cover, you'll see that it is a bit raised all around. That is by design to let some of the hot air out. The strut force problem only looked like a problem on the roadsters because the engine bay design is different. It never caused a problem for me, the fix was a preventative one.

I haven't had any problems overheating. I was on a drive with an Enzo once when it was really hot out and the Enzo overheated but the Diablo didn't. However, I did have to have my alternator replaced at one point. It was potentially fried due to the heat in the engine bay. It gets pretty hot in there on a hot day.

The oxygen sensors might throw an error code once in a blue moon like "cat temp low" when the engine is idling or warming up. I had all mine replaced once, seemed to help. Otherwise, a ODBII reader is your friend to clear the code.

I had to have my camshafts replaced once due to lobe wear. It may be specific to the 99s where they used some kind of coating on the cam lobes (nintinol? can't remember). Rather than replace them with stock which would have had the same problem, I had new ones cut to match the old ones.

The main car computer went bad at one point. The engine would continue to run so it could be driven but the instrument panel would go dead. Put a new one in and didn't have a problem after that.

If your brakes squeak or throw tons of dust, talk to Steve at Driven Exotics. I had my pads replaced down there years ago with a set that just doesn't throw dust or squeak.

Never had any electrical or wiring issues. One fusebox is close to the engine. There is a difference in placement and proximity between different years and different models.