HI Joe I think your right about the MOCNA list however I am not sure if its freely available. I wasnt wanting to start another thread for the list as I believe it needs to be kept in a controlled data base: A people can find it B the information can be verified. Carmine I agree its best kept in Marc's register Welcome Mark Interesting collection you have. Regards
In no way Im I suggesting that we take the info away from Marc and Registry web site . Bottom line is I think Marc needs some help. FChat is no place to store this info because we have no control over how long it will be around. When the server crashes and burns and they have no backup then what happens ? So far we have some 160 pages about the Khamsin if it was gone tomorrow anyone taken the trouble to save this info ? Cheers Mark
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Devil's advocate ... What sort of assurances are you providing? I've seen this happen half a dozen times already. There are some lists already out there. The oldest one I know of is as already mentioned originally from MOCNA. It's been morphed and turned into a few new lists several times and appeared on a couple of Yahoo Groups websites plus George Perfect's website which I believe is now gone? Ask Ivan Ruiz, I think he had a copy of it a while back. I would think he'd be happy to supply a copy of it. It had interchanges, vendors, service places etc. This is a common problem with all of the social media forum software as they don't have this capability. Yahoo Groups did have a crude one but that's not much help now either. That one allowed people to self maintain which was a curse and a blessing for obvious reasons. At least we had something! So what's your proposal? Any website can disappear overnight? End of devils advocate ...
John fantastic!!! Mark and Bob, Joe, Carmine re tech database: yes by all means as you know yours truly is not so tech minded more into history so I would welcome any help for that, thanks for your positive energy there Mark. I would suggest: lets' define the best format for some days, throw up your ideas. Then the data can certainly be put in my website which will never be a pay site I can promise you that. The site is due for a major upgrade in April or May. Right lunchtime tis illegal to be late for lunch in France you know MS
No plan thats why we all need to put our heads together and come up with one. I to have seen website disappear overnight or deleted a bunch of stuff because they needed more storage space Mark
hi john, congradulation. it looks fantastic, i hope i can one day do the same with my car. regards, armaz
http://www.maserati-rc.org/techtips.htm I can no longer log in here but it used to have a variant of that original Mocna parts list. Mocna was only a starting point for this years ago. It was added to and modified while it was associated with the Yahoo Maserati forum. Then someone deleted all the information. There was also some information from the now defunct Bora Registry regarding parts info as well. We all used to share the information quite freely back then. By now I think a pretty good case can be made for it being in the public domain.
hi mark, you are absolutely right. i had lots of difficulties finding replacement parts for my khamsin and ended up paying a lot of money for so called originals. i also support the idea with marcs page, since: regards, armaz
I do not believe George has maintained the website in a long time. Some time ago, I created a PDF of the interchange list in the fear that the information could get lost. I agree that information from any website, public or private, can disappear overnight. My website has a lot of information, especially manuals, and I do not mind if someone wants to post them in another site as backup. Only stipulation is that the website and contents must be available free of charge. If you have a brochure or manual that is not on my website then take the time to convert it to an electronic format, and make it available for others to use. If you do not have a scanner, just take the manual to an office supply store and have them convert it to PDF format. Ivan Image Unavailable, Please Login
Unfortunately George has had one or several strokes and his sports car is now a wheelchair so he has other problems than his old website which is very understandable. We communicated some weeks ago when I found the video of Jeremy Clarkson driving his K in the 1990's and he was very happy to see it again. As several of you allude to websites can disappear: cf George's problems and if for example Ivan or I had had a terminal argument with a truck on the roads of Georgia or Burgundy then some months later the automatic monthly website credit card charges would be denied and eventually his or my site would shut down automatically...as did the Bora register site. I spoke to that man (can't recall his name) and it seems he too had priorities which got rerouted....so that is the key question on which to focus our brain cells : long term presevation of data. Let's consult Italian parliament.......NOT The answer is basically an expanded version of what I do: I keep a back up device in another house 15 minutes away and back up every weekend, that way fire, theft lightning will not destroy both my computer and my back up... So everything should be put in one site as well as in a separate data storage such as www.dropbox.com with a handful of volunteers having access to keep the backup up to date and accessible in case the publc data site lapses. That is my 2 centimes... best regards, Marc
To all who are interested in the parts interchange database: 1. This seems to be a valuable endeavor and I believe we should undertake it. 2. We should not restrict it to the Khamsin, but rather begin to make it for Maserati cars in general with an eye towards expanding it even further. We will be doing this anyway for example for: . Khamsin v. Bora v. Ghibli v. QP3 engine parts; . Khamsin use of Alfa (and Fiat ?) body hardware. So we will be building a larger than Khamsin database anyway. Why not accommodate that right from the start? 3. Regarding custodianship of the authoritative master copies and back-ups: we can fix the blame/responsibility for this and assign a King/Pharoh/Inca/Czar later. From what I've heard from you guys, I nominate Ivan and Marc. From what I am aware, Ivan has gone the farthest along this road for Maserati in general and Marc has done so for Khamsin in particular. For now, if we have a freely accessible and downloadable copy available, (just being passed around here), then everyone can have it. If we all get hit by trucks, the survivor's can always get it from the USA Dept of Homeland Security, the Russian Mafia, the Israeli Secret Service, and numerous other agencies who are surely monitoring and recording all web traffic. (Too bad that newspaper in London closed shop as that would have been another source). In the longer term, something like Marc's idea certainly seems a better way to go. Note that there are well-established precedents for this in the realm of software development and "mirror sites". 4. As to the various details we can sort these out as we go along. I suggest that we start with a design for the individual part record format. So, unless someone objects, (that is to say someone whom I take seriously), I will collect my thoughts over the next few days and open a new thread under "Maserati". In it I will suggest a generic individual part record format and give some specific examples of how to populate the record from the information that is already out there. But if somebody else wants to get this going -- by all means do so. Don't wait for me. Best to all, Carmine
Have a look at something like this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ZF_transmissions I'm not at all conversant in how to set one of these up but finding someone who is might help to let us both define and control access to modifications so that it doesn't get trashed by some jerks. I'm sure there are other Wikis to look at as well. There is already some info on QPIIIs over on Maserati groups yahoo in that database.
-Carmine: It is not about Czars etc anytime that sort of wording is used egos get in the way, I was just talking to a club president yesterday who was facing big egos and when that happens it ruins everything. As far as this data consolidation matter is concerned it is not about the people, this or that person but about preserving data in a professional safe way to make sure it remains at hand. -Bob: the problem with Wikipedia is that anyone can edit it so some/quite a bit of it of it becomes questionable that is why in my humble opinion data such as parts interchage (but any technical data really) should be firstly kept in a couple of free websites and secondly stored safely in case these sites vanish. -Ivan: you missed my mention of George Perfect a couple of posts above this one: not the best news but he was in good spirits and is keeping busy: "Unfortunately George has had one or several strokes and his sports car is now a wheelchair so he has other problems than his old website which is very understandable. We communicated some weeks ago when I found the video of Jeremy Clarkson driving his K in the 1990's and he was very happy to see it again." best regards, Marc
Marc, About the "Czar", I was making a joke. Also had a few other jokes in there. Yes, generally egos equal trouble. Sorry for the misunderstanding. Regarding data preservation -- agreed. I mean only to say that we should establish a more formal method than has been in place to date. Of course, vendors such as MaseratiNet must have this already to a large degree. I'm not sure if vendors would care to lend a hand or rather prefer to keep their information to themselves as it must have cost them plenty to assemble. As an aside, I don't personally have any great expertise in these matters. My experience is primarily process plant mechanical systems design, but particularly with computer tools. Database design is not my expertise, but I've seen a few good ones (and bad ones) over the years. Mainly I have some spare time just now. Carmine
On a slight tangent I finally got around to checking the main jet size on my car over the last week. I borrowed a set of Jet guages, there a bit like feller guages only round. Interesting find, The main jet size in the hand book is 130. The size in my car was 125. After measuring the drilled out size with the guage I assumed they were 130 but I got a surprise and the measured 150. I need to explain the rational for the mod. back in my youth I changed the spec of the engine to match the Gibili and advanced the cams to 2.2 inlet and 1.9 Ex and drilled out the jets to what I thought was 130. This all happened when Australia had leaded fuel. And yes the car did perform very well in fact during a classic rally in 1992 I regulary saw 6,000 in top gear. During the restoration Australia went to unleaded petrol. I have since found the car went very well but was reluctand to rev cleanly, well back to 125 jets and the car is transformed. I did not go to 130 even though the Euro spec cars are that size, and the reason is that as I have mentioned there has been much discussion on other web sites about the concersion to leaded fuel with leaning the mixture a little more advance and and higher heat range plugs. The proof is in the driving it revs out much more cleanly. I did one other change to the engine during the build it has 45 degree ( 60 degrees originally) valve seats and tripple cut seats I would be interested in others thoughts. Cheers Graeme
As I said, I'm not familiar with how Wikipedia can be set up. I'm on another website where we do something like this and you are not allowed to alter anyone's entries but your own. So it's a group contribution effort. You get information that way but it's up to the reader to determine if it's accurate or if there are "issues" with the information. This does occur too. Such is life. A codified and blessed set of information can only come from Maserati and that's not going to be suggesting "alternatives". Who else could officially maintain such a list? What has worked before is that people point out issues with certain recommendations in the list or provide support information etc. via the forum It's a living breathing document in that regard. You'll collect a lot more information if everyone is encouraged to contribute and can do so without a central clearing authority. Just as long as they can't screw other people's stuff up. Having the information on a well know viable website where the housekeeping is done for you is much better insurance for security. I have seen data extracts for backup done as well but realistically who is going to re-populate a new software structure with the old data? If you're doing it as a hobby it's great but people lose interest, get busy or move on etc. Just some of the normal issues. Not insurmountable.
Hi Graeme One other thing that has changed also is the use of Ethanol in the fuel we all buy at the pump today. Just do a search on Google about the effects of ethanol based gas used in classic cars. The stuff is nasty Cheers Mark Image Unavailable, Please Login
It is possible to do what you describe! I'll go into some technical details to explain. You can build a custom SQL database which runs on any hosting environment with popular software like MySQL and at the same time do live replication to other systems. On top of the SQL you can run a custom web CMS application or run one of the popular open source projects which are widely used. By using an open source project as the base of the site, you can make sure the entire system is portable and expandable by everyone. Here are two examples. Use a Wiki system on top of MySQL on a single host and replicate the data accordingly. Or, use a WordPress system on top of MySQL either as a single host or as a WordPress.com MUI. There are however some things that can't be shared. For example, the ownership of a domain name can't be shared by multiple members, one would have to register the domain on his name only and if he "disappears" then you are out of luck, you would need to move the site to a new domain, but at least you never loose any data. Anyway, I don't see a problem from the technical side of things. It is all up to the individuals to do the rest.
