Heard back from my guy yesterday afternoon. So this is the status so far. The vacuum is for idling speed only, as pointed out earlier - as soon as you touch the throttle, the microswitch is deactivated and the retard provided by the solenoid controller via vacuum line cut off. Since we had bypassed mine (the solenoid was acting flaky), I was in fact retarding the timing at all speeds/rpms. Not good. The vacuum provides retard only, there is no vacuum advance on this system, only dodgy Italian-English translations that leave a lot to the imagination, lol. The vacuum retard takes the spark from +6-7 degrees advance to -4 degrees, meaning approx -10 degrees total retard from the fixed advanced point. He concurred with the group here that it's just as well to plug it and deactivate it, since it only works at idle, is only for emissions, and doesn't really help. So that's been taken out of the equation and disabled. Now of course, with timing set as per factory spec, the car overheats again :-/. He did find several clues surrounding that mystery as well. First, the wrong radiator cap was fitted, one that did not build correct pressure nor open to the secondary overflow tank correctly. Meaning a lower boiling point (ambient pressure instead of higher), and an inoperative overflow system. A new (correct) radiator cap and that's fixed. The car still overheats, in the sense that the red "Temp" light comes on when idling for long periods of time. He finds it odd that the temp gauge shows 90-95C, but the light comes on anyway, and says it should be good up to 105-110C before I see a warning light. His theory is that there may be two sensors - one for the gauge and another for the light, and says I should trust the gauge and ignore the light, at least for now until we find out what's going on. Since he changed the timing again (my crude attempts earlier resulted in 20 degrees of advance, far too much), I have to go back and tune the airflow, idle and air/fuel mixtures on the carbs again. I'm beginning to get pretty good at that ;-). In the event the engine is running lean, fattening up the mix a little could certainly help with the overheating as well. We'll see, I won't have time to look at it until next week at the earliest. I'm not 100% sure, but I'm leaning towards removing the metal caps covering the idle mixture screws as it's a major PITA getting in there with a screwdriver to adjust them with the caps in place. There were a few other items as well, but they belong in a separate post.
I can provide some input regarding the temperature indications. As your mechanic suspects, there are two circuits. One for the light and the other for the gauge. The temperature sending unit located just above the thermostat controls both of those circuits and is very expensive. You'll see two wires going to the sending unit. One wire has a smaller connector on it than the other. If you unplug and ground the wire with the large connector the gauge will pin full scale and if you ground the small one the light will come on. Maybe the wires got swapped? or its a bad sending unit. Tony
The second pass came in and it fits. The first pass would not seat far enough down on the shaft to get the washer and clip on. I've installed this one in my car and it fits perfectly and works with the right amount of friction - it isn't hard to move, but holds in place well. Will is uploading the pattern to Shapeways and will upload the right side soon after. He also noticed that they have just now added full color to the options, so we might be able to find a match for the original color and avoid painting. You can search for Quattroporte on Shapeways.com. He has also started working on the crank attachment. Image Unavailable, Please Login
That's awesome! Looking forward to trying it out, hopefully in color! This is turning out really well, it's amazing what can be done these days. Thanks again.
I spoke too soon about the color option. It seems Shapeways has some bugs to work out so for now they're only allowing "pilot designers" to use it. Will has signed up to be designated as one. Also, for some reason they don't offer the polish option with "full color". For a while yet, it will probably still be better to use paint. In the meantime, you can now order a left or right one in white (or bright red, or...).
The important thing is that now we've finally cured the drooping sun visor issue (I think, need to actually test it and see!). A little paint to make it match isn't a big deal...
There's still the slop in the horizontal pivot on mine. I once saw a picture on this forum of the visor disassembled, but I'll have to find it again. I cannot guess how they get it apart!
I finally got around to checking the timing on the car. Once I found the marks and cleaned them off using steel wool and a pencil they were easy to read. First pic. My timing seems to be a bit off. It lands on the circled line just before the "P" in the second photo. According to the book on page III-4 it looks like it's supposed to be between 9 and 10 degrees BTDC. I was by myself so I couldn't try to turn the distributor but it was nice to be able to finally check it. Tony Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login
I finally found the post with the visor opened up - it was your (QP3) post 481! How did you do that? Does it just pop apart? I'm afraid to tweak on it too much. Mitchell, if the droop is caused by a broken mount, the new one Will designed should fix it (more below), but if it's due to the friction clamp being loose on the horizontal part of the shaft, like it is on mine, then some other fix is needed. BTW, Will asked me just today if the clips ever broke - I think he meant the catch mounted to the header panel, but I see in post 481 that the clip on the visor can break, too. He's willing to scan those bits if they're needed. I noticed in #481 that the back sides of the plastic bits seemed to be a yellowish white. Were those parts painted at the factory? My mount seems to have been molded from tan plastic. If you need the plastic mount, you should be able to get it from Shapeways.com now. Search for Quattroporte. We have definitely not rigorously tested this thing (I mounted it in my car and moved it back and forth a few times) but it seems to be pretty tough. If you want to risk about $40, Shapeways will ship you one. It will need to be painted. I see Will has uploaded more pictures. Larry
is the problem. I solved mine by taking the units off another car,(4 spare cars) . I also installed a new reduction starter. $180. the shop I had work done put a rebuilt on. lasted about ten starts. still a few electrical issues. but the come and go. biggest problem, no I Phone yesterday and I was out of town. solved with a new unit last night. I am ready for another short trip after Dr. stuff and coffee stop. will go maybe 200 miles on back roads. rain forecast all week. I have all weather tires so no worry
When I rebuilt the transmission, I got an exchange torque converter. Apparently Maserati is the only manufacturer on the planet that puts timing marks on their torque converter, the replacement one had none, and it didn't occur to me to add them while I had everything apart (I didn't actually notice them on the one I removed from the car, should have inspected it closer). They look quite clear and easy to read on yours. At the risk of sounding obvious, what does "PMS" mean? (lol! we all know these gals can be temperamental...) I thought "before" would be "antiore" or similar in Italian, I'm guessing P/S mean before/after TDC? Or maybe it means "TDC"? Anyway, the mechanic set mine to 6 or 7 degrees BTDC static timing, which corresponds mostly to the manual (section 2, page 1), although we might tweak it a bit more later after I drive a bit. Your figures seem high, and I see them in the manual, but I wonder if that is actually the crankshaft/dizzy initial settings before any additional advance is dialed in? It's at any rate different from the specs given in the Service manual section on ignition (2), and those listed in the User manual. I was out at the workshop the other day and dialed in airflow and idle mixture, and by now am actually getting pretty good at it . Got all cylinders flowing 5kg/h exactly (one needed the air bypass valve opened a turn or two, the others were all fine), and balanced via the throttle linkage adjustment screws, then used the ColorTune to adjust the air/fuel mixture. This time there were only smaller adjustments needed, two cylinders were pretty rich (yellow flame), and two were quite lean (white or no flame), I managed to get a nice bunson blue across them all, and when blipping the throttle you can see it go yellow for a second before settling back to deep blue. Went for a spin around the block and finally began to feel the car is getting closer to how it's supposed to be. Power is there, torque is there, you just touch the gas and the car starts moving. The vacuum still seems a bit low compared to before, but I really have no idea where it should be. If I'm lucky it idles right on the edge between green/yellow, any acceleration at all brings it into the red (on the consumption gauge, which is actually measuring manifold vacuum). On my initial run after tuning the carbs everything sounded good on the side streets, but I had a suspicion that it was pinging on the freeway, just a slight "crumpling aluminum foil" sound coming from somewhere. I had previously filled 95 octane (91 in the US), while running on empty in the boonies, so I filled up some 98 (93) and the noise disappeared. So maybe more advance would not be a good thing, if it's on the verge of pinging. It may have just been my imagination, I'll have to go for a few more drives before I can be sure. The biggest difference is that the engine is much smoother now, vibrates less, and is noticeably quieter. I think improvements can still be made, but I'm pretty happy with how much better it is already. I plan to drive her a bit and keep an eye on my mileage, and see if there are further adjustments that can bring me down to the numbers CharlieA claims to get. Maybe an eighth of a turn leaner on all carbs or a degree more of advance would do it, but I'm going to get better acquainted with how she runs at the current settings first. Oh - no more overheating either. The temperature will rise if you sit and idle for a while, but never got above 90-95C while I was tuning the carbs, and as soon as the car started moving the temperature fell back to 70-75C, where it normally is. Definitely an improvement.
There are two sources of droop as far as I know - one is the broken visor mount post, the other is the cam/spring inside the visor. This is an educated guess, but I would hazard to say 90% of all the drooping is caused by broken plastic mounts. When we pulled mine off the car and held the visor by the metal bar, the cam held it just fine, even 34 years after it was made. We also tried to make it adjustable by drilling a small hole to fit a grub screw, but to be honest it really wasn't needed, once we figured out that the broken post was the cause of the drooping. Since most of these cars are very low mileage and have been used sparingly, I really don't think the metal cams/springs have seen enough use to be worn down. Again, just my assumption. They are not at all easy to open, and even harder to close! They definitely do not just pop apart. They are sewn together, you have to split the seam to open them. I'm lucky in that I know a very skilled guy who does this (he's a sailmaker) for a lot of classic car owners, and he's very methodical and precise. He's the one who came up with the grub screw idea for the visor cams. If the plastic clip could also be remanufactured via Shapeways, that would be great. The guy who sold me the extra pair claimed they were perfect and didn't droop. He lied :-/. And when they arrived the clip was broken, something he blamed the post for, but he had packed them so well there's not a chance anyone could break them under shipment. Oh well. We've been using the spare pair as guinea pigs to find a better solution. All of my parts are molded in a light tan color, probably closer to off-white really. I'm going to order a pair of the new mounts soon, am really looking forward to seeing how they work.
That's a bummer! I would have never thought of looking for timing marks there either. They weren't easy to read at all until I hit them with the steel wool. lol I guess PMS is a Spanish translation "Punto muerto superior". How did he set the timing without marks? I was looking on the wrong page! This book can be annoying at times. Glad to hear she's running better and no more overheating! Tony
I think I'll just let my visor droop the few degrees! It's amazing that they'd put that much labor into closing the seam. Surely there's a better way... It's good to hear that the timing fix, among other things, is clearing things up. I'm way too lazy to set timing from under the car, so I hope we can get the crank drive and timing wheel done. On that point, Will was asking if machining an external hex head on the shaft extension (rather than a square ratchet drive) was acceptable. Any thoughts?
Tony, he set the marks the old fashioned way - used a micrometer in the hole to find TDC, then actually put a mark on the torque converter, as well as chiseled a small notch on the front of the engine and put a mark on the inner pulley for 0 degree reference. I didn't ask, but think they have one of those fancy timing lights where you set the desired advance on the light and it will line it up automatically, even though you only have a 0 marking. I.e. the light itself is advanced/delayed to match whatever timing amount you want, and you just keep the indicator at 0 as you go. GLB - I agree the few degrees of sag is no problem, but the broken post results in the "hit you in the head" position, which is a PITA. As far as square vs. hex on the shaft extension, I would say whichever takes the least amount of space. I would probably use a breaker bar, which has a 1/2" square tap that sticks out to accept sockets. Also, square will accept at least 12 sided and torx style sockets, if not 6 sided ones too. Are we talking male or female fitting on the shaft extension?
I took my intake manifold off to recover a dropped nut, I am figuring I should replace the 8 round gaskets, anyone know a good source or part #?
I got mine from MIE. The part number was MIE000685. I can't find them in the listings but if you search for that number they show up.
We'd originally assumed an internal 1/2" square, but since he doesn't have a broach for his mill, the way to do that is to use a small bit to notch the corners for clearance. Works fine (he has some SPICA wrenches on Ebay that show it - we have an Alfa infestation, too!), but it probably means a slightly larger diameter shaft is needed. He'll probably use steel for this, though, so maybe it's not a problem.
Sorry - I didn't look that far. I bought these for my Bora and assumed the QP3 would be defined as "late V8" also. Wonder what they changed?
Just got off the phone with them, MIE said the correct seal set for a QP III has no part #, they had to put together a set for me. They told me that the rings in MIE000685 are slightly larger than the ones for a QP III.
I also ordered one of these - MIE#310420304, an oil drain plug gasket. After I had a mechanic change my oil (sorry , it was just too hot in Florida to climb under a car that day), I started getting an oil leak at the drain plug. The first thing I thought was that there might have been a gasket lost in the oil change process, and I even called MIE and asked if the car was supposed to have one (they said no!?!). Despite what they said, I happen to come across the part browsing their website.Hopefully this will fix my leak, as it was always bone dry under the car previous to that oil change.
