My only sighting of a two tone Bora was a non factory paintjob on a car with 1200kms in a major Belgian collection 11 years ago (it included THREE 500 Superfasts, one 5000GT, a 365GTC, an Alfa 33 Stradale, three Bizzarrinis, about 70 cars...) the funny thing is there was a Bora engine there on its own....it was ceramic coated because it had been used in a boat!
Former Bora owner here with a question: why do the Maserati V8s redline at 5500 rpm? The music starts at 5000 and is over before you know it. Do different cam grinds increase the rev range?
Yes that collection was exactly along my taste...I was there to do an article on an ultra rare Bizzarrini 1900GT Europa (12 made) and when I said we needed an open car to carry the photog for the car to car action shots I thought he would choose a an old Jeep...but he handed a set of keys to my friend who was there to help us; the keys were for a silver Ghibli spyder! My friend smiled all day and the photographer was happy as we was able to work really well from it.
Agree. Slightly different grind with a bit more duration with a small bump in compression indeed brings the redline up, but there's a bit to the job. I just had this conversation with Dimi Elgin who has done about a dozen different Maserati V8 cam grinds over the years, from small bumps to nearly full race profiles. If one were to just swap stock cams on an otherwise stock engine, you would not move the redline much due to the stock compression ratio. Measuring stock head CC and pistons shows the compression is actually only 7.75:1, if that. Bump the compression ratio to at least 10:1 and you have some great options while retaining the stock low power band, but gaining a bunch more up top with a higher redline (how high do you want to go?). It's been done before or Elgin wouldn't have all these profiles.
Not inside the collection. Only one indoors was in the private garage the 500 Superfast of Peter Sellers. Dirk de Jager was the photog, the article was in the October 2011 Classic & Sports Car issue. Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login
The admonition isn't about cams but the crankshaft. Some one here have had a better one made. But that won't improve the performance, just save then engine. I think you'd have to do the cams and the crankshaft if you were serious.
Issue of the crankshaft is that, at the time they did not know how, or did not have the tools to perfectly balance it, right? Were the crankshafts only statically and manually balanced?
I have certainly heard of that with the 5000gt engine but have not heard re the others. Can anyone expound on this?
There's a Bora owner on here who's been making his into a super Bora for a lot of years and I beleive he's had had many components in the engine redesigned. He'd be a great one to expound. If you do a bit of reading in the Bora thread you'll find him. The 4.7 has a 6K redline. One year I asked Ing. Giulio Alfieri about this but he just said to not exceed the redline. I have of course but not for long periods of time.
I always find it fascinating that the Maserati 6 cylinder engines of the 3500, Sebring and the Mistral have a harmonic damper but that the 8 cylinder engines never incorporated one. Harmonic dampers have been around for a long time so I'd would have love to be around to listen when the engineering team for the 8 cylinder engines was doing their design work and why they decided not to add a damper when they had already done so for the 6 cylinder design. If memory serves me correctly, cylinder engines are inherently smoother in operation than V-8 engines so it is a mystery to me why they passed on including a damper for the V-8. On my super engine, which is still waiting for a rather unique dry sump system which I am supposed to have before the end of this year, the new crankshaft was manufactured specifically to incorporate a damper. Time will tell if that permits a higher rpm for sustained use than the current 5500 rpm red limit. Unfortunately, I have been side tracked by another project, an Alfa Romeo 2600 Sprint , for my daughter. True to form, it too has a super engine being assembled which has suffered from parts delays due to the pandemic. However, that seems to be using up but who knows? We live in strange times.
Hi Elliot. Would you mind sharing some details of your Bora dry sump please? We have opened up the dry sump tank of my Ghibli, ostensibly to clean it thoroughly, and found that it isn’t, shall we say, the best design ever to come from Viale Ciro Menotti. Considering how best to modify it before reconstruction. best regards. Mark.
My dry sump system will be substantial different from what is in the Ghibli. The company that is going to do my dry sump plans to make the oil pan in such a way that it also included the main caps for the crankshaft. The entire assembly will be machined out of billet aluminum. A remote reservoir will be located in the engine compartment much like the Ghibli but it will designed to be completely serviceable. There is some talk about driving the dry sump pump, scavenge and pressure, with electric motors that would be control by the ECU that works the fuel injection system. The various sensors for the ECU would provide the information for driving the dry sump system based on actual engine need. All current dry sump systems I know of are run mechanically off of the crankshaft and are therefore speed controlled although there are variable displacement mechanical dry sump pumps being made currently. If the electrical system comes to pass, it would eliminate any oil pressure reliefs systems that all cars have for their oiling systems which would permit straight through oiling. I'm not sure that this will be made but I am pushing the company to give it a try. If not, the mechanical system I will get is has been designed for a couple of up coming flat out race cars that will do the 24 Hours of Le Mans which you can imagine are quite sophisticated. I'm an experiment so I have ended up at the back of the list so far. I have my fingers crossed that it will all happen before the end of the year but Covid delayed the project for more than two years and they are backlogged with other orders.
Thanks for the synopsis Elliot. That sounds really state of the art. Fingers crossed it all comes together reasonably quickly. As far as the Ghibli tank goes, the pickup is only about 3mm from the floor of the tank and therefore super efficient at sucking up any debris. It is also located really close to where the de-aerated hot oil drops back into the tank, so stands a good chance of not using the whole volume of the tank contents. In addition, it is non-serviceable as is. At the very least we will fit removable hatches. best to all. Mark.
Why? I can't think of any advantage. And the bottom workings would be obscured by the pan making it impossible to observe them during setup.
I suspect that the large diameter main bearings, and more significantly the bore-to-stroke ratio are the most significant limiting factors.
Even though I've rebuilt a few exotic Italian engines and tried to improve the beast with my 4V Biturbo motor I am in no way experienced enough or an engineer capable enough to determine such a thing. I had a very good engine guy, former F1 mechanic from the 80's & 90's, who had a lot of quite famous former racing team clients advising me on my travails with that Biturbo race engine. I end worked in his shop for a couple of days using his tools to set my valve adjustments. But he injured himself and is no longer in the biz, HUGE loss. He was quite fascinated with that engine because of it's Cosworth origins. He worked a lot on vintage Cosworth race engines. So I ran a lot of things by him. I heard most of the stories about the Maserati V8 which has it's origins in the mid 1950's and manufactured in a very old tech plant in Modena, from those working on them here in the early 1990's. People like Al Burtoni (RIP) who worked all the Italian exotics but focused on Lamborghinis near the end. He wasn't very complimentary about the Maserati GT V8 engines when it came to trying to get more power out of these by then very old technically engines. They all talked out the crankshafts being the weak point. But typically long stroke engines from the mid 50's don't lend themselves to high revving anyway. So you could be correct. If one could solve that issue then the aforementioned better camshaft profile might be just the thing for a nice reliable bump in power. Maserati intended these engines to be a nice performing, under stressed power plant for the GT cars and not a high highly strung race engines. They do run reliably in QPIIIs for 100K miles. They also have less aggressive valve springs than the 4.0L Lamborghini V12 so cam and followers life is much less of an issue. My Espada had the cams reground and all the followers replaced just before i bought it. That was at 30K miles ... That's a fun engine to listen to but low end torque is much lower than the Maser engine and maintenance is orders of magnitude more difficult. It's not just that there's 4 more cylinders. My 2.0L 4V Biturbo engine is somewhat the same thing but when those turbos hook up you can burn rubber all the way through any infield portion of a track. It's about 400HP out of 2.0L! My guess is that you're going to spend a lot of time and $$$ trying to turn the V8 into a reliable, high performance engine but ask Elliot about that once he's finished.
I think you are correct about these being grand touring (rather than racing) engines, reliable and with good low end torque. And they are great at that. Still, I am interested in Eliot's engine project and look forward to seeing the result.
Engine number two for my Bora is based on 4.9 liter long block from an Indy. Engine number one, the original factory USA 4.9 engine, only received slightly enlarged intake valves and lighter modern pistons, a more modern ring package and light connecting rods plus a bump in compression to 10:1 due to the use of fuel injection. It's hard to imagine that things like piston rings, main and rod bearings, wrist pins were quite large back in the day but they did make for a low maintenance over head cam engine that would last a long time with minimum care, unlike some contemporaries. In fifty years things have changed quite a bit. Think of what is used in ordinary every day production cars that are putting out as much horsepower and torque in a four or six cylinder engine as the 4.9 liter Maserati and is warranted for 50,000 miles and more. Engine number two is being modified to take advantage of the updated technology available for standard production engine so it will interested to see what it eventually produces in terms of horsepower and torque when all is said and done. Mind you, no attempt is being made to produce a 7500 rpm screamer. The aim is for a nice balance between torque and horsepower as this will be a street car.
One day I hope to witness your efforts installed in your Bora and perhaps get a ride. In regards to the two engines, is that two engines for a single Bora?
The car came from the factory with a nice balance between torque and horsepower. Going faster is unlikely to make it better, but I understand the challenge!
