The BORA

The way it's done in professional shops is pretty elaborate as far as enthusiasts are concerned.
You'd be best served looking it up online, but going by memory it's something like:
Have the engine warmed up.
Pull all spark plugs.
Disable ignition.
Disable fuel pump.
Prop the carburetors to WOT.
Install the compression test fitting, one cylinder at a time.
Crank the engine over several strokes.
Repeat.

Cheers. - Art

 

If you explore the Bora's sheetmetal structure a bit, you can find a path if you look carefully.
Operate the front headlight doors to the open position, and access the front QP void by pulling open the side panels in the front trunk.
The rears I don't remember, but I believe they are exposed once to lift the rear deck and take the carpeted covers off..
- Art

 

So the green box is a relay for a tiny electric air pump that pumps gasoline vapors from the charcoal canisters back to the air cleaner for combustion.

I assume the charcoal canisters after 50 years are for decorative purposes only at this point.

 

Is the tiny pump even there any longer? It probably failed early on. I believe you have the operation exactly backwards. Maserati's standard design for this futile emissions system is to have the pump draw gasoline vapors from the filter box after shut down and route the fumes through the charcoal canisters. The next time the car is started the canisters are purged by having them sucked into the air cleaner housing. There's probably a purge valve somewhere there.
On later carb cars like the QP3 and Biturbo they also added vacuum operated flap valves between the carb box and the air intakes to prevent any fumes from escaping.

 

Got it. that makes sense. Ill have to check how they are plumbed but both of the top connectors on the canisters are connected to clear green hoses that appear to go to a vacuum port near the front carb. Both canisters have two connections at the bottom with one on each open to atmosphere. On the right the other is connected to a vent line on the fuel tank and on the left its connected to a T-juction which is then connected to the air cleaner housing. That left cannister is the one serviced by the NLA tiny pump that seems to be powered by the mystery relay behind quirky tiny door no. 1 behind the drivers head. I wonder when that pump would operate? But I think most gas fumes come from the fuel tank. In fact I like to have this stuff operational on older cars because it doesn't hurt performance and otherwise the whole garage tends to smell like gasoline.

Does anyone know why the American spec cars have two fuel pumps?
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No good reason really. I got rid of both of them, put in a good high capacity Mallory pump and never looked back. BTW at the end of the fuel rail for the carbs there's a fitting that is used to route fuel back into the fuel tank. (27) The idea is to prevent vapor lock by keeping a continuous flow of reasonable cool fuel to the carbs. Vapor lock can become a very real deal for this car, especially when its very warm AND you're at higher elevations such as Denver.

 

Interesting re: return line -Like a fuel injected car. So weird US cars have two fuel pumps and filters and others one.

 

Sorry for replying to an old post, but Feb was the first "unread" post for me when I clicked the thread. I have to agree regarding XWX's.

I think the Michelin/Pirelli superiority story is a bit ironic -- in my experience, Michelin generally makes the best tires today and (most) modern Pirelli's are not that good. That said, for vintage tires being remade today, Pirelli's generally perform much better than Michelins. In both cases, I'd say the gap is fairly substantial.

 

I've insulated all of my fuel lines because of all of the high performance driving I did in Nevada during hot weather. Once you've opened the gas cap on a warm very early spring day @ 5000 ft elevation and seen a tankful winter gas formulation churning due to heat it changes your perspective on the amount of heat that's generated and remains in that engine compartment.

 

That would be a bit unnerving to say the least.

 

Indeed..

.. here is what an old XWX is capable of.

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Yep, and you can confirm this function by looking into the filler neck with the engine or pump running and see the stream of return fuel being dumped back into the tank at the filler neck.
(The Khamsin also has a form of this feature although it is returned to a 3-way fitting at the fuel pump, to be recirculated up to the fuel rail).

Dean, do you have the two fuel pumps in yours? .. if so there should be a small toggle switch in the engine bay. The two pumps are Primary and Secondary, with the switch toggling between them. The purpose of this arrangement is so that you had a functioning pump to feed the engine when one of the pumps fails. "When, not If." That's the way it was back in them days. Maserati was clever enough to simply compensate for worn out fuel pumps, so they added the second one to get clients home.

I retained the two pumps and toggle switch for the first few years. It's the darndest thing because I went through half-dozen Facet pumps, switching to the Secondary when they failed. IMHO Facet pumps are absolute garbage - some didn't even work straight out of the box.

I switched to a single Holley and haven't had an issue since.

Cheers,
- Art

 

I have the Facet replacement for the Bendix pump in my Espada and it's worked great but I haven't put the kind of miles on that car that I did on the Bora. Marine supply and Aircraft supply places usually have @ great prices. If they're using them on small airplanes ... well they must be reliable.

https://www.pegasusautoracing.com/document.asp?DocID=TECH00150

 

yes I have two pumps and they both work. just never understood why. also needs two fuel filters instead of one. Plus another one at the regulator. and maybe some screens on the pumps themselves.

MIE has the original Bendex fuel pumps:
https://maseratinet.com/maserati/quattroporte-i/maserati-kyalami-maserati-ghibli-bora-mexico-khamsin-quattroporte-indy-bendix-style-fuel-pump-50620

Eurospares offers the Facet to use as the secondary fuel pump:
https://www.eurospares.com/Parts/100245/Eurospares?srsltid=AfmBOor1rBH7-sF7lvp8payLlNpdiuEZMjcw-DwsOXKANmT7QuniyDl_

The Facet is twice as expensive.

I find it double weird that theres two DIFFERENT types of fuel pumps.

 

Best to have two filters because if the single filter ever became impacted with contamination or rust (that's happened to me on my Espada) then that would render both pumps useless.

 

The switch that used to toggle between my two pumps is still mounted on the steel bracket holding the ignition coil. Maybe you have the switch there too?

 

I think you can find Facet replacements for both on that website I posted.

 

yes theres two toggles, fuel, ignition and push button for start. but that pushbutton start didn't work when my ignition switch was being weird the other day.

switches can be seen in the pic. My car also has an aftermarket CDI ignition box located right under the LHM tank. Not sure LHM is combustable but if so....BLAMMO.
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LHM burns like smudge pot oil, not explosive. A lousy location for that box due to the heat. The later cars with Bosch ignition boxes as used in the QP3, Pordsche 928 and others is located on the left side aft of the little compartment door and down low.

 

Was it your car?
And do you know how old was this tire and at which speed that arrived?

 

I could always relocate that control box one of these days when I'm not feeling too lazy.

 

I remember getting the Facet fuel pumps through a Yatch parts supplier, i think at the time they were significantly less money. Another thing I seem to recall there is a possible voltage drop off under load with the Facet. I think Ivan had a fix for it.

 

sidewall held together

 

what are the best spark plugs to run in the Bora? Thanks.

 

As I remember Joe it turned out that the electrical circuit on your Ghibli was under capacity in terms of the wire gauge size to operate two facet pumps of that model pump. There are many different models with varying fuel flow capacity and subsequent amperage draw.

When a circuits amperage load is exceeded the voltage will drop and the harness may heat up. This scenario is what the fuse in the circuit is all about. If it has the right size fuse it should interrupt the circuit to avoid such a dangerous electrical failure. Whether your Ghibli had a right sized fuse when you began dealing with this failure I don't recall.

But I remember all the phone calls and I recall that you had a lot of trouble with the performance of that model pump and returned them at least once. I believe that you ordered the same pump as I did for my Espada. However that pump exceeds the amperage draw for the fuel pump circuit of an original Ghibli.

The Facet pumps are NOT an identical replacement for the old Bendix pumps. But with a careful selection of model based upon your engine's fuel flow requirements there's usually a right sized model that will work and not exceed the electrical circuits load capacity.

A little Lamborghini and automotive historical detour that I think will be helpful here for those arriving on this thread oh so many years later.

Helpful link https://facet-purolator.com/faqs/

When I was trying to find the proper fuel pump for my 71 Espada I called Facet's technical department in Elmira, NY. Mark Twain is buried there and his wife's family has a large plot there. It's a short side detour from your travels to/from Watkins Glen and I was fielding my track day car with the Ferrari club at the time.

So the guy who answered the phone turned out to be the most senior tech they had. He claimed to have been there since the old Bendix days and talked about how they right sized their pumps to the manufactures requirements at the time of a car's debut on the market. That's something tire manufactures still do today for higher performance vehicles. But ... they do not necessarily still manufacture an identical specification model. So he helped me out and we had a lovely conversation about the "good old days". When he learned about my frequent trips to the Glen he invited me to stop by sometime. Unfortunately I never did.

If you have any experience with hauling a race car from NYC metro and other parts to The Glen it's often an arduous trek and typically there's not a lot of time for leisurely side trips.

Which ever model they originally designed and built for the Espada it was perfectly specified to simultaneously draw from dual aide saddle tanks in the rear and pipe the fuel all thee way to the rear of the engine compartment, similar to the Ghibli. That rubber hose went through the passenger compartment under the carpet along the driver side sill but inside of the cabin! .
It then goes back through the fire wall and is distributed through a pair of fuels rails at the perfect fuel pressure, all WO a fuel pressure regulator! That's really an amazing if possibly foolhardy piece of engineering.

Well he didn't have a pump exactly like that available anymore so he found one with enough flow and I had to add a regulator to the fuel circuit as well as make sure that my electrical circuit was up to snuff. I would eventually have to completely re-engineer the entire fuel delivery system on that car. In those days Lamborghini had fuel delivery system design problems on several of their cars. Why do you think so many Miuras have burnt up?

These are the sorts of issues one often has to deal with on vintage cars. The devil is in the details ...

The Bora has very different fuel system issues and that same pump would probably work just fine on the Bora but not on the Ghibli.