Bora - engine and chassis photos, please?

I wish I could help out but when I did mine there were no digital cameras and almost all of my restoration photos are in deep storage. My car is not accessible either and once it's all together all that everything is black engine compartment is very hard to photograph.

To be honest IMHO if it's truly original get rid of it and replace most everything with much better stuff. That's if you want to drive and enjoy the car.

The Bora has to have one of the worst engine compartments of any Maserati ever produced. In addition to have numerous poorly engineered issues it was also finished very poorly. That's why they all look like crap if they're original.

I spent a lot of time fixing all the poor construction, poorly routed wires/hoses, inadequate shielding etc. The only thing I think they really did well is to put a very useful cover over the entire mess But maybe that let then be so sloppy in the first place?
It's sort of like the engine compartment/bilge on a nice boat.

There are numerous failure points that will cause problems eventually like the shift linkage shield and those silly OEM boots that cover the joints.

Heat is the constant enemy and I'm assuming you HAVE removed all of the emissions equipment right? None of it worked properly for very long and the thermal reactors cooked everything to death in the process.

Make certain that you still have a heat shield in place for the starter as that was frequently discarded and you'll definitely fry your stater/solenoid if it's missing.

The heat shield for the gas tank should be upgraded as well. A gas tank 3-4 inches from full exposure to the exhaust headers protected by aluminum and 1" of fiberglass haphazardly glued to the backside? I've seen the gas churn in the tank on a hot summer's day before I fixed that one. Vapor lock ensued shortly thereafter. I also did my best to insulate the fuel lines. Make sure that it still has the trickle bleed/return at the end of the fuel rail. I added a shield for the fuel pumps as well. The headers will get cherry red if you drive it hard.

The emergency brake cable housings are another great one. They run right by the exhaust. The housing is steel with a nylon liner. The nylon melts. The cable jambs.

There are plenty of other spots too like the LHM tank & regulator and even the spare tire can get cooked to death by the rear muffler. Some of the heat shields are aluminum with asbestos sheet riveted to it using large washers. There's much better stuff to use now when I did mine that wasn't the case so I had to work a bit more at it.

Some of the vacuum and coolant hoses are either the cloth braided cover style or the kind where you can see the fabric reinforcing just under the outer layer of rubber. If you hunt around a bit you can find that style stuff. Mine is so non original that I went with high quality stuff that wouldn't collect dirt. I tried to stay with black but some of the silicone stuff ended up being blue.

I didn't go the hot rod style, chrome and red wires route. Whatever I did was for a functional improvement because I did run it at speed in warm weather for almost a year then I pulled it all apart to sort the car's issues out.

I don't think you're wanting to take that on but you can still take note of some the areas I mentioned for heat shielding and improved functionality as you go through your car. The heat new shield products on the market will make that job a lot easier. A whole lot easier.

If your car has the later emissions oriented vacuum retard distributor you should have the advance curve re-profiled and eliminate that micro-switch and that small plastic vacuum tank. Some people just plugged the line to the dizzy but having it reworked will give you the best performance.

That should keep you busy for a bit ...

 

Before I took mine apart, I tried to find some reference files on the web. Unfortunately, the several I have exceed the forum's attachment size limit. I've put them on <www.quadravox.com/Downloads/mechanical.zip> (case sensitive). Most of them are from US994 when it was for sale from a dealer.

I also took pictures of my own car, but I doubt they'd be much help for originality. I'm going in the direction Bob described so the end result will be tidy, but not factory original.

 

As you compare earlier to later production models you will see a few things change mostly due to emissions and ignition issues. The earlier cars had a distributor which allowed you to bypass the ignition box and run directly on the points. I believe there was a switch for this function located next to the fuel pump switch.The later ones (75 on?) had the Bosch box which was mounted outside of the engine compartment (good idea!) on the LH side. My car came with different spark plug connectors. Instead of the Bosch bakelite style it has the same as used on the QPIII a rubber boot that slips into the hole and attempts to make a seal. My car also has a coolant bleed fitting on the right rear end of the head.
Later cars had the interior rear body areas (inside of the hatch and those two doors plus around the rear window painted black.

Plenty to argue about with a concours "judge" who's mostly unaware of these things.

 

Bob,
This is an excellent dissertation on the Bora that every Bora owner should print out an keep with the owners manual.
Well done.
FGM

 

Kind words Frank.

It's certainly not everything and I now remember one other item that's really, really important to mention so add this to the list.

This was published in the VCM as a bulletin way back when ...

The ordinary steel brake lines on the sub frame are held in place with welded on metal tabs that wrap around a vinyl tube sleeve that's slipped over the brake line. Where they are close to the heat of the headers the plastic fails and it's been postulated that it thus turns acidic and greatly accelerates the corrosion. In any event, many cars have been found with very corroded brake lines under that vinyl. In particular the RH front one which is on the top horizontal rail of the subframe. It's very hard to see it and you would guess that's the case by just looking at it. Pull the tabs back and slip the vinyl to the side. In my case the brake line literally just fell in half when I removed it from the car.

I switched to a special high temp material instead of the vinyl and others have also gone to S.S. brake lines.

 

Your car looks nice and clean.

These pictures can be upload here if you want. They just need to be re-sized a bit.

Those look pretty good and very original to me. It's just that as you start to drive the car in any meaningful way stuff either fails or begins to look bad very fast. If this were going to be a concours queen maybe I'd just leave it alone?

Just to explain a bit why I originally did what I did.
When I bought my car it wasn't really a vintage car as yet and I intended to use it damn it! I wanted it to work well at speed (well over 100MPH) even in 100F environments.
That's not really possible IMHO due to airflow issues in and NOT out of the engine compartment but what I did accomplish is a great running car at moderate speeds in very hot weather and in cooler weather it was just fine.

Not every owner is quite this crazy.

After this many years all the rubber is no good though. The vacuum retard stuff and the associated emissions equipment on the top of the engine is quite visible there.

The aluminum covered insulation on those extension pipes from the headers to the exhaust is as well. Once you put decent headers on the car those things are useless as they have a different fitting method as compared with any headers you'll get. Go with stainless and expect a very good shop to spend some hours fitting everything.

I have steel headers , new extension pipes and the original exhaust system which is fine after 40K miles! It's heavy but it does produce a nice and non obnoxious sound which is a very good idea for long excursions.

If you do decide to drop the subframe contact me as there are certain things that will have to be done to get it out without going nuts just because of the age as well as access.

 

I wish that were my car! Mine is US974 and, well, grubbier. You can see how grubby in the pictures I posted in the bumper conversion thread. These pictures are from a Miller Motors ad for US994 that I kept for reference. I'd intended to post them here, but my antique photo editor would not load the files so I took the quick way out.

My own car has headers (mild steel, jet-hot coated) and supposedly has the cam timing and ignition timing/advance set to European specs. Given the quality of other work done by the previous owner's shop, I'm not so sure it ever happened. I'm concerned about function more than originality, so for example, I plan to replace the motley collection of hose clamps with some full-stainless marine ones with rolled edges and non-perforated bands. I've noted your suggestions on hoses, too. As long as my changes don't prevent a future owner from returning it to original form, I haven't hurt anything. Besides, after a bumper conversion, do hose clamps matter?

I probably won't get to drive mine to the extent that you did, but it does get hot in Texas and as long as the radar detector is working, the speeds are about right, too. When you did your experiments, did you discover whether the roof and rear deck vents actually did anything? If the deck vents are in a low pressure area (looks like it might be the opposite), then I might try making a space saver spare (narrow 4x130 VW wheel) to allow more flow to that area. If the roof vents are in a high- at least neutral-pressure area, then it might be worth trying to duct cool air to the air cleaner from there.

I'd hoped to do a lot of things while I have the engine out, but I have a deadline looming so I'm going to concentrate on the changes that make subframe removal easier. If I run out of time, at least it will be simpler next time. In addition to localizing the bottom-side electrical connections, I'd like to make it easier to leave the A/C compressor with the car, make a single-point connection for the radiator and heater hose(s), and maybe a tool for easier removal of the shift U-joint pins. At the rate I'm moving, though, I'll be lucky just to get it back together in stock form.

 

OH, so I think that's the one Wayne Carini handled for a client of his? Probably forever a garage queen now.

I don't want to get into all of the things I did to run cooler in the desert in this thread.
There are already discussions here about this here and other places as well. I removed my spare tire. With or without the cover it makes no difference. I doubt that anyone has the cajones to do what's required.

But as for subframe removal. Basically what I did to ease removal was to actually cut the various hoses and cables that were a real SOB with the idea in mind to install disconnects at those points for future removal. That's what I did too. There are several of these that are just to tough of a location and one was the starter to battery cable. I used a brass welding cable connector (M&F) now positioned along side the frame rail and it gets assembled last with sticky water tight shrink wrap on it.

I also have two inspection access covers in the firewall which are much larger than that puny original one and they barely show because they're behind the seats. NOW is a great time to do this but a friend of mine, the first to do this, managed to do his with the engine in the car.

 

Hi Art,

I don't have any now, but if you're still looking for some in a month or so, I should have my car back on the lift and I can photograph whatever you need.

Larry

 

How about posting some specific questions and photos of your car?

Also, something to consider is that there are a lot of Bora owners on that original Bora thread who will get notified when a post shows up there. So you might get more action if it was posted there? It's an idea anyway.