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"I have long wondered what it would be like to own some of the machines that I keep reading about in magazines. What are they like in daily use, what's it like to take them to their limits? Eventually a time came when I decided to stop wondering and start doing...."
Bringing the car home:
I wanted to steam clean the underside of the car. I needed something to raise the car from the ground and here is what we came up with.
First repairs: fit new exhausts, fit missing bolts in the diff carrier.
Working on the typical italian electrical gremlins, getting the windows and central locking to work properly...
Rust! Just like a Citroën. I feel much more comfortable doing this work then doing electrics on this car. All rust is first sandblasted, then the holes welded and the welds are cleaned up.
No rust on my maserati. So after blasting and welding, off to the paintshop.
Back from the paintshop and with fresh technical test.
Then due to excessive play on the crownwheel / pignon, 3 teeth broke off from the pignon.
A replacement differential was offered to me within days.
It's a early ghibli diff from a 2.8 automatic, and it normally has a oilcooler but this has been taken off.
It has a slightly higher ratio but has been rebuilt with new bearings and seals.
I'm going to use my own cover to fit the diff to the car.
The dark diff is the original blown one, the light and clean on the inside diff is the replacement.
After having run on 50% ethanol, the fuel filter needed to be replaced.
Cleaned up the pump, replaced all rubber hoses and fitted new hose clamps.
With the car fully sorted it was time to put it to good use.
We did a vacation to the Cote d'Azure (including Monaco!), drove 3500km in 8 days, went over the highest pass in europa (Col de la Bonette 2806m).
It was fantastic, the car behaved very well, and it was a lot of fun.
I had a small argument with a pole in France.
Only a little damage and i managed to find a wing and headlight through dutch Maserati Club members which have been extremely helpfull again.
Turns out the bumper supports have quite a bit of rust in them, but confined to the tubes alone.
Repairing the wing, building new bumper supports and stripping for painting.
Found a hole in the door pillar!
Replacing the double needle bearing in the steering arm
Getting rid of the rust in the floors.
Master clutch cylinder overhaul.
Couldn't get the clutch blead, so took the car to my local Maserati / Ferrari specialist.
Turns out you need 3 guys to bleed the clutch.
Then dropped the car off at the painter, I wont get it back for about 2 months!
But good to be able to drive it to de painter after not running for 6 months.
At the painter's.
When Jeroen died, his Maserat 430 was still away for it’s paintjob. It took (too) long for the car to return from the painter but eventually we got it back home, where the re-assembly could start. That was a straight forward job.
In the mean time another 242 quatroporte was purchased for spares, which had a very nice black leather interior. First of all the differential was used to replace the one that was in Jeroen’s car (that came from an automatic with a shorter final drive). Also it was decided to use that interior in the 430 in order to replace the white leather (less vulnurable; this white leather looks either dirty or has a plastic look IMHO). However that included also a dashbord swap. Not the simpliest of tasks but we managed the transplant; everything works again and is rattle free. The pictures tell their own story.
And here is the final result:
I’m sure Jeroen would approve the final result. |
