4200 CC with "Slight" misfire

8 cylinder liners, 8 piston sets with rings and gasket kits cost 2600 gbp acording to Eurospares.

Not cheap but for someone looking for a project it might be worth it.
In the end the engine will be as new regarding compression ratios.

jayblue said:

If you have euro spec manifolds (4 bolt flange) replace the pipe containing both the primary and secondary cats with a custom made or off the shelf solution with sports cats in the secondary cat position. Relocate lambda sensors, job done.

If you have the US spec manifolds (2 bolt flange) with the primary cats in the headers things become more complicated. You have a few options though:

1) Replace the US spec manifolds with euro spec ones and then do as you would for the euro spec above. Very expensive but the euro manifolds flow better so at least a small performance gain to go with your peace of mind.

2) Cut open the bottom of the US spec manifolds, gut the cats and weld them up again. Not ideal for the flow of gas in the exhaust but does deal with the problem effectively. Cut off the secondary cats and replace them with sports cats. There are no off the shelf options available for this (unlike the euro spec one) so you will either need to cut the original pipe or have an new one custom made. Then relocate the lambda sensors to the secondary cats.

3) The most common way of removing some of the worry is to simply replace the secondary cats and squish pipes with decat pipes, leaving the primary cats in the headers untouched. Not as full proof as the first two options but better than nothing.

All three options will free up the engine and may also add a little extra power, not to mention a whole lot of noise is you decide to mod the rear boxes or add a straight through X pipe.

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I had US-spec manifolds on the yellow beast, so went belt and braces - option 1 as shown above by Jay. I was lucky and got the manifolds for an absolute bargain, they're £4k from Maserati/Eurospares new or can very occasionally be found used at around £800/£1000. To replicate what I've done would cost a minimum £8k including labour to fit everything and assuming the manifolds can be found at used prices. I have euro-spec manifolds, Larini 200 cell sports cats with revised squish pipe, Larini h-pipe, link pipes and Larini valved GS rear boxes. Not cheap, but now I have full peace of mind about the cats never ruining the engine. And the noise it makes....oh, the noise!!

Ok - for my limited experience on these are you talking about the manifolds as bolted to the engine - my assumption or on the exhaust system under the car.

Dave

Yes, some cars have manifolds with cats in (US-spec), others don't. What year is your car, Dave?

MAF260 said:

Yes, some cars have manifolds with cats in (US-spec), others don't. What year is your car, Dave?

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Hi Mark - mine is a MY 2006 (55 Plate) 4200

Dave

D Walker said:

Hi Mark - mine is a MY 2006 (55 Plate) 4200

Dave

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It's possible you have the US-spec manifolds, very easy to check. Have a look underneath the car where the manifolds join the exhaust. The flange should be easy to see - if it has 2 bolts securing it to the exhaust then you have US-spec. If there are 4 bolts you have Euro-spec. If you have US-spec then you should also be able to see the bottom of the cats in the manifold fairly easily.

jluis said:

8 cylinder liners, 8 piston sets with rings and gasket kits cost 2600 gbp acording to Eurospares.

Not cheap but for someone looking for a project it might be worth it.
In the end the engine will be as new regarding compression ratios.

Click to expand...

There is a used engine one ebay for a 4200 you have to add in the cost of exhaust modification or new cats with the risk it could happen again.

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/MASERATI-...542?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_3&hash=item41995c51ce

I would be grateful if you could point me in the direction of the IS that ran the diagnostics. I suspect that I am now the proud and stupid owner of this car, following a mad moment on ebay recently. It is currently with a specialist who is struggling to identify the problem - and the £notes are mounting for his time spent. Any help gratefully received.

adrianr said:

I would be grateful if you could point me in the direction of the IS that ran the diagnostics. I suspect that I am now the proud and stupid owner of this car, following a mad moment on ebay recently. It is currently with a specialist who is struggling to identify the problem - and the £notes are mounting for his time spent. Any help gratefully received.

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Oh dear. I do hope not for your sake. Not sure if you're going to be able to get hold of that Indy. The person that posted seems to be something of a newby on here as well. You could probably send him a private message.

Who is your specialist? If you suggest that this is what happened, it should be pretty easy for him to confirm. Compression test is simple, and pulling a lambda plug and using an endoscope should show the insides of the cats *even if the welding on the outside is not visible....*

Very *very* best of luck.

Did you buy from a dealer? In which case serious warranty / claims time.

C

I've alerted the specialist to this thread and told him that I strongly suspect that this is the car I have recently acquired. As to recourse to the dealer. He sold it to me with an engine mis-fire and that would appear to be no lie! At this stage I am believing that I have been impetuous and stupid, but that it is now my problem to get it sorted out. I am hoping that the specialist will be prepared to work with me and fix it as economically as possible without bankrupting me, but that remains to be seen. It may have been cheap -but it certainly isn't going to be a bargain price. I have an empty feeling in my stomach at the moment!

Oh dear, if it is this car fingers crossed its not as bad as it sounds - rarely is there such a thing as a cheap Maserati

If its the one we think it is then it was being sold as a trade deal only. Claused as suitable for a mechanic to repair or something along those lines.

There are a couple of engines on Ebay at the moment:-
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Maserati-...ar-breaking-/141459787421?hash=item20efa90e9d

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/engine-Ma...-M138066452-/231549583455?hash=item35e96e405f

Hopefully its not the same car but the above may help bring the repair costs down if it is.

The only way i can think of that you may have some recourse against the garage is if it can be proved that the garage had additional information as to the cause of the problem or they were missleading in the wording of the advert. Even then at most you may get a contribution towards the costs.

Only other option would be to part it out for spares. Somewhere around 4K of spares on the car not including the engine I would have thought.

Good luck and hopefully its not the same car.

Found the original ebay ad for the car we are talking about :-

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Maserati-...B2Kgb7xoBjQ%2Fh4uBYIo%3D&orig_cvip=true&rt=nc

Scroll down the linked page to see the original advert.

A dealer cannot sell a car 'trade' with no warranty or recourse regardless of how it has been described or advertised. They still fall foul of the standard commitments a dealer have to honour if there are any issues. It is 3 months I believe.

Often the dealer knows more than they describe or state. If it were a simple fix for an independent dealer it is unusual they would want to trade it out & not fix it themselves as they often have a network/team of partners/garages in place to do this for them on alll cars. Obviously at trade rates so more cost effective.

If they did want to trade it out it should be done to the 'trade' at proper trade money. Or sold privately where buyer beware. It shouldn't be sold 'trade' from a dealer to a member of the public.

We have no way of knowing but possibly the fault has been looked at and either fault not found or it is a more complex or time consuming fix that was not cost effective.

Time is often the killer especially if you are paying for the labour. In the IT world I can say from experience that I have spent 1000's of hours over the years finding the root cause of many issues but never can justify invoicing all that time to the customer. I'm like a dog with a bone & very tenacious so find it difficult to accept not finding the root cause of any issues.

If it is your time & you have plenty also enjoying doing the work it can make sense. However often it doesn't work this way so ends up being expensive. You need a good experienced guy to look at this one who knows his stuff. He is likely to find the issue in much less time if at all.

Good post

The owner needs to get in touch with trading standards , you can't sell trade to the public

The only caveat to that is something I spotted on another forum, a member bought a MGA , 2-3 weeks into ownership going round a bend the steering wheel came off in his hands sending the car in to a ditch , metric nut on a unf thread

When he contacted the garage that sold it to him they asked him to check his receipt , which said he'd bought a project despite paying top money for it.

Last I heard he'd contacted a solicitor who told him as this receipt had his signature on acknowledging he'd bought a project he probably wouldn't win

Read the small print , apparently it's common practice in the classic car world

Agree totally with Rockits on this one. A dealer can't simply mark a receipt "sold as seen" and use that to circumnavigate any recourse here. It's all about how much effort the OP buyer wants to put into chasing a resolution.

If the car had been sold without the fault being pointed out then it is a diferent matter all together. the two relevant parts of the consumer act that apply in this case would be :-

Of satisfactory quality - this covers minor and cosmetic defects as well as substantial problems. It also means that products must last a reasonable time. But it doesn't give your customer any rights if a fault was obvious or pointed out to them at point of sale.

When a Customer Cannot Make a Claim
A customer has no rights in respect of defects that were brought to their attention before the sale, or if the customer examines the goods before purchase and any defects should have been readily noticeable.

I'm no lawyer but those two items alone give the trader more than enough wriggle room. If its the same car we think it is then the fault was clearly pointed out prior to sale. As far as i can see the only hope would be to try and prove that the car fault was misrepresentated in the first place. ie. the dealer knew it was a new engine job rather than a slight misfire.

Hmm. I hear you, Stuart My *opinion* would be that describing 'needs a new engine as the cats have broken up and been ingested' is a substantial difference from 'slight misfire' and therefore the fault was not really brought to the the buyers attention. However, I profess zero expertise. Just wish the buyer the best

C

Im with you on that Chris. If the original poster could find out which indy diagnosed the problem in the first place thus proving the garage selling was fully aware of the extent of the damage. Thats assuming that the indy diagnosis was carried out after the dealer owned the car.

Hopefully the OP will update us and we all hope its good news.

I'd think trading stadards would see it as a major engine fault rather than an oiled up plug given all the information

People liethrough their teeth when selling cars , "simple fix" , why haven't you fixed it if it's going to add 3-5k to the value then