DIY Adventures With a 2009 Quattroporte S

[philw696]

Fantastic work, I was under the impression that the QPV absorbers can't be repaired because they are sealed. But seen you and hearing that you have found someone there to do it for £50 is really no brainer.

We were getting them repaired 10 years ago in New Zealand very successfully done by a Ohlins Motorcycle suspension specialist.
Needs must when you're so far from Europe.

 

[rs48635]

I'm happy to report that the clunking noise is gone.
As I suspected it was the sway bar drop links!

So, I received the new parts and they seem to be pretty good quality actually:
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Doesn't looks bad at all, the stickers say made in Italy but given the price I somehow doubt it.
Anyway, I didn't have a lot of spare time yesterday so I only installed the drop links, as it was quick to do:

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Immediately went for a ride afterwards and I'm happy to report that the problem is now gone completely. No more clunking noise, no sensation of something being loose, perfectly smooth!
I almost took pleasure in driving on potholes, this car is really comfortable.

I will still change the lower control arms as the one on the left has a busted bushing, but it wasn't the cause of the noise. I'll probably do that this weekend if nothing else gets in the way.
One more lesson learned and one more issue fixed!

Very interested in this element. I have some noises too , likely drop links. There was minor concern about front balljoints and no way I will be buying UK / Europe priced lower arms. Did you already post links for these Chinese items?

 

[rs48635]

Yeah, true, but this kind of things happen a lot here. That being said it was probably fixed for free in 15 minutes for a few bucks on the side of the road and it worked reasonably well for some time.
At the Maserati dealership this would have probably needed two weeks and cost the price of a small motorcycle.

Anyway, now it's been properly fixed:

Received the new bushings. Not particularily impressed with the quality, the old ones had some kind of glassfiber sleeve inside, these don't seem to have it so I suppose they'll wear quicker. I guess we'll see.
View attachment 140690

While I was at it, I decided to model them in 3D so that next time I'll just 3D print them if I want. It could be fun to try different stiffnesses and see how it changes the driving feel.
If anyone needs the file or if there is some kind of official thread for 3D models please let me know.
View attachment 140691

Anyway, I replaced the front bushings. They were completely toast on both sides. Both had rubber "shims".
No problem on the left side, but I noticed that on the right side the sway bar link has a tiny bit of play, so I will order new ones and replace them later.

View attachment 140692

Rear sway bar bushing in place:
View attachment 140693

The rear rubbers were still in OK condition. But unfortunately.... same cannot be said about my rear shocks...
View attachment 140694

Both rear shocks are busted. I need to do something about it.
So first thing was to try and assess the damage, so I took one strut out of the car. Surprisingly easy to do, the only annoying part was that I had to remove the trunk carpets again to access the skyhook plug and disconnect it:
View attachment 140695

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I wanted to remove the spring, but unfortunately I didn't have the appropriate spanner to reach the nut on top. So I've ordered one and meanwhile I just cleaned the thing:

View attachment 140696

The parts number 12, 7 and 3 are busted and need to be replaced on both shocks (and probably the front ones as well).

View attachment 140697
Also, one of the rear shocks has been leaking. I don't know how much it leaked and without removing the spring I can't tell if the shock still has gas in it.
So right now, the plan is to remove the coil springs, then assess the damage. If both shocks still have gas in them then I'll replace the bushings and call it good enough.
Otherwise, I will check if I can have the shock rebuilt or maybe get new ones as they seem a lot cheaper than I thought they would be (at least for chinese reproductions). If I get new ones I'll still rebuild the old ones so I will have a fresh set if I need them later.

Anyway, I reinstalled the shock back into the car so I can at least keep driving until I fix it.

The good news is that the new sway bar rubbers fixed almost all of the suspension noises, so that is a lot better. I hope that the remaining noise are coming from the right sway bar linkage and the left steering rod, as I haven't replaced these yet.
Anyway, the problem is 95% fixed so it is already a whole lot better, on bad roads the car is much more quiet.

Did you replace the long bottom bole, item 6 in the picture? It comes with a crinlke / crush washer and mine was almost flat. The bolt showed some wear and had been fretting against the shock mount.

 

[Neptune.]

Very interested in this element. I have some noises too , likely drop links. There was minor concern about front balljoints and no way I will be buying UK / Europe priced lower arms. Did you already post links for these Chinese items?

Sorry I can't really post any useful link as I'm living in China, the platform I bought it from isn't available elsewhere.

Did you replace the long bottom bole, item 6 in the picture?

I didn't replace it as mine seemed to be in good condition.


Anyway, been pretty busy this weekend.
First, I took out both rear shock absorbers, then took them apart.
This is my setup for removing the spring, I've got the spring compressor tightened and the thing is secured in my vice to keep it tightly in place. Feels pretty safe and worked great:


The plan was to send them to get the oil changed, replace the seals and also replace the bottom bushing. Problem is, I bought the front bushing and didn't pay attention to the fact that the rear ones were different...
And apparently the rear ones can't be find anywhere except at the dealer, where they are ridiculously expensive (120 euros for ONE bushing, wtf Maserati, seriously? I can litterally find a brand new aftermarket complete shock for this price!)
So anyway, I took some measurements and will see later if I can find something with similar dimensions from another, less greedy manufacturer. Meanwhile, I've sent both shocks on Saturday afternoon to be repaired in Bejing. Sunday I got the confirmation that the repair shop already received my shocks and repaired them. They're on their way back right now and I should receive this evening or maybe tomorrow. I love China for that kind of stuff, it would be completely impossible to get that kind of speed in Europe.



As you can see on the picture above, both shocks are busted. I'm no expert of course, but apparently when a shock is dead you can simply know it because when you push the rod back in it will not get back out by itself.

I was under the impression that the QPV absorbers can't be repaired because they are sealed.

Actually, just about any shock can be repaired, even if it is not supposed to be repaired.
You basically just have to remove the cap on top of it, then replace the oil, clean everything, put a new seal and then put the cap back again or make a new cap one way or the other.
Last year I've rebuilt an old motorcycle (Honda Hawk) and I had a similar issue with my rear shock leaking. It was sealed as well and advertized at not repairable, but I tried anyway. I destroyed the original cap, then machined a new one on my lathe. Also had to remanufacture a new shaft because the original one was deeply rusted. It was a difficult and pretty intimidating project to tackle but the shock absorber now works just fine so I call it a success. If you're interested to see what I'm talking about you can have a quick look at my build thread where I documented the process with many pics: https://www.hawkgtforum.com/forum/h...s/966604-chinese-bros-400?p=986192#post986192
The only thing I couldn't do was to add pressurized nitrogen into the shock, so it's not a perfect job, but the thing works fine and the bike rides very well now. It is exactly the same principle for almost all shock absorbers.

So anyway, since I sent the shock absorbers to be repaired it was a good opportunity to prepare the other parts for reinstall later, so the first thing was to clean the springs and prep them for paint. These are surprisingly time consuming to clean and sand:



The only 2K paint I had left was bright red, but I found some old black 1K paint. I hesitated for a while between both colors... The 2K paint is a lot tougher then the 1K, but I thought red might be too visible and look tacky on an otherwise classy car, so I decided to go for the black paint instead even though it will be less durable. At least it should protect it from rust for a little while.
So it was time for a bit of spraying:



Tadaaaa, shiny buoy:

You can also see two yellow bushings next to the shiny springs. I bought these to replace the crusty original foam ones. The dimensions match the originals so they should work just the same, the difference being that they are A LOT cheaper. The official mas part is 33 euro for one, but this thing cost me 7 euro for one and they even include the dust boot (you can see them on the pic, on top of the printer). They are from another car, I'm not sure which one, but they seem to fit. I guess we'll see.

Next step on this busy weekend was to replace the control arms on the front right side.
It went a bit smoother than the left side, because this time I managed to get the front bottom screw without cutting it. It did put a good fight, but I managed to push it out using a long threaded rod and a few nuts.
I took out the front shock absorber and replaced its bushing with my press. The front ones seem a lot easier to replace than the rear ones, because the flange around the bushing is bigger. Easy peasy.


This one really needed to be changed, as you can see it started cracking:


I then cleaned every part including the ABS sensor as best I could:


Then it was just a matter of putting this stuff back in the car:





It went relatively smoothly.
One thing to be noted is that the upper control arm is different than the original one, as the front bushing is "upgraded" to a stiffer one which is physically bigger. That meant that the original spacer shims won't fit anymore.
So I'm left with two extra spacers per side, I hope it won't mess up the original settings too much. But it's not like I had a choice anyway.
I'll get a new alignment done once I'll be finished with this, hopefully things aren't too far off.

Now I'm waiting for the rear shock absorbers, hopefully the car should be sorted out by wednesday.

 

[philw696]

Excellent Work again and the socket method works well for shock bushes especially in a press.
Doing it all on the floor too ain't easy but good exercise guessing you're a younger man.
Getting the shocks repaired that quickly is amazing the Chinese weekend certainly not like a French one
Can we have a picture when you get them back please.

 

[Neptune.]

Can we have a picture when you get them back please.

Yes, of course! I shall receive them this afternoon so hopefully they'll be back on the car very soon.

Meanwhile, the shop sent me some short videos (they are content creators on tiktok/Douyin and seemed to do a good job, that's how I found them actually)

First video is just refilling the oil. First time I ever see some blue oil for shock absorbers, it looks like glass cleaning liquid so I was a bit surprised and thought it'd be interesting to share here. I bet it is a bit special because on their other videos of shock absorber refurbishing they use more classic yellow/brownish oil. It's the first time I've seen them using this oil actually.

And a video of the result:

This is right after repairing the strut, it's been refilled with oil and also with nitrogen. Normal shocks will extend much faster after being compressed, but as the guy is saying in Chinese, these are a lot slower because it's a heavy car and also because it needs to receive some voltage from the Skyhook system to open the valves.
The cap has been replaced, as well as the seals, So hopefully the shock absorber should be good for a few more years

I'm not sure yet if they took a video of the entire process for my shocks, I bet they did because it's a bit exotic and they don't do Maseratis very often so that is good content for their channel. If they release a video I'll post it here as well.

 

[philw696]

That's a Great little opération you've found there for sure and what value for servicing the original shocks.

 

[Motorsport3]

I so regret throwing away my old leaking skyhooks when I changed to coilovers as I was told that can't be repaired...

Great job and congratulations!

 

[philw696]

I so regret throwing away my old leaking skyhooks when I changed to coilovers as I was told that can't be repaired...

Great job and congratulations!

That's ashame as these guys in China look to be very good indeed and it would be worth the international shipping.

 

[Neptune.]

I so regret throwing away my old leaking skyhooks when I changed to coilovers as I was told that can't be repaired...

Great job and congratulations!

Rule number one: You never throw anything!


So, I received the shocks and they look just the same as when I sent them:


Next I replaced the lower spring seat rubber as well as the top one, and also replaced the foam limit bumper with the el cheapo one I bought. Everything fits great!


Did the same with the second shock absorber, good as new!


The only thing I didn't do was to change the lower bushings, because I couldn't find any at a reasonable price. A new lower bushing from Maserati costs litterally the same price as a brand new aftermarket shock. Insane.
I took some measurements and modeled them in CAD, so I can keep searching later for a compatible one.

Installed boths shocks back into the car:


And voila. Now the front has brand new control arms/drop links/swaybar bushings and the rear has "new" shocks.
The only remaining issue I found is a little bit of play in the rear right wheel, I narrowed it down to this little ball joint, which will need to be replaced:


Hopefully that should be easy to do, I'll check that later. Didn't notice it before because the play is minimal.

Anyway, it was finally time to go for a test!
Put the key in the ignition, turn it and........ nothing at all.

Apparently I left the key in the ignition for too long while repairing the car (because you need it to be able to turn the steering wheel in order to get to some bolts). My multimeter indicated a measly 6V.
What an idiot.
So I trickled charged it, hoping I didn't ruin the battery. It ran overnight and the next day it was ok. I did had a lot of issues with the electronics when starting the car for the first time, so I cleared all the errors with my diagnostics tool and afterwards it was just a matter of reinitializing the door locks (put the key into the keyhole of the door, close the door then open again).

So, after this drama I went for a ride.

Well, all of this hasn't been done in vain! The car rides perfect. Pretty much the driving feeling of a brand new car out of the dealer. Everything is tight, everything feels solid and there's no weird noise. The back of the car feels so much more planted, especially on bad roads. Clearly the refurbish made a difference, no doubt. It used to feel a little loose before, like it wasn't always following the front. Now it feels great.
Absolutely love how this car drives, I was supposed to do a short 10-15 minutes test and I ended up driving for almost two hours having fun around the house. What an absolutely brilliant car.



Couldn't be happier.

In total I spent:
-Control arms: 280 eur for the whole front kit (top and bottom)
-Lower control arm front screw: 30 euro for a second hand one (not cheap!)
-Drop links: 23 eur for both drop links
-Front shock lower bushings : 23 eur for both
-Sway bar rubbers: 46 euros for 4 rubbers
-Rear shocks refurb: 120 euro for both
-Rear shocks various rubber thingies: 37 Euro for all the rubber parts

So in total I spent 559 euro for the almost complete overhaul of the suspension system. That is by far the biggest amount of money I've spent until now on this car, but I feel like it was well invested as long as it lasts. Also I really doubt it was possible to do this for cheaper.
I will still keep the old hardware like the original control arms. I will replace the bushings on them and also take some measurements/model them in CAD so I can create custom control arms if I ever want to build some in the future.

Now the only real issue I need to deal with is the ABS. I'll start working on that again until I find a fix, hopefully.

 

[philw696]

Excellent work done and for a Maserati what value too.
I'm intrigued as to how the shock absorber tops came off and went back on as they look stock.
When mine were done they made new caps and they were threaded so could easily be taken on and off for future servicing.

 

[zagatoes30]

Great work and even better when you can enjoy the fruit of your labours with a good drive which is what these cars are all about

 

[Neptune.]

Excellent work done and for a Maserati what value too.
I'm intrigued as to how the shock absorber tops came off and went back on as they look stock.
When mine were done they made new caps and they were threaded so could easily be taken on and off for future servicing.

Yeah I assumed they would put new threaded caps just like you say but apparently it wasn't necessary.
I'm not sure how they've done that but I assume these are just pressed in. It's a bit strange because in the video I don't see any groove for a circlip or any form of retaining feature. I'm not sure how these are put together.

 

[philw696]

Yeah I assumed they would put new threaded caps just like you say but apparently it wasn't necessary.
I'm not sure how they've done that but I assume these are just pressed in. It's a bit strange because in the video I don't see any groove for a circlip or any form of retaining feature. I'm not sure how these are put together.

They obviously know what they're doing but as a mechanic for many years I really would like to know how they've done it but it's probably their secret.

 

[Ebenezer]

Wow! well done and sooooo cheap! (apart from your labour and experience, which of course, is priceless!)

Eb

 

[Don.Hasi]

I guess, you did press the sport button to control the harder setting of the suspension as well? Did it work fine?

 

[Neptune.]

I guess, you did press the sport button to control the harder setting of the suspension as well? Did it work fine?

Yes that's one of the first thing I've tried, it works just fine, no problem
Good as new, I hope it is going to last a few years.


Anyway, since I had this little battery incident, yesterday evening I had to wait until 0:00 to reset my clock (I do this by disconnecting the gauge cluster and reconnecting it at precisely 0:00).
So instead of doing nothing, I decided to use this waiting time to try and see if I could clean the dashboard cap (or whatever this thing is called that protects the gage cluster from the sun)

So I removed it from the car, as you can see it wasn't in great shape. It's all sticky and gooey, pretty disgusting:


At first I tried using paint thinner and it was working pretty well to remove the sticky layer:


But then, once I was basically finished, I brushed some alcohol on it to remove the last residue, and unfortunately that's when it started peeling off:


At this point I decided to remove entirely this ugly thing, and start fresh with only the foam under it:


The foam is in pristine condition so that's cool.
So I started wrapping with new leather:


I thought this part was gonna be super easy and just take me a dozen of minutes. O boy was I wrong, it was actually one of the most difficult parts I wrapped so far. wrapping is easy when you expand the material, but much more difficult when you need to shrink it. On this part it was almost entirely shrinking.
But eventually, after a while it ended up pretty good:


Finally, some good looking non sticky leather!
I finished this at 23:55 so I had to hurry up to reinstall this and reconnect the gauge cluster, luckily I managed to do it just in time and reconnected everything spot on, up to the very second.

Now let's see how this leather covering will age. I'm not 100% certain I will keep it. It looks fine and there's no actual problem with it, but maybe I could bite the bullet and spend a bit more to get some high quality leather instead, as this one was some el cheapo stuff. Originally the idea with this was to train myself and get some experience. Now that I at least got the basics maybe it would be smarter to try using some nicer stuff, as the goal isn't to redo all of this in a few years.

 

[CatmanV2]

Lovely job again

C

 

[philw696]

Absolutely another Great Job Done.

 

[Neptune.]

Some more work this weekend:

First, the buttons on the right of the screen (lock/unlock and sunshade) sunk into the dashboard, so I had to take out the central console in order to fix them.
It's basically the same thing that happened when I first got the car, except it's the other side this time. I took them off then used some different screws. Easy fix.

Since I had to remove the screen and the trim panels around it, it was a good opportunity to just remove everything so I could get access to some panels and replace the leather.
First I removed the screen and gearbox panels and this time I decided to label every connector. I did this for two reasons: obviously to avoid doing the same mistake as the first time, when I plugged the wrong connectors into the wrong devices, but also to prepare for later, when I will have to remove the entire dashboard to replace its leather. I have a small labelling printer so that was quite convenient to do:



Then I removed the seats:


The rest was very easy, basically the center console is held in place by only six screws. 4 on the sides (hidden behind some little plastic covers, you can see two of them on the picture above) and two screws at the front. You also need to separate the gearbox lever mechanism from the console, it's just two allen screws and one 10mm nut. That's quite simple, but it could have been easier if Maserati decided to put the side screws eleswhere so we wouldn't have to remove the seats. I guess it's doable without removing the seats but it must surely be a hassle.
The last thing to do was to disconnect the console wiring harness, the two plugs were located in the left side of the passenger footwell

Anyway, eventually the console was off the car:


It was the perfect opportunity to do a bit of cleaning, so I used a very good stain remover and cleaned the carpet. It looks good as new now.

The reason why I did all of this was to remove these two panels:


As you can see, they did not look good, so they will definitely benefit from some new leather. The difficulty here will clearly be to match the color, I'm not sure yet how I'm going to do this.

Actually, aside from taking the heavy seats out of the car without bumping into stuff, getting to separate these side panels from the rest of the central console was the biggest challenge. You litterally have to tear everything apart to get to the last screws. Litterally, every single part needs to come off. Problem is, some of the air ducts are riveted in place. So that means I had to drill the rivets. You cannot remove the cooling box and the side panels without drilling these rivets, there's no alternative.


Once this part is removed then the rest is easy.
I finally managed to remove the side panels at this point, and was just left with the central frame and its wiring harness:


I removed the wiring harness and then cleaned this part completely.
After this it was time to start reassembling everything back together. It took me 3 attempts, as I got confused in the assembly order. Each time I realized it after I riveted things back together, so I wasted a lot of time on this.
Eventually I got things right, so I was able to put it back on the car (minus the side panels, obviously):


I then put everything else back in, the seats, the screen, the gearbox lever assembly, etc.
Then I decided to relax and listen to some music a bit.

To my horror, the bass started rattling, just like it did before when I just bought the car... WTF, I thought I repaired this thing already!

So, back to work again, I took out the subwoofer and quickly found out that the superglue didn't do the trick. I suppose it's just too stif and brittle for this application, it's likely that it didn't like the vibrations plus the relatively high temperatures of this summer.
The central cone separated form the rest of the speaker just like before.
So this time, I decided to try another glue, I went for shoe sole glue, because it should be flexible and it should be able to sustain vibration and relatively warm temperatures.
I suppose time will tell us if this was a good choice, just like it told us that superglue wasn't.



I put the subwoofer back in the car and then I was finally able to relax a bit and listen to my favorite songs

Now I have taken out the two side panels I should be able to work on them without needing to hurry. I'm not sure yet what I'm going to do. Ideally I'd like to find a leather that would already be of the same color, but I think there is no chance I'll ever find that. So far the realistic plan is to use some white leather and then spray it with the appropriate color. I'd really prefer having a properly dyed materiall but no idea where I could find that, unfortunately.

The damage is very visible on the driver side. Passenger side looked mostly fine, except at the rear. I really don't like this material they used, it looks like it is some kind of sprayed latex or something. Surely it's convenient for making the panel, but it gets sticky and tends to disintegrate, it's not very durable.
w

At least the shape is not too complicated so wrapping it shouldn't be too hard, hopefully.