Hello Everyone,
I'm finally back from my holiday, which was longer than expected due to some unfortunate health problems in my family. But hopefully now it should be better, so things can get back in order.
Anyway, during my holiday I still had the opportunity to work on a Maserati, just not my Quattroporte. This time it was my dad's 4200CC!
First thing was a problem with the windshield wipers that happened while I was driving. There was a huge storm, with torrential rain (and I mean really torrential, that was insane). After a few minutes some water found its way inside the cabin. Then a few minutes later the windhield wipers started acting funny... At first I couldn't stop them, or change gears then they just died entirely.
Luckily I was almost home at this point, thank god it didn't happen at the beginning of my 400km trip.
I had to do something about it, obviously, so first I gathered some information about how the windshield wiper system works. Apparently the control box for it is located on the transmission tunnel, on the driver's side.
So I took the side panel off, if was just a matter of removing a few screws:
As you can see, there are two little green electronic boxes: one is in charge of the door locks, the other is in charge of the winshield wipers.
They both were wet, so I knew right away the problem was there.
I pried open the cover of the windshield wiper ECU and here is how it looked like inside after a bit of cleaning:
A bit of some copper trace and a soledring pad were missing from it, which looked like a good reason why this thing stopped working.
So I bridged it back and then put some varnish on it in order to protect from corrosion:
Great success, the wipers are working fine again, yay!
I decided to add a bit of silicone sealant to the casing in order to prevent water from entering in the future. Hopefully it stays dry for a while. Also did the same on the door lock module, as there was a bit of water in it as well.
I also investigated the cause for this water ingestion, so I removed the windshield wiper cowl. There was some debris but nothing was really clogged, just a few leaves. I guess it was just too much water for too long and the water evacuation sytem just isn't designed for that much water at once. Anyway, I cleaned everything for good measure. Now I realize I forgot to change the pollen filter while I was at it. That'll be for next time I guess.
On the next few days I discussed with my dad about the car maintenance and learned something I wasn't expecting: this car might very well be the one with the oldest/highest mileage clutch in the world.
I mean I'm not sure what is the actual record for a cambiocorsa, but on this car the clutch has been changed in 2004 or 2005 at 30 000km. Now it's 2025 and the car has done 150 000km exactly.
So this means that the clutch is more than
20 years old and 120 000km!! Did anyone manage to do more than this?
This car has not been feathered, it's been driven relatively hard in all kind of conditions. It made a lot of city trips, small countryside roads, autobahn, you name it. It's not like it's been babysitted at all! Most of the time on sport mode, virtually never in auto mode, always manual.
It still works very well, the PIS is perfect, the only issue is a noise from the spigot bearing under hard acceleration from standstill (so we do our best to avoid doing that, we wait for the clutch to finish biting before flooring the accelerator)
I was sure that the clutch would have been changed at least two or three times, but my dad said he only done it once at the very beginning of the car ownership. I'm still very much surprized about it, because the clutch still works perfectly fine.
Anyway, I guess that means it will be a task to be done soon.
There was another thing that seemed to have never been done on this car yet: the accessory belt...
At idle I could hear a weird clacking noise, at first I thought something might be wrong with the engine but then I looked at the belt and quickly understood: it was missing entire chunks of it!
Here is just one of them, but there were like 5 or 6 spots like this all around the belt. It's a small miracle this thing was even working at all. I managed to do about 800km this way (the new belt took a while to arrive).
Never seen a belt so toast.
So that was time for a belt change, first time I do that on a car. It is fairly easy on the 4200CC. You don't need a lift, you don't even need access to the bottom of the car, everything can be done from the top.
I chose to change the entire system and not only the belt, so that meant I had to change the belt tightening pulley as well as the belt tensioner pulley assembly. I ordered these on eurospares for around 250 Euro which wasn't too horribly expensive. My bearings weren't loud or anything, but the plastic wheels were a bit worn.
First thing is to remove the mass Air flow sensor and the throttle body in order to get some space.
Then a long wrench with a 15mm socket, turning counterclockwise on the tensioner screw to remove the tension, and in the meantime removing the old belt. Easy.
After this you can remove the belt tightening pulley (the one on the top). It took a 17mm wrench, but I couldn't remove the screw entirely, because it was hitting the metal tube that is used for the auxiliary air supply for the catalysers pre heating. So I had to loosen the screw that held this metal pipe, then pry a little bit with a screwdriver to get the tube out of the way just enough to remove the pulley. Worked well.
Here's a picture to illustrate what I'm talking about, the pully is held by the screw in orange (I removed the pulley for clarity), but it hits the pipe in blue. By loosening the screw in green you can wiggle the pipe just enough to remove the pulley.
Next was to remove the tensioner. It isn't difficult but there isn't much space and you can't see the screw, at least from the top of the car. With the help of a long bar and a few sockets ( I think it was a 13mm but not sure) it finally came off. It wasn't difficult at all to remove it, it's just that you can't really see what you're doing so it's a bit awkward:
As you can see, it had developped pretty deep grooves already, the plastic wheel was on its last leg.
I gave everything a good cleaning, then put the new parts in. Nothing special, just the same thing but reversed. The tensioner is a little bit difficult to fit in because you don't see anything and there is little space for the arms, but it's totally doable with a bit of patience. Also, make sure you fit the top pulley the right way. At first I put it the wrong way around and the belt wasn't at all running on the middle of the pulley. I took it off and reversed it and it solved the problem.
Anyway, I eventually got it right:
Went for a ride and no problem, everything works well and the engine doesn't make weird noises anymore.
It's such a fun car, I love how violent the transmission is, you just can't wipe the smile off your face everytime you change a gear.
I have a few things to repair on this car (air conditioning leak, roof liner, sticky buttons, small play in the rear suspension, steering ball joints and very likely a heater core), but these are to be expected on a 23 years old car. Aside form these minor details it is still driving excellent and the car is in overall great condition. The 4200 is electronically vastly simpler than the Quattroporte, so it should probably age relatively well.
) - please keep up the good work !
