DIY Adventures With a 2009 Quattroporte S
- Thread starter Neptune.
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Bebs
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Ditto, although I think I’m even below 1%, but that’s probably due to a lot of long distance touring.
Neptune.
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Awesome, thank you so much for your answer it helps tremendously, but I read the info a bit too late as I've already finished the job so I coudn't do it yesterday lol
(entirely my fault, I should have asked earlier. But I'll do it someday later anyway)
That's on my to do list but not for now. It's the first time I took away the intake and it was a bit intimidating, so I thought I'd keep it simple for now and just do the alternator as I'm still a total noob. I will do the valve covers for sure, but I need to prepare for that (I need to buy the gaskets but also I need to find a good paint or, better, find someone who can professionally paint the covers for me).
That'll be for someday soon, but not now, although I entirely agree with you it would have been a relatively simple job starting from there.
Anyway, here's a recap of what I've done over the past week:
Came back to China after nearly two months abroad. I was expecting the battery to be completely flat, but to my great surprise it wasn't and the car started immediately. That was a nice surprise.
I then decided to change my accessory and water belts + pulleys. It went well (I'll do an other post about that later to explain how it's done, it's more complicated than on the 4200CC)
Then right after changing the belts I drove the car for a few hours in the Chinese scorching heat... and suddenly the battery logo popped out on the dash.
I knew what it meant. Actually I was suspecting something wrong with the alternator for a few months already, since I used my thermal imaging camera and saw that it was much, much hotter than the engine around it. I also had some weird symptoms, like the engine idle becoming unstable whenever the cooling fan was on, and also the fact that the battery was never really fully charged. I wasn't 100% sure, but I knew something was up with the alternator somehow.
So anyway, the battery logo popped on the dash, so I quickly went back home and put a multimeter on the battery with engine ON: 11.5V . Ok, alternator's toast.
So I immediately bought a new alternator. Official maserati approved one was 700Euro while the chinese copy was only 180.
So, you know me, I chose the chinese copy immediately. Time will tell if this was a good idea or not, I will keep the burnt one and try to repair it anyway, if possible with upgrades.
Then it was time to actually remove the old alternator.
First removing the air filter, Mass air flow sensor and throttle body, then the windshield wipers and all their surrounding plastics. This isn't very difficult but it does take a long time.
Next was to remove the fuel lines, vacuum lines and everything that's attached to the intake plenum.
Finally, remove all the screws that secure the plenum onto the engine block and lift it carefully so as not to damage the seals underneath. Then you get access to the alternator and it's easy to remove it
It was most definitely the culprit:
Apparently some plug inside it was slightly loose, I guess it was arcing for a while, then melted enventually. I'll see if I can rebuild this later.
Then I had to wait two days for the new alternator to arrive, so in the meantime I decided to clean a few stuff:
I cleaned the plenum gaskets as well as the inside of the plenum tubes (at least the parts I could access). The plenum wasn't very clean, lots of black soot everywhere. I also contemplated the idea of hydrodipping the entire plenum with a carbon film, but I didn't have a big enough tub. Maybe someday later, I don't know.
Also cleaned the engine, in order to better spot the origin of some leaks:
Before
After
Not perfect but a lot cleaner.
Looks like someone fiddled with the pipe of doom at some point in this car's life. There are two metal collars and they don't look original.
Now I know how to remove the plenum and it's not such a big deal so I'm not too afraid anymore, I can always change this pipe if it causes me trouble later on.
Also cleaned the injectors (just the outside, electric plug, seals and whatnot):
I will try to build myself an injector testing machine (or maybe buy one if I can find a really cheap unit), as I would like to check if all my injectors are in good condition.
That'll be a project for later.
Finally my new El Cheapo alternator arrived. We'll see how long it lasts... I hope it will survive for at least a few years. Visually it didnt look any different from the original.
It was time to fit it in its new home:
First thing I did was to put back the belt, as it was very accessible this way:
Then it was just a matter of putting things back together the same way they went out.
I took great care of not damaging the intake seals, so what I did was to put every screw and tun them 2-3 turns just so they wouldn't fall off. Then I lifted the plenum one last time and dropped it slowly in place. After that I tightened all the screws in several steps, and a final torque down to 10N.m.
The rest went relatively smoothly.
I fired the engine and everthing was running smooth, great! So I jumped in the car and went for a ride.
And then, after a few kilometers.... poof. Engine lost all of its power and slowly died. Horror.
I stopped on the sidewalk and took my OBD reader: no error code! WTF is going on?
Thinked about it for a while and then it hit me: maybe this weird ghetto "repair" I've seen in the trunk a few months ago could be the culprit?
In the trunk, above the battery, there are a few fuses. I'm not sure what they do exactly because I couldn't find the information anywhere in the manuals, but I know for sure one of them is responsible for the fuel pumps. And I also know that someone "fixed" one of the fuses with a bit of wire. Probably something temporary at that time, but it's still there.
You can see it on the picture, it's this weird little green wire. There used to be a real fuse here. Could this be the fuse for the fuel pumps? that would explain why the engine died like this.
Well, bingo! That wire was disconnected somehow!
I connected it back however I could and the engine fired right away! what a relief!
So I was able to get back home, secure the wire a bit better and went for a 30 minutes ride with no trouble this time. I'll get a new fuse and things should be good.
I was extremely lucky to find the cause this time, I was almost sure I did something wrong and was ready to have the car towed to an actual shop for super expensive repairs... What a stress!
zagatoes30
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As always great work and great write up, strange how things that ave worked for ages suddenly stop due to a wire becoming disconnected we have just had this issue with a domestic plus socket that is behind the washing machine and which could never have moved, very strange.
Neptune.
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Some little side quest of yesterday, doing a bit of hydrodipping.
No real reason other than it was the perfect temperature for doing hydrodipping (27 degree C), so I thought I'd had a bit of fun.
All you need is a container full of tap water, some hydro dipping activator liquid and of course the hydrodipping film:
The part needs to be painted first otherwise the film won't stick to it. Any random spay paint does the trick. Once the part is dried you just place the film on the water, wait 2 minutes then spay the activator liquid onto the film with a spray gun. Then you can dip the object.
Rinse, wait for it to dry and you get cool patterns like this:
It was mostly for fun, it's not like it's very noticeable once in the engine bay anyway.
Next I did something that was bothering me a bit since I got the car: the rust on the master cylinder.
So masking and spray painting:
Looks a lot cleaner now. It was a small detail but somehow it made a difference:
Only thing that still bothers me is the cam covers. It's very sad to see that beautiful paint peeling. But that'll be for another time, now I'd rather enjoy the car for a bit.
Finally I put back all the plastic shields to make sure no one sees that beautiful, freshly painted master cylinder
Went for a ride and all is good, the car drives great and I have a lot of fun with it.
No real reason other than it was the perfect temperature for doing hydrodipping (27 degree C), so I thought I'd had a bit of fun.
All you need is a container full of tap water, some hydro dipping activator liquid and of course the hydrodipping film:
The part needs to be painted first otherwise the film won't stick to it. Any random spay paint does the trick. Once the part is dried you just place the film on the water, wait 2 minutes then spay the activator liquid onto the film with a spray gun. Then you can dip the object.
Rinse, wait for it to dry and you get cool patterns like this:
It was mostly for fun, it's not like it's very noticeable once in the engine bay anyway.
Next I did something that was bothering me a bit since I got the car: the rust on the master cylinder.
So masking and spray painting:
Looks a lot cleaner now. It was a small detail but somehow it made a difference:
Only thing that still bothers me is the cam covers. It's very sad to see that beautiful paint peeling. But that'll be for another time, now I'd rather enjoy the car for a bit.
Finally I put back all the plastic shields to make sure no one sees that beautiful, freshly painted master cylinder
Went for a ride and all is good, the car drives great and I have a lot of fun with it.
Neptune.
Member
- Messages
- 295
I almost forgot to document it, but I also changed the belts.
The 4.7L quattroporte has two belts, one for the accessories (alternator, steering pump and airconditioner compressor) and an other one for the water pump.
The first one is relatively straightforward to replace as it has a tensioner, but the second one is a little bit more tricky because there is no tensioner on it, so it needs to be installed pretty tight.
Here is a small recap/tutorial of how it's done:
First you have to remove the Air box and air filter to make room:
Then there are two choices: either cut the old belt, which is what most people do, or try to remove it without damaging it too much, which is what I did.
I chose to do it this way just in case I mess up the new belt, it would give me a backup option.
So, in order to do this you need to turn the cranckshaft manually by turning the main cranckshaft nut with a big 36mm socket, like this one:
Then put a flat screwdriver between the belt and the cranckshaft pulley an turn it CLOCKWISE. The belt shouldn't be too difficult to remove
Next, take a 15mm socket and a long bar then use it to release the tension on the belt tensioner by turning the tensioner bolt counterclockwise. While doing this, you can remove the old accessory belt.
It is easier to remove it from one of the plastic pulleys, don't try to remove it at the alternator, because the alternator has a deep flange and it is difficult to stretch the belt around it. Going around the non flanged pulleys take no effort.
As you can see, my plastic pulleys have developped relatively deep grooves. Not horrific, Iv'e seen way worse, but still, not great.
The belt itself was in pristine condition, it was probably changed recently, I'll keep it as a spare just in case.
So it was time to remove all the pulleys. The tensioner pulley was easy, (13mm screw I think) the large plastic pulley was also easy (17mm screw), but the little one that goes right under the alternator didn't want to get out after removing its screw.
I had to use a bearing extractor for this. It's wasn't very difficult but space was limited so you need a small extractor. I had to modify mine slightly with an angle grinder because the claws didn't fit under the pulley:
At this point I realized that one of the new pulleys was a fair bit larger than the original one:
After carefully checking it seemed like there was no interference with anything else and things should work just fine, so I went ahead and installed all the new pulleys, after giving a good cleaning to the engine block of course.
Then it was time for the new belt.
Here is a good tip for belt reinstall as it's not as easy as it was on the 4200GT, for some reason:
The key is that you want to finish with the tensioner pulley, so first, you put the belt around the cranckshaft, then the air conditioner compressor, then the steering pump and the pulley right next to it.
After this step, you put the belt around your 15mm socket and push the tensioner a bit, but without putting the belt around the tensioner pulley itself. At this point you need to put the belt around the alternator's pulley, while maintaining pressure on the tensioner all along.
Once this is done, you can put the belt around the tensioner pulley and voila, job done.
I tried other methods before and none worked, they could potentially work with 3 hands or if you applied lots of force with a screwdriver, but this method litterally took zero effort, just a bit of thinking/logic.
New belt in:
Last but certainly not least was the water pump belt.
I did not have the recommended fancy tool to put the belt back, but I had a zip tie.
So the technique is to put the belt around one pulley, then to use the zip tie to secure it in the grooves of the other pulley, like this:
Then you just turn the engine using the 36mm socket on the cranckshaft bolt and job done!
That was surprizingly easy. The zip tie technique worked wonders.
After that you just put back the airbox, throttle body and other stuff and you're good to go.
In my case, the alternator decided to release the magic smoke litterally 2 hours after I did that job, so I had to do it all over again
Anyway, not a difficult job, just make sure you have the appropriate tools like a small extractor and of course the mighty zip tie!
Took me like 3-4 hours in total because I didn't know what I was doing and I was very cautious, but next time I believe I could do it in less than one hour. I recommend changing the entire system every time, as it's not very difficult to change the pulleys and they aren't very expensive anyway.
The 4.7L quattroporte has two belts, one for the accessories (alternator, steering pump and airconditioner compressor) and an other one for the water pump.
The first one is relatively straightforward to replace as it has a tensioner, but the second one is a little bit more tricky because there is no tensioner on it, so it needs to be installed pretty tight.
Here is a small recap/tutorial of how it's done:
First you have to remove the Air box and air filter to make room:
Then there are two choices: either cut the old belt, which is what most people do, or try to remove it without damaging it too much, which is what I did.
I chose to do it this way just in case I mess up the new belt, it would give me a backup option.
So, in order to do this you need to turn the cranckshaft manually by turning the main cranckshaft nut with a big 36mm socket, like this one:
Then put a flat screwdriver between the belt and the cranckshaft pulley an turn it CLOCKWISE. The belt shouldn't be too difficult to remove
Next, take a 15mm socket and a long bar then use it to release the tension on the belt tensioner by turning the tensioner bolt counterclockwise. While doing this, you can remove the old accessory belt.
It is easier to remove it from one of the plastic pulleys, don't try to remove it at the alternator, because the alternator has a deep flange and it is difficult to stretch the belt around it. Going around the non flanged pulleys take no effort.
As you can see, my plastic pulleys have developped relatively deep grooves. Not horrific, Iv'e seen way worse, but still, not great.
The belt itself was in pristine condition, it was probably changed recently, I'll keep it as a spare just in case.
So it was time to remove all the pulleys. The tensioner pulley was easy, (13mm screw I think) the large plastic pulley was also easy (17mm screw), but the little one that goes right under the alternator didn't want to get out after removing its screw.
I had to use a bearing extractor for this. It's wasn't very difficult but space was limited so you need a small extractor. I had to modify mine slightly with an angle grinder because the claws didn't fit under the pulley:
At this point I realized that one of the new pulleys was a fair bit larger than the original one:
After carefully checking it seemed like there was no interference with anything else and things should work just fine, so I went ahead and installed all the new pulleys, after giving a good cleaning to the engine block of course.
Then it was time for the new belt.
Here is a good tip for belt reinstall as it's not as easy as it was on the 4200GT, for some reason:
The key is that you want to finish with the tensioner pulley, so first, you put the belt around the cranckshaft, then the air conditioner compressor, then the steering pump and the pulley right next to it.
After this step, you put the belt around your 15mm socket and push the tensioner a bit, but without putting the belt around the tensioner pulley itself. At this point you need to put the belt around the alternator's pulley, while maintaining pressure on the tensioner all along.
Once this is done, you can put the belt around the tensioner pulley and voila, job done.
I tried other methods before and none worked, they could potentially work with 3 hands or if you applied lots of force with a screwdriver, but this method litterally took zero effort, just a bit of thinking/logic.
New belt in:
Last but certainly not least was the water pump belt.
I did not have the recommended fancy tool to put the belt back, but I had a zip tie.
So the technique is to put the belt around one pulley, then to use the zip tie to secure it in the grooves of the other pulley, like this:
Then you just turn the engine using the 36mm socket on the cranckshaft bolt and job done!
That was surprizingly easy. The zip tie technique worked wonders.
After that you just put back the airbox, throttle body and other stuff and you're good to go.
In my case, the alternator decided to release the magic smoke litterally 2 hours after I did that job, so I had to do it all over again
Anyway, not a difficult job, just make sure you have the appropriate tools like a small extractor and of course the mighty zip tie!
Took me like 3-4 hours in total because I didn't know what I was doing and I was very cautious, but next time I believe I could do it in less than one hour. I recommend changing the entire system every time, as it's not very difficult to change the pulleys and they aren't very expensive anyway.
Last edited:
Neptune.
Member
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- 295
Well, bad news, unfortunately after 10+ years of loyal service my company fired me because of economic reasons. So that means there probably won't be much more updates for a while, as I will need to find a new job which apparently won't be an easy task at all so I'll probably even have to leave China. That sucks.
Hopefully I will be able to keep my car, but I don't know how long I'll be able to afford it.
Anyway, before I pause this thread, here is the last repair I've done, in case it helps someone with similar issues: No sound coming from the stereo system.
For some reason, one day I sat on my car, turned the stereo on... and no sound came out.
So I started by trying the basic stuff, like going into the menus and making sure that the settings weren't messed up, pressing the mute button on the steering wheel, restarting the car several times, disconnected and reconnected the battery. That made no difference.
That left me with at least the following possibilities:
-Defective NIT
-Bad wiring
-blown fuse
-Bad amplifier
-Shorted wires on a speaker
My original guess was something bad in the wiring from the NIT to the amplifier, as I removed the NIT not long ago in order to find the source of a ticking noise that I could hear on bad roads or when the car vibrated. But a guess is just a guess, what matters is hard evidence.
So first thing I did was to remove the amplifier in order to access its wiring, because it's is the central point where most things are happening, plus it was easier than removing the NIT console.
The amplifier is installed in the rear trunk/boot, on the left side. To access it you have to remove all the carpets, which isn't difficult but a little bit time consuming. Then there are 3 screws that secure the amplifier bracket as well as the parking sensors computer. You can then remove the whole assembly.
If all goes well, you should end up with this thing on your bench:
-The orange arrow plug has 8 wires. One large gage red wire for the main power that goes directly to the battery positive terminal. One other large gage black wire going to ground. The remaining 6 wires are grouped in pairs of the same color, going to 3 different speakers going somewhere in the car.
-The blue arrow plug is the output for the other 4 speakers, 4 pairs of wires
-The red arrow plug is the input coming from the NIT. One of the wires (top right corner when you face the amp plug) is the wake up signal. The amp will not start working if there is not 12V coming to this pin. The amp is awaken everytime you open a door, so to see if this works you should just connect a multimeter to this pin, open your door and see if there's 12V. All the other wires are pairs of wires coming from the NIT, each pair carries the sound signal to be amplified
The first goal here was to see if the NIT was working as it should, and if it did indeed send the sound signals to the amplifier.
In order to check this, I used a small speaker that had a standard 3.5mm jack plug. You can use pretty much any speaker, I suppose headphones should also work just fine. Taped two wires onto the jack, like this:
Then connected the wires onto one of the pair of wires coming from the NIT, like so:
Turned on the stereo and, great news, got sound coming out of the little speaker!
That meant the problem wasn't the NIT and it wasn't even the wiring coming from the NIT to the amp. So my first guess was wrong, wiring had nothing to do with this.
Next was to check the speakers for short as apparently that can stop all sound coming out of the stereo. I did this by putting my multimeter in ohm meter mode and checking each pair of wire going to each speaker. The values seemed normal (a few ohms for most speakers, and a few mega ohm for a few other speakers which I assume have some electronics attached to it). Anyway, didn't see a short.
So at that point it could logically only mean one thing: a defective amplifier.
I opened the amp, which was just a matter of removing a few screws, and got access to the electronic board:
Unfortunately, I didn't see anything obvious.
Then I started probing voltages around, in order to see if there could be issues with power management, as it is often one of the first things that fail on electronic devices.
On this board there are two main power converters. The first one is on the top left corner on the above picture, it converts the 12V power into 5V, only if it gets a 12V signal coming from the door opening sensor. So I gave power to the board and also put 12V on the door sensor input pin, then measured the voltage coming out of the chip: 5V, all normal.
Next, there is another, much smaller power converter, which is a dual voltage regulator that takes the 5V and provides 3.3V and 1.2V. I think the 3.3V goes to the CPU and the 1.2V maybe to the memory, I'm not sure. Here again, I probed the voltages and it did deliver 3.3V on the first output... but it only delivered 0.6V on the second one!
Aha, finally something that wasn't normal! Could this be the problem?
So I used my microscope and read the markings, the chip was a 2L05 made by ST microelectronics. Luckily it was very easy to source, so I bought one for 1.46 Euro.
I could have tried to replace it myself, but one of my colleagues is extremely skilled at soldering, so I thought I'd just ask him to do it instead, less chances of messing up something.
It took him less than 2 minutes, didn't even break a sweat:
New chip installed:
It was now time to test, so I put everything back in the car... turned the key, put on some music.... and YES, it worked!
What a relief!
I tested the unit for a few hours and so far so good. I hope this lasts.
Anyway, that's all for now. I hope to be back someday soon with better news, but I'm quite pessimistic as to what is going to happen in the coming months. Now is really not a good time to be jobless.
Thanks to everyone who's been following this thread and hopefully see you later.
Hopefully I will be able to keep my car, but I don't know how long I'll be able to afford it.
Anyway, before I pause this thread, here is the last repair I've done, in case it helps someone with similar issues: No sound coming from the stereo system.
For some reason, one day I sat on my car, turned the stereo on... and no sound came out.
So I started by trying the basic stuff, like going into the menus and making sure that the settings weren't messed up, pressing the mute button on the steering wheel, restarting the car several times, disconnected and reconnected the battery. That made no difference.
That left me with at least the following possibilities:
-Defective NIT
-Bad wiring
-blown fuse
-Bad amplifier
-Shorted wires on a speaker
My original guess was something bad in the wiring from the NIT to the amplifier, as I removed the NIT not long ago in order to find the source of a ticking noise that I could hear on bad roads or when the car vibrated. But a guess is just a guess, what matters is hard evidence.
So first thing I did was to remove the amplifier in order to access its wiring, because it's is the central point where most things are happening, plus it was easier than removing the NIT console.
The amplifier is installed in the rear trunk/boot, on the left side. To access it you have to remove all the carpets, which isn't difficult but a little bit time consuming. Then there are 3 screws that secure the amplifier bracket as well as the parking sensors computer. You can then remove the whole assembly.
If all goes well, you should end up with this thing on your bench:
-The orange arrow plug has 8 wires. One large gage red wire for the main power that goes directly to the battery positive terminal. One other large gage black wire going to ground. The remaining 6 wires are grouped in pairs of the same color, going to 3 different speakers going somewhere in the car.
-The blue arrow plug is the output for the other 4 speakers, 4 pairs of wires
-The red arrow plug is the input coming from the NIT. One of the wires (top right corner when you face the amp plug) is the wake up signal. The amp will not start working if there is not 12V coming to this pin. The amp is awaken everytime you open a door, so to see if this works you should just connect a multimeter to this pin, open your door and see if there's 12V. All the other wires are pairs of wires coming from the NIT, each pair carries the sound signal to be amplified
The first goal here was to see if the NIT was working as it should, and if it did indeed send the sound signals to the amplifier.
In order to check this, I used a small speaker that had a standard 3.5mm jack plug. You can use pretty much any speaker, I suppose headphones should also work just fine. Taped two wires onto the jack, like this:
Then connected the wires onto one of the pair of wires coming from the NIT, like so:
Turned on the stereo and, great news, got sound coming out of the little speaker!
That meant the problem wasn't the NIT and it wasn't even the wiring coming from the NIT to the amp. So my first guess was wrong, wiring had nothing to do with this.
Next was to check the speakers for short as apparently that can stop all sound coming out of the stereo. I did this by putting my multimeter in ohm meter mode and checking each pair of wire going to each speaker. The values seemed normal (a few ohms for most speakers, and a few mega ohm for a few other speakers which I assume have some electronics attached to it). Anyway, didn't see a short.
So at that point it could logically only mean one thing: a defective amplifier.
I opened the amp, which was just a matter of removing a few screws, and got access to the electronic board:
Unfortunately, I didn't see anything obvious.
Then I started probing voltages around, in order to see if there could be issues with power management, as it is often one of the first things that fail on electronic devices.
On this board there are two main power converters. The first one is on the top left corner on the above picture, it converts the 12V power into 5V, only if it gets a 12V signal coming from the door opening sensor. So I gave power to the board and also put 12V on the door sensor input pin, then measured the voltage coming out of the chip: 5V, all normal.
Next, there is another, much smaller power converter, which is a dual voltage regulator that takes the 5V and provides 3.3V and 1.2V. I think the 3.3V goes to the CPU and the 1.2V maybe to the memory, I'm not sure. Here again, I probed the voltages and it did deliver 3.3V on the first output... but it only delivered 0.6V on the second one!
Aha, finally something that wasn't normal! Could this be the problem?
So I used my microscope and read the markings, the chip was a 2L05 made by ST microelectronics. Luckily it was very easy to source, so I bought one for 1.46 Euro.
I could have tried to replace it myself, but one of my colleagues is extremely skilled at soldering, so I thought I'd just ask him to do it instead, less chances of messing up something.
It took him less than 2 minutes, didn't even break a sweat:
New chip installed:
It was now time to test, so I put everything back in the car... turned the key, put on some music.... and YES, it worked!
What a relief!
I tested the unit for a few hours and so far so good. I hope this lasts.
Anyway, that's all for now. I hope to be back someday soon with better news, but I'm quite pessimistic as to what is going to happen in the coming months. Now is really not a good time to be jobless.
Thanks to everyone who's been following this thread and hopefully see you later.
Last edited:
zagatoes30
Member
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- 24,736
Not great news hope you find something new and don't need to let the QP go, fingers crossed
Motorsport3
Member
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- 1,105
Im sorry to hear the news, but you are evidently very talented and I'm sure you will find an new role soon.
James3200GTA
Member
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- 732
Sorry for the bad news. But a guy with your skills should be able to find a job anywhere.
Thanks and very much success with your future endaevours.
Thanks and very much success with your future endaevours.
philw696
Member
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- 32,531
Now there's a thought just wishing I was younger Peter.
Harvey_Tim
Member
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- 492
Very sorry to hear of your employment issues, not good at all. I wish you the best and hope you are able to keep hold of your car, your posts have been very inspirational and have prompted me to work more on my QPV.