Hello, I am the unfortunate owner of this car. I have only owned it for around three months and am absolutely distraught with what's happened.
With regard to what happened and if there is anything that you guys can do to prevent it happening to you, I will try to describe what happened and let you decide. If I can pass on my powers of hindsight then I will!
I live in Dorset and set of to visit family in Nottingham. Shortly in to the journey the car started making a slight 'ticking' noise - not dissimilar to an exhaust manifold leak. The Oil pressure was at 5, the engine was running smoothly and all of the power was there ( here is the bit that kills me)
so I pressed on.
Nothing changed on the entire journey until we came off the motorway. When the revs dropped the engine was making a **** of a racket - like it was falling apart. Yet still the engine was revving smoothly, not running lumpy, no lights on the dash or anything. Anyway I called the AA who recommended me not to drive it any more and then spent most of the rest of the weekend in a big yellow truck with flashy lights. I had it recovered to Emblem in Poole and that is where the horror story unfolded....
It transpires that there was no oil getting to the top of the engine. It is still something of a mystery how, as the oil pressure was solid throughout. An oilway must've been blocked but how this happened...
So I'm left with a; Remove, strip investigate and repair. b; Remove and replace. c; Write the whole experience off as a bad job and move on.
Financially there is not a lot of difference between all three options but the whole point of having a Maserati was for enjoyment and fun - if I wanted 'a car' I could've bought a Focus!! Unfortunately for me I can no longer view this car as either enjoyable or fun, so for that reason moving on has to be the sensible option. I would not relish the thought of shelling out lots on a car just to sell it and go through the hassle of explaining to a buyer why I am selling it on so quickly and all of the work that it has recently had done and why, so I am being (I think) genuinely honest in my ebay ad and just moving on from this with the minimum of fuss, time and effort.
I spent months shopping for the car and went as far as Peterborough to look at them - that's a long way from Dorset!! This was 'a good one' and right for me. It has full service history from known specialists all the keys, paperwork and everything that you should look for. Emblem have assured me that the problem could not have been present when I bought it so I wasn't sold a pup - just massively unlucky. It galls me to think of all of the cars I rejected because of very trivial issues (not sure on the colour, has a service gap, no red key, has a service due etc) and wondering how many of those are still happily being driven by their new owners. But you spin the wheel, you take your chance...
So there it is. Is there anything you lot can do to stop it happening to you? I don't know. Be massively paranoid about every slight noise the car makes? Maybe. I wish I had have been - or maybe even the damage would have already been done by then? Who knows.
I'm not going to talk figures on here, other than what the ebay value is as that's no secret, but I do have a reasonable offer (more than you guys are offering!!!
) from a gentleman who sounds genuine and is intending to repair the car. Even after everything it has done to me it would still sicken me to see it scrapped.
Enjoy your cars Gents, they are beautiful. It's been emotional...
Joe.
