GranSport Giallo Granturismo thread

[gotcha]

Hello all,

This is my first post on this forum, even though I was reading it for multiple years. I would like to introduce myself and document my recently started journey with my dream car - GranSport.

Deep in my heart I am Alfa Romeo guy, I do own and drive multiple Alfa Romeos and years ago I was quite active on Alfaowner forum. Since about 2015 I started to think about making one more automotive „step up“ and Maserati was an obvious choice for me. Took me some years to be ready with additional garage space and funds for an additional toy but finally now the “time was right” and in March/April I did fulfill my dream and bought a GranSport.

I was briefly considering QP GTS that I also deeply love and being a very big guy, I was not sure GS would be spacious enough for me, but at the same time 5m / 2 ton saloon didn’t seem ideal as a weekend fun toy. When I realized I can really fit in GS, all was decided.

With this purchase I am also re-motivated after many years to be a little active again on a car forum and in this thread, I would like to document my GranSport journey and a lot of servicing and mods that I started to do. I absolutely love any enjoy the car, even though for the last 2 months I am spending the majority of the time with spanners in the garage instead of driving it. However, for me both working on cars and driving them brings the same pleasure.

So here it is and I hope I will succeed with my first picture upload here

 

[GeoffCapes]

Lovely looking car!

There's another Giallo GS on the forum (AKA The Flying Banana).

Welcome!

 

[Bebs]

Welcome - great looking GS

 

[gotcha]

Thank you guys!



The car comes from Japan. It was first registered in March 2006 so I guess it will be a late 2005 manufactured car. Based on records it was driven in its first years, but mostly sitting in the last decade and it has only 53k kms.

About 2 years ago it was sold in Japan to a German trader and imported to Germany. The trader sold it to a French guy and the car spend last year in France as its first EU registration.
The French owner was a lovely guy, owns multiple Maserati’s, is very knowledgeable about them and works on them a lot too but in the end, he decided he needed to decrease his collection and put this one for sale.

I was looking for a "vivid” car. Red one, yellow one, white one…. Not easy ones to find. Over the years I saw some nice combinations, grey with red leather, blue with tan leather etc…. What I really didn’t want is a black car with black leather. It is very elegant combination, just not for me. And then I found this yellow one. Took a plane and went to see it immediately and once I saw it live, I fell in love. The seller was also wonderful guy, my first visit “to see” the car took like 6 hours and we discussed a lot. Definitely a guy from whom you like a to buy a car compared to a trader who has no idea about it. I bought the car in the first 45min, I just loved it so much, the rest of time we just chatted about it

Two weeks later I went to France again to pick it up and I drove it 1450km back home to Slovakia in one shot. What a trip a what better way to get to know a new car . It took me 13hours to make the 1450kms drive home including 3 short stops. Unlimited speed in Germany helped a lot as well

 

[safrane]

Welcome - Your cars English twin is on here

 

[gotcha]

At the same time, already the first drive home showed me many issues and I found even more at home. However, no regrets, no 15-20 years od car is perfect, and it will just give me more garage time with it I would expect any GS to have some issues at this age.

So what I found already on the drive home:

• Thermostat needs replacing. Temps sits around 70deg or under. Goes up to 90 in traffic jam or at long idle, when moving drops to 70 again. I guess it is partially stuck open.
• Oil pressure sensor is faulty. When driving sits permanently at the top of the scale. What I realized later, just with ignition on goes to 2 bar and if you sit in the car with ignition on it will jump to 5+bar/end of scale eventually. Without engine running.
• The outside temperature indicator changed from showing the outside temp to “E” few times. Sometimes it went back to showing temp by itself, sometimes after restart. Either it is faulty, or some other issue with HVAC. Later I found out A/C does not work. I bough the car at 4-8 degree temperature so I could not test it properly. Now with warm days I home I see it does not work. I don’t have the “E” issue anymore, the outside temp is showing, but A/C does not work.
• Rear tyres are from 2011. Plenty of thread, just old. Front ones are 2020.
• Putting left indicator light cancels cruise control. Probably connection, or broken wire, cruise control works fine, but if you want to change the lane and give left indicator – CC cancels.
• Headlamps are RHD. This is a small issue for LHD traffic, but the notch/step in the light pattern is not too big and they (especially left one) are adjusted down not to blind opposite traffic. Not urgent, but eventually I would prefer LHD headlamps.
• central locking sometimes does not lock/unlock the car
• drivers window sometimes does not return up after closing

What I found later:

• Puddle of red fluid by the front right wheel – steering rack is leaking via the right boot. Reservoir was empty. But PS worked fine. The leak was slow and gave me just enough time to arrive home with PS still working
• Both engine mounts and gearbox mount are collapsed, their bottoms are bulged out and filled with oil that leaked down.

Plus big service of all filters, fluids and consumables. And car detailing etc… Lot of work ahead that I will document here.

 

[Doohickey]

At the same time, already the first drive home showed me many issues and I found even more at home. However, no regrets, no 15-20 years od car is perfect, and it will just give me more garage time with it I would expect any GS to have some issues at this age.

So what I found already on the drive home:

• Thermostat needs replacing. Temps sits around 70deg or under. Goes up to 90 in traffic jam or at long idle, when moving drops to 70 again. I guess it is partially stuck open.
• Oil pressure sensor is faulty. When driving sits permanently at the top of the scale. What I realized later, just with ignition on goes to 2 bar and if you sit in the car with ignition on it will jump to 5+bar/end of scale eventually. Without engine running.
• The outside temperature indicator changed from showing the outside temp to “E” few times. Sometimes it went back to showing temp by itself, sometimes after restart. Either it is faulty, or some other issue with HVAC. Later I found out A/C does not work. I bough the car at 4-8 degree temperature so I could not test it properly. Now with warm days I home I see it does not work. I don’t have the “E” issue anymore, the outside temp is showing, but A/C does not work.
• Rear tyres are from 2011. Plenty of thread, just old. Front ones are 2020.
• Putting left indicator light cancels cruise control. Probably connection, or broken wire, cruise control works fine, but if you want to change the lane and give left indicator – CC cancels.
• Headlamps are RHD. This is a small issue for LHD traffic, but the notch/step in the light pattern is not too big and they (especially left one) are adjusted down not to blind opposite traffic. Not urgent, but eventually I would prefer LHD headlamps.
• central locking sometimes does not lock/unlock the car
• drivers window sometimes does not return up after closing

What I found later:

• Puddle of red fluid by the front right wheel – steering rack is leaking via the right boot. Reservoir was empty. But PS worked fine. The leak was slow and gave me just enough time to arrive home with PS still working
• Both engine mounts and gearbox mount are collapsed, their bottoms are bulged out and filled with oil that leaked down.

Plus big service of all filters, fluids and consumables. And car detailing etc… Lot of work ahead that I will document here.

Not sure about the other stuff but the temp reading sounds normal - at least that's what my Granturismo does.

 

[Andyk]

Welcome and what a great colour on a great car.

 

[mowlas]

Warm welcome to the forum and congratulations on your striking and fabulous looking GS! Wishing you luck on your continuing journey as well as plenty of support from this forum. What an amazing journey the car has had so far!

Out of interest (and forgive my ignorance), what is the root cause of the steering rack leaking? Is it that the boots/gaiters/o-rings are just meant to hold free-flowing steering fluid or something else at root? I need to do a fix as I also have a very slow leak and wondered what the root cause issue and fix might be?

 

[gotcha]

Not sure about the other stuff but the temp reading sounds normal - at least that's what my Granturismo does.

Thanks. I thought abbot that Maserati maybe displays real temp like early Alfas 156 and not "ECU filtered" temp that means the needle sits at 90 even though the engine is fluctuating 70-100degrees. But still will not hurt to replace a 17years old stat for a piece of mind and I want to flush the coolant as well.

 

[gotcha]

Warm welcome to the forum and congratulations on your striking and fabulous looking GS! Wishing you luck on your journey as well as plenty of support from this forum.

Out of interest (and forgive my ignorance), what is the root cause of the steering rack leaking? Is it that the boots/gaiters/o-rings are just meant to hold free-flowing steering fluid or something else at root? I need to do a fix as I also have a very slow leak and wondered what the root cause issue and fix might be?

It was internal seals on the right side of the rack. the fluid was leaking into the rubber boot and out. I sorted it already, will post in a minute.

 

[gotcha]

I started the first service with the obvious oil change. There are plenty of threads, so I will not post too much about it.

I drained the external tank, maybe over 6-7 liters of oil came out:



Than the actual sump that held maybe 1,5 liters:



I replaced the filter and filled with Millers:



Than I replaced the air filter in the front left wheel bay:



The old one was a bit dirty:



I removed the MAF and TB to clean them:



I took the sensor out of MAF and sprayed it with MAF cleaner:



And same job with TB, here is before and after shot:

 

[gotcha]

Than I had to sort the steering rack. It was slowly but constantly dripping from the right boot:



On the first look it looks "comfortably" located for removal, my first idea was to release it and slide to the side.

I unlocked the pin and nut connecting it the steering shaft:



Than I disconnected the two pipes connected to the rack, released the 4 rack bolts, disconnected the track rod ends from the wheel hubs and try to slide it to the left. No way, not enough space. So I had to release the front pipes with cats, drop ARB and the bracket behind. The front pipes do not need to be removed completely, just disconnected from the manifolds and dropped about 5-6 cm to give more space. I let them connected to the middle exhaust section, just hanging down. Then the rack can slide out and this is the space left after that.




The rack seemed to me nothing special or unique, usual TRW rack like on many other cars so I decide to look for a TRW rack refurb company.





I quickly found one, brought the rack to them. They called me in one hour that they disassembled it, they checked and they do have all seals in stock, so that can clean and check the internal components a put it back together with new seals. They also offered to tighten the track rods, they had some press to tighten ball joints. Next day morning I was returned a refurbed rack with tight track rods. It cost me 270€ to have it refurbed. Much better than new rack and much better than any used rack I see online.

 

[mowlas]

Than I had to sort the steering rack. It was slowly but constantly dripping from the right boot:

View attachment 100279

On the first look it looks "comfortably" located for removal, my first idea was to release it and slide to the side.

I unlocked the pin and nut connecting it the steering shaft:

View attachment 100280

Than I disconnected the two pipes connected to the rack, released the 4 rack bolts, disconnected the track rod ends from the wheel hubs and try to slide it to the left. No way, not enough space. So I had to release the front pipes with cats, drop ARB and the bracket behind. The front pipes do not need to be removed completely, just disconnected from the manifolds and dropped about 5-6 cm to give more space. I let them connected to the middle exhaust section, just hanging down. Then the rack can slide out and this is the space left after that.


View attachment 100281

The rack seemed to me nothing special or unique, usual TRW rack like on many other cars so I decide to look for a TRW rack refurb company.

View attachment 100282

View attachment 100283

I quickly found one, brought the rack to them. They called me in one hour that they disassembled it, they checked and they do have all seals in stock, so that can clean and check the internal components a put it back together with new seals. They also offered to tighten the track rods, they had some press to tighten ball joints. Next day morning I was returned a refurbed rack with tight track rods. It cost me 270€ to have it refurbed. Much better than new rack and much better than any used rack I see online.

View attachment 100284


View attachment 100285

Thank you so much for sharing! Absolutely brilliant info and insights! And impressive workmanship.

 

[UlstermanAbroad]

Welcome Gotcha
I'm fairly sure that your first thread has had more immediate and positive impact than any other that I've seen
for several years. Brilliant colour. Obviously you're the shy, quiet, introverted type
Great explanations of the work you're doing and excellent accompanying photos. I think that you might become an excellent source of technical help on the forum and that's always very very welcome.
I'm afraid that I've never been to Slovakia, though it is high on my bucket list, for many reasons. The closest I ever got
was skiing in the Tatra Mountains following an exhausting trip all around Poland, during the Cold War as we'd refer to it. The skiing was excellent. Unfortunately, the many flavours of vodka were too. I reckon that I only just made it out alive, by the slimmest of margins
Anyhoo. I think everyone would agree that whatever you'd like to share about your car and also where you live, would be very very welcome. For the most part, Slovakia seems to quietly go about getting better and better, without making a fuss or attracting much attention. As a local, your experience may differ of course
Welcome again Gotcha. This forum seems to be getting more international of late and that can only be a very good thing.

 

[PhillV8S]

Welcome, great to see a another Giallo Gransport here, what fine taste you have.
I haven’t done much with mine apart from fit some carbon seat backs for the front seats. I Just enjoy buzzing around the local lanes on a sunny Sunday.

 

[Andyk]

Welcome, great to see a another Giallo Gransport here, what fine taste you have.
I haven’t done much with mine apart from fit some carbon seat backs for the front seats. I Just enjoy buzzing around the local lanes on a sunny Sunday.

As always stunning. Who would have thought it was 13 years ago I test drove you very car at Dick Lovett Maserati in Swindon.

 

[Ewan]

They do look fabulous in yellow.
Congrats.

 

[PhillV8S]

As always stunning. Who would have thought it was 13 years ago I test drove you very car at Dick Lovett Maserati in Swindon.

Sometimes I think I have the forum bike. Or we all have great taste in cars…

 

[philw696]

Welcome and Well Done on buying your GS and starting a great thread along with pictures.
Keep them coming