Valve adjustment & cam timing

In an as-yet unposted blog entry, I’ll entertain you with my clumsiness and all thumbs dexterity during some wrenching I did last year (2015), and which resulted in an unplanned visit to the emergency ward (mechanics) to pull the cam covers. Nothing serious, thankfully, but immensely educational and slightly punishing to my wallet. 

The mechanic was thoughtful enough while he was in there to measure the valve clearances (aka “lash”) as well as put a camera into each cylinder to see the condition of the pistons, valves and cylinder walls. The gods of metallurgy and chemistry have apparently smiled upon Sylvia, the cylinder walls showed no signs of wear or scoring, the pistons looked good and the valves as well. That would explain the excellent compression values and leak down results obtained earlier. 

There was however a problem with the valve clearances, several being far out of spec. He gave me a choice, he could do them (learning along the way, for Maserati has their own way of doing things which differs enough from his Ferrari experience that he can’t make any assumptions) or I could take a drive to a specialist on the continent to have a look at it. 

When one the choices includes a road trip, I’m pretty much sold already! So I packed a small bag, tossed my camera in the car and was on my way to Denmark to have the valves and cans adjusted. Coming off the ferry at night made for a beautiful “moon over Maserati” picture, as you can imagine. 

The mechanics in Denmark have been doing this, on these cars, for decades. They know their stuff. Sylvia turned out to be in good shape, but definitely in need of a valve adjustment, as well as tightening up the timing chain. After the job was done we fired her up and I can’t say I’ve ever heard her purr smoother or queiter than at that time. Beautiful! 

Even better was that due to the differences in labor costs, it was actually cheaper to drive to Denmark and have the job done than going local. Add to this the lack of local Maserati V8 specific knowledge and it’s a no-brainer. 

Now to tweak and adjust the carbs – again. I’m gradually becoming an expert at tuning webers. Not sure there’s much use for it, but it is a lot of fun!
Stay tuned.