Maserati

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  • ron ll
    Seattle WA USA (Ballard)
    • Oct 2005
    • 24273

    Maserati

    Forum member Chris who is chronicling his restoration of his troller above decks happened to mention his formerly owned Maserati. It looks to be a beautiful car and Chris hints that the back story may be interesting. So hopefully we can entice him to flesh it out a bit more here.

    6683894B-F2A9-429F-86DE-DC10B837732E.jpg
  • ron ll
    Seattle WA USA (Ballard)
    • Oct 2005
    • 24273

    #2
    Re: Maserati

    941630E7-9A6D-47D4-A279-FEB1F5EE5FDC.jpg

    23D4F941-F886-4AB7-B3D5-F0D83EA428A9.jpg

    Comment

    • jsjpd1
      mmmm....boat good.
      • Oct 2009
      • 5126

      #3
      Re: Maserati

      Anything that starts out, "So, I found this in a Ferrari dealership's basement covered in dust and not running", has to be a good one.
      -Jim

      Sucker for a pretty face.
      1934 27' Blanchard Cuiser ~ Amazon, Ex. Emalu
      19'6" Caledonia Yawl ~ Sparrow

      Getting into trouble one board at a time.

      Comment

      • cstevens
        Dreaming of a boat
        • Nov 2014
        • 6357

        #4
        Re: Maserati

        I sure loved that car. And yes, there is a story worth telling. Time for dinner but I'll be back.
        - Chris

        Any single boat project will always expand to encompass the set of all possible boat projects.

        Life is short. Go boating now!

        Comment

        • cstevens
          Dreaming of a boat
          • Nov 2014
          • 6357

          #5
          Re: Maserati

          Ok. The Maserati. It's a 1966 Maserati Sebring II with a 4.0 liter DOHC six derived from the 250F GP engine. Six cylinders. Three Weber DCOE carburetors, twin plugs... More GT than sports car, a 2+2 with small back seats and power windows, it was no lightweight but it was a rush to drive on any road. And the noise from those carbs with the throttles wide open was something to hear. But, I'm getting ahead of things a bit.

          The story really begins with this car and a visit to my grandparents in Maine as a boy in the late 70s:



          That's a Maserati 200si. In my opinion the loveliest and most desirable racing car of all time. Just a little two liter four-cylinder, DOHC engine. Not a fire breathing 450S with a great honking V8. Not as rarified as a contemporary V12 Ferrari. But oh so much cooler than any of those cars to my 10-year-old self. Restored from the frame up by my Dad's father, it was one of a small collection of rare sports and racing cars - a varying group of OSCAs, Maseratis, Austin-Healeys, MGs and Alfa Romeos - that he kept throughout most of my childhood.

          The 200si is in England now, but I remember it sitting under a cotton MG Mitten cover in my grandfather's garage for years. The ultimate treat was when he would take me in and pull the cover off so I could look at it - look but never touch. We lived in Seattle so I only saw my grandparents every few years, which added to the excitement whenever I was given a chance to visit.

          But on this trip, in 1978 or so, the Maserati need new tabs. Back then it was just an old car. Road registered. And to renew the registration it needed to be inspected so he rolled it out of the garage, fired up that wonderful engine and told me to hop in. No seat belts. No roll bar. Not even the slightest sop to safety. We roared out of the driveway and down the hill into town. And my fate as a committed gearhead was well and truly sealed.

          To be continued...
          - Chris

          Any single boat project will always expand to encompass the set of all possible boat projects.

          Life is short. Go boating now!

          Comment

          • David G
            Senior Member
            • Dec 2003
            • 89687

            #6
            Re: Maserati

            I hope you're continuing... I just made a fresh batch of popcorn <G>
            David G
            Harbor Woodworks
            https://www.facebook.com/HarborWoodworks/

            "It was a Sunday morning and Goddard gave thanks that there were still places where one could worship in temples not made by human hands." -- L. F. Herreshoff (The Compleat Cruiser)

            Comment

            • jsjpd1
              mmmm....boat good.
              • Oct 2009
              • 5126

              #7
              Re: Maserati

              You had me at, Grandpa had a collection of race and sports cars.

              Don't stop now!
              -Jim

              Sucker for a pretty face.
              1934 27' Blanchard Cuiser ~ Amazon, Ex. Emalu
              19'6" Caledonia Yawl ~ Sparrow

              Getting into trouble one board at a time.

              Comment

              • cstevens
                Dreaming of a boat
                • Nov 2014
                • 6357

                #8
                Re: Maserati

                Working on it... Stay tuned.
                - Chris

                Any single boat project will always expand to encompass the set of all possible boat projects.

                Life is short. Go boating now!

                Comment

                • cstevens
                  Dreaming of a boat
                  • Nov 2014
                  • 6357

                  #9
                  Re: Maserati

                  After that trip to Maine I was car-obsessed. Even after we moved aboard the St. Brendan, a 40' Matthews, and I started my affair with old wooden boats, I loved cars just as much. My grandfather would send me his old copies of Hemmings Motor News, that wonderful brown-paper wrapped trove of every possible car and part. Those bare ads, just a few words of microscopic text and an occasional grainy black and white photo, could keep me daydreaming for hours, days even. I read every car magazine I could get. My heroes were Peter Egan, Stan Mott, David E. Davis.

                  Through my teens I dreamed about sports cars. Classic ones with wire wheels and low windscreens. More than anything I wanted a Bugeye Sprite. My grandfather had one of course. Red with wire wheels, a 1275cc engine and all the go fast bits. But I couldn't afford even a basket case project. Or anything at all really. My first car was a Fiat 850 Spider that I bought for $500 and drove until a transmission mount rusted through and the engine fell out.

                  In college I fell in love with motorcycles, courtesy of a woman who rode a red Honda CB400F to school. A cult bike even then - a factory cafe racer with low bars and a squared-off tank like a vintage GP bike - I loved it at first sight. That started a new obsession and for the next decade I rode and then raced a varied collection of Japanese and Italian bikes ranging from the obscure (Yamaha SDR200 anyone?) to the sublime (Yamaha TZR250 and Honda RS125GP) to the simply brutal (Moto Guzzi 850 Lemans). My four-wheel transportation was limited to a series of nondescript and utilitarian pickup trucks good mostly for hauling bikes to the track. But I never stopped dreaming about sports cars, especially Italian sports cars. And most especially Maseratis. I still subscribed to Hemmings and would look at the ads for vintage Maserati GTs - Sebrings, 3500s, Mistrals - and wonder if I would ever be able to afford one.

                  Then one day in 1998 I took some friends for a cruise around Lake Union on my Monk bridgedeck, Savona. I was living aboard by then and had recently given up motorcycle racing so I had a bit of money to spend (amateur motorcycle racers have no money - it's like taking a vow of poverty). My friend John was aboard as well. He has his own history with cars and bikes, including a stint as a salesman for a local Lamborghini dealership. He and I traded off vehicles for years. I sold him my BMW K75S and he sold me his Peugeot 505. We exchanged a green Saab 900 turbo back and forth a few times. Ultimately he ended up with Savona as well, but that's another story.

                  On this particular evening, as we were poking in and out of the docks along the ship canal, looking at boats and talking about cars, boats, motorcycles, girls and whatever else twenty-something guys talk about, he mentioned that he knew where there was a Maserati Sebring for sale. He was toying with the idea of buying it, but I knew he had no money at the time, and was deep into rebuilding his own boat. So the chances of him getting the Maserati were slim. I convinced him that his best option was to let me in on it. If I bought it he would at least be able to drive it whenever he wanted. Slowly I broke him down until he told me the whole story.

                  To be continued. Next installment on the way!
                  - Chris

                  Any single boat project will always expand to encompass the set of all possible boat projects.

                  Life is short. Go boating now!

                  Comment

                  • cstevens
                    Dreaming of a boat
                    • Nov 2014
                    • 6357

                    #10
                    Re: Maserati

                    It turned out that the owners of Bellevue Lamborghini, Pasquale Perinna and his son Tino, were in the process of buying Grand Prix Motors, a used exotic car shop in Seattle, and were going to turn it into a Ferrari dealership. John had worked for them in the past and had heard about a bunch of cars in the basement of the building that they needed to clear out. There were some nice vehicles there - a Ferrari 250GTE and a few other things of that sort - but the Perrinas needed the room for the new car inventory and everything had to go. And one of the cars was this Maserati Sebring.

                    So a few days after that cruise on Savona John and I walked down a short flight of stairs and into this vault of unwanted machinery. The Maserati sat in a corner looking rather worse for wear. Dusty, dirty and with a smell of old leather and mice inside. It didn't run. Could not be made to run. The brakes were gone. The pedal went flat to the floor with no resistance. The fuel tanks were undoubtedly full of rust and the fuel injection system - the notoriously difficult and expensive to maintain Lucas mechanical injection designed originally for the Jaguar D-Type - was a question mark. It was perfect. There was no way I could afford a running car. But this one...? Maybe, just maybe.

                    We talked price. The owner was a dentist in Idaho. He had sent the car to Grand Prix Motors to have them get it running but one thing or another prevented that from happening and the car had been sitting for a long time. Now the dentist just wanted to get rid of it with the least possible effort. I made a laughably low offer. The cost of a used Toyota but it was all I could afford. To my surprise it was accepted and after some untangling of paperwork I became the owner of a fabulous machine. A true Italian GT from the classic age of sports cars. It arrived at my shop on a flatbed truck and I took the afternoon off from work to go sit in it and make engine noises.

                    I had some mechanical abilities developed over years of racing and maintaining motorcycles. I had a shop space that now had some room in it with the race bikes all gone. And there in the middle sat the Maserati. It needed some major work. Brake rebuild, fuel system rebuild, fuel tank cleaning... but after cleaning off the dust it looked surprisingly presentable. The paint was shiny, although a second-rate respray with many flaws. The interior came back to life with a good cleaning. There was, amazingly, no rust in the underside at all.

                    For the next few months I slowly worked through all of the problems. I pulled the twin fuel tanks and had them stripped and derusted by a local radiator shop. The brake calipers and master cylinder were rebuilt by a company that relined everything with stainless steel. I installed new hard lines. Finally, with the rust removed from the fuel system and a new battery installed I tried starting it. It ran, but very roughly. I had sorted out the ignition system already so it had to be a problem with the fuel injection. Which was a problem. That system was only ever used on the D-Type Jaguar and the Maserati Sebring and parts were entirely unavailable. If you were a multi-millionaire and owned a D-Type you sent your FI system to one small shop in England that would rebuild it for you and charge you millionaires prices. If you were a kid trying to restore a Sebring on the cheap you were pretty much screwed.

                    To be continued soon.
                    - Chris

                    Any single boat project will always expand to encompass the set of all possible boat projects.

                    Life is short. Go boating now!

                    Comment

                    • seanz
                      Resilient?
                      • Nov 2006
                      • 23662

                      #11
                      Re: Maserati

                      Originally posted by cstevens



                      ...
                      Truly a lovely looking machine. Now, guess which of the two cars I want to own
                      We don't know how lucky we are....

                      Comment

                      • cstevens
                        Dreaming of a boat
                        • Nov 2014
                        • 6357

                        #12
                        Re: Maserati

                        The solution came from a surprisingly close source. The Maserati Information Exchange was just across Lake Washington from me. Founded by Francis Mandarano as an offshoot of the Maserati Club International and the Concorso Italiano, they had a warehouse full of vintage Maserati parts just a few miles away. Frank Mandarano was quite a character himself. I never got the full story, but I recall that he had an Uzi submachine gun hanging on the wall of his office and a photo of him posing with a bunch of special-forces types in front of a helicopter. Interesting guy. But to the point, MIE made a Weber carburetor conversion for the Sebring based on the setup from the earlier 3500GT, which used the same engine as the Sebring but carbureted. In exchange for the original FI system and nearly as much money as I had paid for the car in the first place I got a box full of DCOE Webers, a custom manifold and some miscellaneous parts.

                        That was what the Sebring needed. I was never going to be able to restore the FI system but the Webers worked perfectly. A few weekends of wrenching had them installed and the car running well enough to drive around the block. Few things have given me more satisfaction than that first drive. The Sebring was an amazing car and that was obvious from the first tentative run up and down the street outside my shop. A trip to Ferrari of Seattle followed, and Pasquale applied his decades of experience to tuning the Webers. After that the car was... incredible. Smooth and powerful. Comfortable gliding along at 70 mph on the highway or wrestling with a twisty back road. And nothing but nothing felt as great as pulling up to a stoplight and watching people turn and stare at it.

                        There were still a few bumps though. It was an Italian car after all. I made an amateur mistake and forgot to replace one of the soft lines in the brake system. So it collapsed one day while crossing the 520 bridge, locking the rear calipers on. Not enough to stop the car, but just enough that they heated up and caught on fire. I pulled off at the first exit and into the parking lot of a fire station to wait for everything to cool off and the smoke to go away, then drove slowly to my shop. New caliper seals and a new soft line solved that problem but while I was waiting for the parts to arrive I met someone.

                        I had started a new job while working on the Sebring, and one of my coworkers was a woman named Victoria. Victoria Antoinette, as if being named after one queen wasn't enough. She was (and is) a New York Italian with a strong personality, beautiful brunette hair, the most piercing green eyes you ever saw and an engagement ring on her left hand. I was hooked but she was taken. But bit by bit we got to know each other and I learned that she loved Italian cars. Her father had owned a few exotics - Ferraris and Lamborghinis - when she was growing up in the Hudson Valley. I told her I was working to restore a Maserati Sebring although it wasn't running right then since the brakes had caught on fire. She told me I should take her for a ride some day when it was done.

                        I don't think I have ever done a brake job as fast as the work I did on the Maserati after that! I worked through the weekend as soon as the parts arrived and the next Monday I drove the Sebring to the office. I took her for that ride at lunch and, well, things progressed from there and we were eventually married aboard the Virginia V, a vintage steam ferry still operating as a charter boat here in Seattle.

                        The Sebring lasted a few years after Victoria and I met. We drove it on weekends and out to dinner occasionally. And I lent it to John every so often as we had agreed. But then I started a new business and began working on Perihelion (a 50' Huckins that I tried and failed to restore, for anyone who has not read that thread). Money was short for a few years and the Sebring was sold to keep the business running. I've had many other cars since thern. Some nearly as exotic, many faster, many that handled better. But that Sebring was in a class of its own. I do miss the car but I got to keep the girl so I figure I came out on the right side of that deal in the end.

                        Finito.
                        - Chris

                        Any single boat project will always expand to encompass the set of all possible boat projects.

                        Life is short. Go boating now!

                        Comment

                        • cstevens
                          Dreaming of a boat
                          • Nov 2014
                          • 6357

                          #13
                          Re: Maserati

                          Originally posted by seanz
                          Truly a lovely looking machine. Now, guess which of the two cars I want to own
                          Funny, I like that FJ55 too. My grandfather had good taste even in his utilitarian vehicles.
                          - Chris

                          Any single boat project will always expand to encompass the set of all possible boat projects.

                          Life is short. Go boating now!

                          Comment

                          • jsjpd1
                            mmmm....boat good.
                            • Oct 2009
                            • 5126

                            #14
                            Re: Maserati

                            Best thread of the day.


                            Thank you for sharing that story with us Chris.
                            -Jim

                            Sucker for a pretty face.
                            1934 27' Blanchard Cuiser ~ Amazon, Ex. Emalu
                            19'6" Caledonia Yawl ~ Sparrow

                            Getting into trouble one board at a time.

                            Comment

                            • doorstop
                              Scurrilous Cur
                              • May 2001
                              • 2112

                              #15
                              Re: Maserati

                              A great yarn! Thank you.
                              Bald, ugly, not too bright but incredibly sexy in an unattractive sort of way....

                              Comment

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