cgperry

Anyone know where I can get one of these? The Lambo parts book just shows these caps (2) as part of the whole brake booster/reservoir assembly. The assembly is nearly $3k and all I have is a cracked cap that I'm trying to replace. Any help appreciated, including used parts or cross-reference to equivalent part from another vehicle.

I know this is a dumb question, but is there a trick to getting the ashtray out of the dash on this car? Is it just a pressure/friction fit or is there some sort of attachment under the trim panel that requires the larger dash trim to come out? My ashtray has turned sticky as is common with a lot of Ferrari trim over the past decade. My Ferraris cleaned up easily with rubbing alcohol, but it's a lot easier with the part out. I tried just pulling the ashtray but it doesn't seem to want to release. Working on Italian cars has taught me that force is almost always the wrong solution, so wonder if any of you have gotten this thing out? It also appears that the trim around the shock switch has the same coating on it - does this also friction-fit or is it restrained from underneath? Thanks!

The door panel just lifts out. You do NOT have to remove the rubber strip along the top, as I suspected. It stays in the car. With some care, I was able to leave the door panel connected and get into the weather seal to change out the handles. Now my problem is that the replacement handles seem to have had plastic poured into the metal inserts that are molded inside to secure the handle to the door, but that's a manufacturing problem...

I found the picture from the other post. It's step 1 I'm suspicious of...

Anybody have the trick to this? Search shows nothing useful. I have all the bolts free from the door panel and the panel is swinging relatively freely. I've disconnected the speaker and the power mirror control. Two things remain which have me stuck since I don't want to break anything expensive: 1. Door handle - must be disconnected to let pull cable go back through door panel. I've removed the 3.5mm hex screw from inside the cup of the door handle and the cup will now pull out, but I can't figure out how to disconnect the cable. If you pull up the handle and look inside, the head of the cable comes through a hole, then there's a pin through it to keep it in, and the pin snaps into catches in the plastic of the door handle. Don't know how to remove this though. I could probably hook the pin with something and snap it out of the catches, in which case the cable looks like it would drop through the bottom. However, it looks like it would be nearly impossible to put back together then. Any suggestions? 2. Upper Panel where it hooks over the door frame. Is this just a pressure fit? Is it easier to remove with the window up or window down? Another forum showed a picture which indicated that you should pull out the rubber strip that contacts the window, but in my experience this is usually attached to the door panel and can't be pulled out separately. Any suggestions? Thanks! Trying to change out my sticky exterior door handles (have nice looking MACarbon ones) and maybe look at the door switch that is killing my battery.

It looks like Optimas require much higher charging current than a regular battery to come back. Check out their FAQ here: http://www.optimabatteries.com/product_support/faqs.php# Scroll down to where it says "How do I charge a deeply discharged battery?" The fact that they want you to use a "helper" battery and they warn about temperatures indicates to me that they need a pretty high charge current - more than the 10 amps that an average car charger can do. They also indicate higher charging currents help break up the sulfation of an Optima battery. My charger can do as much as 200 amps, so I think it will be fine, but we'll see... Thanks!

Well - I found the problem. Just not sure of the most permanent solution. Under each door are two spring switches. One appears to turn off the red courtesy light on the inside door panel. The other appears to be dome light control. The dome light control switch on the driver's door is not breaking the circuit when the door is closed, so it's leaving the interior dome light and the luggage compartment light on all the time. The switch is good as it works properly when I press it in manually - just not when the door is closed. As a temporary solution, I folded over some cardboard from a pizza box and taped it into the door frame where the switches are supposed to make contact. Now it works properly, but my wife thinks it makes our Lambo look ghetto to have the pizza box taped to the door frame. I think it's an appropriately Italian solution, but I will defer to her. So does anyone know if those switches are at all adjustable? They're covered in a rubber boot so it's not immediately obvious if the plunger reach can be adjusted. I'd still like to know what all those designations mean if anyone knows. Thanks!

OK. Disconnected alternator - no change. Checked through fuses and discovered the draw is on Fuse 25, described as: "Courtesy Lights, Luggage Compartment Light, Stereo, Air Conditioning Memory - Brake Lights (+30ST)". Now I need some help with how Lamborghini describes things. All through the fuse listings, certain functions include similar designations to the brake lights above (+30D, +30ST, +15P, +15D). What do those mean? There is also a fuse (#11) marked "+15/30", described as: "Car Stereo - lights selector and +15/30 fuse". There is also a relay (#5) marked as "+15/30 relay". Any idea what that fuse / relay / designation mean? I have the full service/electrical manuals to the car but they are still packed from our move. Thanks!

So it's a beautiful day in SC and the wife is out so I decide to take the trusty Diablo (99VT) out for a little fun. However, for the 2nd time in two weeks when I wanted to do that, battery is dead despite being only a year old (Optima Red Top) and on a tender at all times. Last week it at least started with the help of my 200 amp jump cart. This time not. So I take the massive rear wheel off to check the battery. Reading 9 volts out of the car, so I put it on the charger. I check all my connections with a meter to make sure the tender is actually able to do it's job - all good. So then I check the battery terminals and across the + and - I'm reading 8 ohms of resistance with the key out and the battery totally disconnected. Not a dead short, but I believe a helluva lot lower than it should be. So I'm thinking I have a short somewhere, although last week after jumping it the car ran fine and all systems I tried worked. So normally my troubleshooting would start with just pulling fuses and links one by one until I see the short disappear and then start troubleshooting the attendant system. Any better ideas out there? Thanks, - - charles

The cotton candy stuff is probably their private label of a product called NEVR-DULL. Very, very good results, very easy to use, no serious elbow work - just keep rubbing lightly until it turns black, then buff it off. You can get it at almost any car parts store, hardware store, Lowe's/Home Depot and many fine silver shops.

Mark - What you're talking about is the LDAS report (Lamborghini Diagnostics and something-or-other). If you're having LoD do a full PPI, this would be part of it. If you're just going to look at it yourself, it would be worth having done. I would guess it's like most dealers where they'd charge you around $75 to hook up the laptop and run the report. The LDAS includes all the things you mentioned - time the motor has been running, time the ECUs have been running, % of time spent at each RPM level, last 10 highest RPMs (and duration), last 10 highest water temps (and duration), last 10 highest and lowest alternator voltages (and duration), last 10 highest and lowest cat temperatures (and duration), number of starting attempts, and a few other things. The report is done seperately for the two banks of the engine (and thus the two ECUs). I wouldn't worry about the car being redlined. After all, redline is designed to tell you the highest SAFE speed to run the motor. Now if the car was run at redline for 4 hours, that might tell you something about the driving habits of the previous owner. If the report tells you it was above redline, but only for 2 seconds, that's also not an instant fail. The thing I would be most concerned with on the LDAS is the water temperature reports. If the car has been often overheated or overheated once for an extended period of time, that would worry me since most of the motor is aluminum and the last thing you want to buy on the Diablo is a set of head gaskets, or worse, a head. Second most important would be the cat temperature history as this can indicate problems with the catalytic converters, o2 sensors, general engine tuning, etc. The alternator stuff is not a big deal. It's normal to have some pretty low readings since Diablos sit a lot and run down their battery. A few highs will sometimes come with that as the alternator works to recharge a low or damaged battery. The other thing I would look at is to see if most of the stats for the two banks are similar. They should be. I did see an LDAS report recently for a car in Australia where the info from the two banks were wildly different and one had a bunch of readings that made no sense. That's usually a bad sign - damaged ECU or something else screwy with the car. I had LoD do the PPI on my Diablo last year. Mike (their mechanic) was really terrific - he spent about 1/2 hour with me going over the report and explaining what everything meant and possible things it meant about the car and its previous use. That would definitely be worth paying for if you're not paying them already for a full PPI. Good luck! They are amazing cars.

I removed the temp probe from the cat to make sure it hadn't melted or anything. It looked good so I polished it a little and reinstalled it. The CEL went out when I re-started the car. Looks like I'm ok for the moment. I've ordered some Stabilant-22 and will treat the connectors on the cam position sensors when it comes in. I think that should do for a while. And for the record, thanks to John at SportAuto for his help.

I have a 99 VT US-spec that is displaying the 'L Check Engine' light. My generic OBD-II scanner indicates P1407 - 'Manufacturer Specific Powertrain Trouble Code' and P0341 - 'Camshaft Position Sensor'. I assume both codes indicate the same error. I found P0341 in my Diablo shop manual and it indicates 'Cam RPM sensor'. However, that is the last mention of a cam RPM sensor in any of the factory books. I can't find further mention of it in my shop manual or in my parts manual. The thing that appears closest is the 'engine timing sensor' on the driver's side bank, which has seperate outputs for 1-6 and 7-12, but this doesn't sound the same. Can anyone tell/show me where the cam RPM sensor is on the motor? Are there seperate units for each intake cam for the VVT? My history with Ferrari always leads me to assume an electrical connection problem before an actual sensor failure, so I'm trying to find the plug to treat it with some Stabilant-22 before replacing the sensor.

Remember that with valve management, the difference in feel is not necessarily related just to the difference in peak power. I doubt many people could feel 38hp worth of difference in a Diablo, particularly in VTs with the higher driveline losses. However, the VVT can make a big difference in the shape of the horsepower/torque curves for a motor. This means that a VVT car will usually have greater torque across a wider rev band. This you generally will feel more easily. I can't find any pre- or post-VVT curves for the Diablo in my short search, but it would be interesting to see how the curves differ in shape with the valve management. Anyone got pre- and post- curves for the Diablo they can post?

If you can get over your thirst issue, I would look at the Ferrari 456. Early models are changing hands in the US for around the figures you mentioned. I would expect European ones to be cheaper since they're more plentiful. The body is beautiful I think - elegantly understated, room for four, reasonable luggage room and the V12 torque and smoothness that you love from the Countach. Only common issues I know of are window regulators (most were fixed under warranty) and some of the soft-touch plastic inside turns to goo over time (just like 355/348. Can be fixed easily with some oven cleaner). Worth a look!

I originally used the Koni mode to narrow it down to which corner of the car it was. Mine was left rear where there are two shocks. If I disconnected one it cleared the error. If I disconnect the other the error remained, so that narrowed it down to a specific shock for me. Then the question was which part was bad - the motor, or the potentiometer that tells the computer the motor position. When I plugged the shock in to its electrical harness I could hear the motor move, and I could hear it move when it changed settings. That meant (to me, and I'm no pro mechanic) that the motor seemed ok but that the computer was not getting a valid report on its position. I reassembled everything to start researching where to buy a new shock or get one rebuilt. In the meantime I kept driving the car and it solved itself. Ecnal - You're obviously no garage queen owner, but perhaps the previous owner put on very few miles and let things set up...

Mine did exactly the same thing (99 VT). Definitely one of those 'garage queen' type of failures...

You guys need to check out some of the articles on gas that are common in Car & Driver. Most of the time, all of your local gas stations are buying their gas from a common distributor. That means Shell, Hess, Quickie-Mart, whoever all pull from the same tanks. There isn't a Shell specific distributor that only sells to Shell stations, etc. There are times when a brand will add their own additive package (detergents, etc), but generally that occurs AFTER the local distribution level. Your safest track is not buying from a brand that you recognize but buying from the busiest station in your area. The reason is that their tanks turn over more often, so it's less likely that you'll get sediment or water in a tankload from them. Buying from an out-of-the-way Mom-and-Pop place is the worst because it may take months for them to turn over their underground tanks.

Just for the record, it is entirely possible that a car with a bad battery could stall after starting. Remember that batteries are made up internally of several different plates immersed in an acid bath. The plates are pretty rugged, but they can deteriorate and break, particularly if a battery has been down on fluid and refilled. If the battery was fine on startup, the car starts, the alternator starts to turn and the car begins running off the alternator current (rather than the battery current) because the alternator puts out a higher voltage (14.4 vs 12.4). This is where US/UK Diablo was thinking. HOWEVER. If one of those plates was loose or broken, and then leans over and shorts against another plate, the battery can go from being a very light load on the alternator (just charging current), to being almost a dead short. If it were shorted or close to shorted, the resulting current draw can exceed the alternator's rating which begins to draw the voltage down. So even a healthy alternator can be dragged down from 14.4 volts to, say, 5 volts. At 5 volts ignition coils do not work and engine computers may quit even before that. Either of which can stop a running motor. This is a very unusual situation, but entirely possible. Also, the charged voltage means nothing in this case. Seeing 12.4 volts at the battery USUALLY means you don't have a bad plate, but it is VERY common for a battery to show good voltage and still not be able to produce good current. As I (and others) originally suggested, only a load test can tell you the true condition of the battery. Is the single click you're getting on startup loud or quiet? I'm wondering whether you're hearing a relay (quiet click) or the starter solenoid (loud click). Could narrow it down further. Which place did you decide to tow it to?

Whart - It may be a moot point now, but your shock is doing just what I described to you on one of the other boards. The shock apparently has two electronic pieces in it. One is the motor to actually change the valving of the shock; the other is a potentiometer that tells the shock computer where the motor is in its range of motion. On mine, the motor was working fine but the pot was sticking, causing the suspension error light to go on frequently. The more I drove the car (it was somewhat of a garage queen before I got it), the less frequently I got the error, and then it quit entirely. My assumption is that the pot was just dirty/sticky from having sat and driving the car regularly freed it up. I don't have a shock to try it with, but I'd bet if you could hook up a little voltage source that would run the motor back and forth continually for an hour or so that it would free yours up too and you'd have a good spare.

I would look for battery as well. If you had a really bad battery where one or more plates were shorted, you can cause all kinds of havoc that may or may not look related. Take off the driver's side rear wheel and the battery is behind the fender liner towards the driver's seat. I would change it. It's only $100 for a good battery and it's something you can look at while you look for a mechanic. If nothing else, take the current battery to a parts store and have it load tested to see if it's a culprit or contributor. Speaking of which, the following guys are Ferrari trained. I would bet they work on Lambo too. I don't know them personally: AutoTecnica, Andrea Falbo, Fountain Hills, AZ 480-836-7915 Italian Design & Racing, Butch Hooper, Glendale, AZ 480-968-0421

In several of the other forums I frequent that use the vBulletin software, you have mouse-over previews on the thread lists. By which I mean, as you are looking down the list of threads, if you pause on one with your mouse it gives you the first line or two in a little pop-up box. This is really time-saving in seeing which threads you want to look at, especially since most people do a poor job of putting the topic in their thread title. Can we activate this for L-Power?

I don't know if the 94-95 is like my 99, but on the 99 there are two sets of cats, a pre-cat and a regular cat (my Testarossa is also like this). You can remove the 2nd set of cats with no problem, but changing the pre-cats seems to be an issue. My car has a Larini exhaust with bypass pipes replacing the secondary cats (pre-cats still in place) and all is fine. Have heard of numerous others with the same setup.

I know Mike will do another great job of explaining, but I believe in his original explanation leaving the clutch released had nothing to do with the clutch itself or the TO bearing. I believe it had to do with the crankshaft. Pushing in the clutch forced the crankshaft to be at the far end of its freeplay tolerance in one direction, so you were actually dragging/wearing the crankshaft by starting the car with the clutch engaged. Needless to say, replacing the crankshaft would be a megabucks operation in a Lambo, so you do whatever it takes to protect it. Replacing a starter motor is FAR less expensive...

If you don't want fancy logos or embroidery, just search for one of the many places that sells Lloyds Mats. I bought a set for my Diablo recently and the fit is perfect, they are very thick and have nice binding and come with anchors to keep them from sliding. Good color selection too.