My 2005 QP was doing the same thing on an off and sometimes even went into Neutral while cruising with no warning. I finally took it to a Maserati/ Italian car specialist who scanned with the correct type of scanner. NO related faults came up but he said the trans oil was a bit low. So he topped it up (has to be done with car on hoist and slowly from what I saw) and he also adjusted the clutch take-up mechanism. On that front, it has behaved itself since then. It still sometimes pays up if it gets hot and you've been driving a little more spritely, but much better than it was.

 

I'm the furthest thing from a mechanic, but I don't believe your "slightly low fluid" has anything to do with what is going on with your car. It's clearly a Maserati gremlin, like mine.

 

Sean, if you have a lift, you could check level, and otherwise check if anything is leaking. Of course you likely already have checked the garage floor or usual outdoors parking spot...

I hope, for your sake, it's not the TCU. They are becoming hard to get, I believe.

 

Sean, if you have a lift, you could check level, and otherwise check if anything is leaking. Of course you likely already have checked the garage floor or usual outdoors parking spot...

Actually I haven't yet done so.... isn't there a specific alarm for low F1 fluid on the panel?

 

There is a transmission failure warning and a low fluid warning..They are two separate things...If it has a transmission failure warning then the TCM needs to be scanned for error codes...Jason

 

I believe the early cars are SOFAST3, not SOFAST3+, and the TCU's may be different. TBH I don't understand what this actually means, i.e. is it so-called firmware versus software? CFC301F.62 might be the correct TCU for you, or is that the correct one for the later SOFAST3+ cars? The SportGT's, 2007, use CFC301F.64.

If you cannot get another TCU, and if you have the stomach for it, consider converting it to 6MT, which I don't think is easy...?

 

I have replaced one TCU in 10 years..I imagine a lot of the replacements are for dudes throwing parts at cars....They are fairly robust units..Jason

 

The owner of my usual shop, who also works on cars, told me in 2017 that the TCU is a common point of failure if there is some electrical issue with the battery, which is how mine got fried. He told me about his frustrations with trying to get one "fixed" or reprogrammed, and then showed me a box filled with old dead units. He kept them in some hope of one day being able to revive them. I took mine home, still have it around somewhere. He said we were lucky to find a replacement for mine within a week, he had cars in his care that waited six months to find a compatible unit. He tried mine with a new unit at first, but as expected it would not shift beyond gear '3'. I'm not going to get an answer on this until the New Year at this point, we will see.

 

Sean, I'm not trying to throw you under the bus, but I'd hate for you to continue to have problems and never find solutions based on what this tech told you about that era of TCU. We've talked about this before and I'm with Jason on this - they are fairly durable units that rarely fail. Some were manufactured with firmware that is specific of the NCR version that your MY car has, and based on that some cars are better performing than others. But having a "pile of bad TCUs" in a bucket (your quote from years ago) based on some battery failure is simply hard to believe. Your car has megafuses and a battery ECU that will fry long before a power surge reaches the TCU with any kind of load. I've replaced both primarily due to people charging their cars with a quick charger without disconnecting the battery cables.

Either way, there are a number of things that can cause those symptoms. Hook the car up to a SD3 and read the codes. Any tech with experience in F1s will agree that a combination of codes will point in maybe one or two directions when trying to diagnose. Since your display flashed, that means you were thrown into recovery mode for some reason. There could be internal solenoid leakage, could be the pressure sensor, your accumulator, the actuator tooth could be drifting slightly out of spec, or hell, even one/two of your ABS module sensors could be starting to fail which would cause an F1 to act erratically as it tries to shift into limp mode.

My "guess" would be you have a pressure deprivation problem stemming from the accumulator, EV solenoids or something similar. This is why it runs when restarted, as the pump brings the pressure back up to 50 bar, allowing it to start.

 

It's definitely going in to get figured out, I will report back next month. Problem has happened three times and gets worse each time. The third time it took about 10 minutes before it went away after several restarts. I don't know if this is a coincidence, but all three failures happened when the car was trying to automatically downshift. After I noticed this was true the first two times, I started driving it in Manual mode, and all was well for a couple of days until it crapped out when I was stopping in 3rd gear, when it automatically downshifted it got stuck again and did the failure. Seems like an amazing coincidence, that it could do all my manual shifts but got stuck on the rare one that I let it do on its own in Manual mode.

 

Erik, have you gotten back in to a Maserati yet? Thx for the good comments...

 

OK well my shop has had the car for a week and put 50 miles on it, they haven't seen it fail yet. They say that the TCU itself has not stored any codes from the past failures, but based on the behavior they believe it is the F-1 pump and/or its relay beginning to fail. A very slight drop in pressure from the F-1 pump will produce the behavior, despite the pump running within spec 99% of the time. They believe if it were any other kind of sensor or issue the failure would be far more frequent and the car would become undriveable, or it would show other behaviors like going into Neutral while driving. Their assessment correlates with the fact that the distinctive sound made by the pump priming when I open the driver door has changed in a way that has worried me lately.

 

I agree...The pumps are not all that great and when they start to go bad they will work and then not work...I have smacked many with a hammer just to get a car in the shop for pump replacement....Jason

 

Yeah we are at 70,000 miles now, which is plenty for one of those pumps after all.

 

Is it easy to upgrade to the higher amperage rated F1 pump relay (if indeed the OEM fitment for your year of QPV has the lighter duty one)? I don't think it's just.plug n play, though. And I'm not suggesting the relay is the culprit, though some would consider them a consumable, meriting change-out at interval.

 

OK, the saga has ended with the shop replacing my F-1 fluid pump and we are back on the road as the possibly only QP5 terrorizing the streets of Fresno. Eventually they saw it fail and tapped it with a hammer to get it going again, so they are quite sure of the diagnosis now. I guess it was good that it failed in stages, although it's disappointing that the computer doesn't store these codes so techs can read them later.

 

Glad you got it going. My “no crank and no pump” problem was fixed today. Finally got enough people to push the heavy car and got it on the hoist. After checking all relays and fuses I decided to find this infamous F1 pump and gave it a few taps at a couple of different points. Then lowered the car, opened the door and voila ! The pump started whirring. With that working, it must tell the computer that it’s OK to crank the engine because before, there was no sign or cranking at all.
Drove it about 80 kms today and tonight and seems to be all good. Now I’m brought the problem on when I let the battery drain too much and then tried to jump start and then it just stopped cranking altogether. I thought I had dried something but seems it was the pump that got “stuck”. Not sure if it’s a one off or a sign that it’s on its way out. Prior to this haven’t had any F1 pump issues in terms of having to tap it to work. Hope it stays the same but always fearful of the worst !!

 

Glad you got it going. My “no crank and no pump” problem was fixed today. Finally got enough people to push the heavy car and got it on the hoist. After checking all relays and fuses I decided to find this infamous F1 pump and gave it a few taps at a couple of different points. Then lowered the car, opened the door and voila ! The pump started whirring. With that working, it must tell the computer that it’s OK to crank the engine because before, there was no sign or cranking at all.
Drove it about 80 kms today and tonight and seems to be all good. Now I’m brought the problem on when I let the battery drain too much and then tried to jump start and then it just stopped cranking altogether. I thought I had dried something but seems it was the pump that got “stuck”. Not sure if it’s a one off or a sign that it’s on its way out. Prior to this haven’t had any F1 pump issues in terms of having to tap it to work. Hope it stays the same but always fearful of the worst !!

Yes if you have a total transmission failure, it is a "no start" situation, the car will not crank. Apparently there are degrees of transmission failure, because when I was going through the pump issues, my car would always start even if it was showing 'transmission failure.'

 

The F-1 pump is pretty durable but its lifespan is generally less than we might hope for. If your mileage is higher, probably should replace it. Cost me $1100 for the pump and $1050 for labor on the job.

 

Thanks for the tip. Will start looking. Found this clip too which was informative.

 

That is possible, but it probably should have been explained to you IMO...Their time isn't free, but you are talking about just driving a car..We send an employee home with the car and don't charge people for stuff like that generally..J

 

I checked on Scuderia and the pump is listed but without a price, it says "inquire". Maybe getting scarce?

 

I certaiy hope the F1 pump is not becoming scarce. Said pump, I believe, is the same unit from the first of the CC 4200's right to when the QPV ceased being available somewhere in the world as a DuoSelect. The GT pump is different, I believe, i.e. upgraded...

Possibly same as on the Alfa Selespeed and the Fiat variant, too.

 

No Offense brother, but for a cat with a 3 pedal car...You seem to love talking about the F1 cars? Jason

 

Alfa Romeo GT Selespeed pump

www.alfaworkshop.co.uk

For future reference

C

 

Well yes there are many instances of $1,000 Maserati parts that are essentially the same as a $300 part for a different car, but can they really be substituted? I can't believe my shop wouldn't know that, if so.

 

They are exactly the same part with the same part number from Magneti Marelli.

Much of the price difference (far from being simply profit taking) will be accounted for by different storage and distribution chain costs <shrug>

Totally get that you don't want to haggle over the price. Some people would like an alternative.]

C

 

The substitution of the Alfa pump motor is common knowledge on the 4200 forums. I believe the motor can be swapped without removing the pump.

 

They knew, but I love the devotion to that shop...Jason

 

So many times in the past I have had work done on a car that was done incorrectly and had to be redone. Other times, I have brought in a car with some problem and it was never really fixed. Roselli's is the only shop I have ever patronized where neither of those things has happened. When I can get the right solution done right every time, quibbling about the prices is not really a priority at that point.

 

Personally I settled on the Duoselect Maserati because I wanted to try this type of transmission before they went extinct, and Maseratis are the cheapest cars that have them.

 

The other thing is that all of the North American QP-V's are SOFAST3 or 3+ (like, I believe, Ferrari 430's), and the '07 DuoSelect GT Sport (Sport GT?) is yet further developed by way of transaxle control. All of these QP-V's have further refinement versus the 4200 coupé's, spyders, and all of the gransport's... They are not swoopy 2 dr's though, obviously.