gemellocattivo.com

The Bosch system looks interesting, but as you say - expensive. As you say, the RusEFI is much more affordable, and the Proteus seems to be the model that would be most appropriate to my needs, but as it's intended for port injection, it'd need a host of other bits in order to run DI.

That video was most interesting - I've been stripping out most of the front end over the last few days in order to try and work out where a coolant leak is coming from. It's good to see that I'm not the only person who finds some of Maserati's design ideas 'less than helpful' when it comes to maintenance!

The outputs from the Audi trans are on the same plane as the stock diff, so shouldn't raise the engine at all.

Take a look here:
https://rusefi.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=1845

Andrey, the founder of rusEFI has a V12 DI BMW he's been running or trying to. I think there are a couple other DI cars they are messing with too. The way it works is interesting projects get support so you have a decent shot at getting help.....but the best path is still probably to map the CAN bus on a running, driving car and start trying to replace signals with an emulator then use that info to run you swap. That is only going to cost you a couple hundred $$, not counting the time of course. You can always fall back to a high price aftermarket ECU if everything it done and you just can't get the stock ECU to work.

Thanks for the interesting link - I'm now on page 4 - it's going to take me some time to read through it all!

Having bought a car from a salvage auction that turned out to be far too good to cut up, I bought another (OK, two more!) - it arrived all the way from Chicago (I'm in the UK) yesterday. So now I have an engine (F154AM) to play with...

Well done, looking forward to following this one.

Progress!
Now you need to hunts up a trans I guess?

I intend to use an Audi 01E manual transaxle which I bought a few months back. With a performance diff - probably a Quaife, fitted I'm led to believe they'll take 750 Nm. There's a chap from Scandinavia who successfully runs one in a 1,000 hp drag car, so it should do the job. My first problem will be making it fit on the back of the F154 engine. My plan is to get the car dismantled such that I can take the engine and trans to get them 3D scanned - once I've got the coordinates I'll be able to sort an adaptor plate. While I'm at it, I'll also have to work out how to get a clutch to go on the flywheel.

Over the weekend I spent a couple of days of cutting and unbolting various bits and pieces - as a result, the car has got a fair bit lighter... The main issue I have to deal with right now is that it's too long to go in the garage bay where my 4-post ramps live, so as the back was completely trashed, I've now cut most of it off. Once the last bit has gone I'll be able to roll it back far enough to shut the roller doors. Given that every spare nook and cranny is rammed with computer modules, I had to take great care when going about this! It would be nice if I can get a fire-up before removing the engine, but given how much of the front was also obliterated, that may prove to be too optimistic. Time will tell..

I remember you mentioning tman audi trans, just didn't realize you already had it, excellent

Getting it running will likely be a challenge but fingers crossed! I guess worst that happens is you need to CAN map the nice one and see what signals are missing

Having cut about three feet off the back of the car, it now fits in my ramp bay. It's ridiculous how a car like this is longer than my long wheelbase Land Rover!

Since I've been unable to find anyone who can work with the original Maserati ECU, I've come to the conclusion that trying to make it function with most of the major modules deleted would be a stupid way to proceed. As an (obvious) example, the master ECM constantly talks to the computer on the auto trans to find out what gear it's in and then compares the info with all the various sensors such as the throttle position and then varies the power output to correspond. Once the manual transaxle is in place, this clearly can't happen though, so I'd have to create a CAN-emulation fix. But the transaxle is only six-speed, whereas the original is eight-speed. To make matters worse, none of the original code appears to be documented outside the factory, so I'd have to spend hours with the car on a rolling road trying to work out exactly what messages the CAN system was passing back and forth. And that translates into a lot of cost. Then magnify that across all the 32 computers on the car, and it would be recipe for both bankruptcy and entry into an insane asylum!

Instead, I had an excellent conversation today with LifeRacing, who make high-end ECUs. They did all the units for the Ferrari 458 Italia race series cars, so are already most of the way there. They are keen to be involved, so while they'll certainly be more expensive in the short term, I'd probably save both time and money in the long run. Consequently, they're currently my #1 choice of supplier. Fingers crossed that their cost estimates are achievable when I get them!