Gallardo cat sucking

[Hoofy]

eye121 said:

Just to add my ha'penny worth I've had my 2004 manual coupe for five years. It was given 'cat replacement pipes' at 25K miles and now stands at 46K miles with oil use about 0.25L/1000 miles. As has been said above these are fantastic cars with a great sound from any one of many aftermarket exhausts and a lovely slick manual with the latest clutches. I'm sure that you can buy a troublesome car and have a nightmare but they do seem to me to be a fairly straightforward Italian. One has to spend to keep them in the right condition but it's not a chore because problems are few and fairly simple to fix in my experience. 4321go has much more extensive experience given his mileage. I would always advise buying one of the many cars which have had early cat replacements.

Thanks for the reply. What kind of expense have you had in the 20k you've done?

Also, how do you know the cat has been replaced? Not seeing it mentioned at all in ads.

[eye121]

Hi Hoofy

My 'bypass pipes' were fitted when the car got its Tubi exhaust. It's obvious in the engine bay as well as in the history. When I bought it I didn't appreciate the importance of no, or aftermarket, cats but I was lucky. I think that many of us are rather sensitive about cats now as the MOT may insist on it. You may have to ask a vendor quietly.

As for expenses over five years:

Annual servicing with plugs on mileage. A leaky oil cooler at about £1K including Lambo tax but not VAT. All connecting pipes necessary of course. The very common power steering drive shaft, which costs buttons but inevitably leads to lots of unique pipes only available from Lambo and not costing buttons. At that point you are introduced to the wonderful world of Lambo recalls and the complete redesign of the PAS circuit more than a decade ago. The poorly designed pivot bolt on the top of the gearbox for that part of the gear selection mechanism came out and threatened to halt progress. It's a common and recurrent problem and if it happens again we'll make a modification. I've had work to remap fault codes out because of the lack of cats but this is done for good now. Age related air con and heating replacements with a new HVS unit and new compressor, dryer and radiator. I've had plenty of paintwork to address alloy paint bubbling and done properly it's not cheap. All the Gallardos I previously viewed had this.

We're (well, I'm paying for it) shortly going to move onto the underside and replace bushes, recondition shockers and perhaps new front discs and pads. Mine doesn't have front lift and I agree with 4321go that that doesn't get in the way of daily use and touring. I wouldn't want to stretch my masculine pride by adding it all up but it's not been expensive given the width of the grin during every journey. As you can probably imagine I hope that it's a keeper because nothing else at the price would give the same combination of sound, security, speed and positive reactions from almost everyone.

[Hoofy]

eye121 said:

Hi Hoofy

My 'bypass pipes' were fitted when the car got its Tubi exhaust. It's obvious in the engine bay as well as in the history. When I bought it I didn't appreciate the importance of no, or aftermarket, cats but I was lucky. I think that many of us are rather sensitive about cats now as the MOT may insist on it. You may have to ask a vendor quietly.

As for expenses over five years:

Annual servicing with plugs on mileage. A leaky oil cooler at about £1K including Lambo tax but not VAT. All connecting pipes necessary of course. The very common power steering drive shaft, which costs buttons but inevitably leads to lots of unique pipes only available from Lambo and not costing buttons. At that point you are introduced to the wonderful world of Lambo recalls and the complete redesign of the PAS circuit more than a decade ago. The poorly designed pivot bolt on the top of the gearbox for that part of the gear selection mechanism came out and threatened to halt progress. It's a common and recurrent problem and if it happens again we'll make a modification. I've had work to remap fault codes out because of the lack of cats but this is done for good now. Age related air con and heating replacements with a new HVS unit and new compressor, dryer and radiator. I've had plenty of paintwork to address alloy paint bubbling and done properly it's not cheap. All the Gallardos I previously viewed had this.

We're (well, I'm paying for it) shortly going to move onto the underside and replace bushes, recondition shockers and perhaps new front discs and pads. Mine doesn't have front lift and I agree with 4321go that that doesn't get in the way of daily use and touring. I wouldn't want to stretch my masculine pride by adding it all up but it's not been expensive given the width of the grin during every journey. As you can probably imagine I hope that it's a keeper because nothing else at the price would give the same combination of sound, security, speed and positive reactions from almost everyone.

Thanks, interesting stuff. I won't insist that you add things up. I can see that as it starts to age, things are going to wear out if you use it.

[Xps911]

Is this for all 5litre models or just the first gen of them before the tweaks in 2006?

[Hoofy]

Xps911 said:

Is this for all 5litre models or just the first gen of them before the tweaks in 2006?

I was under the impression it was for anything not LP560 (ie pre-LP as it's often referred to). You can tell by the massive cats vs the smaller ones.

[K50 DEL]

Trev450 said:

Yes this is a fairly common fault with Gallardo cats.

I'm not sure what the procedure is for checking them, but I can thoroughly recommend Ricky at RE Performance in Swindon when it comes to these cars.

https://reperformance.co.uk/

I contacted Ricky before I bought mine as he's just down the road from me.... the very first question he asked about the car I was looking at was had the cats been changed (and when) by that virtue I would assume it's a pretty common thing.

Mine were changed (for 300cell sports cats) when the car was about 5 years old and Ricky's later full on inspection with bore scope camera and everything revealed no damage at all. The 300 cell cats also have the advantage of not throwing CELs and passing an MOT with no problems..... does make the car rather louder than stock though!

[Hoofy]

K50 DEL said:

does make the car rather louder than stock though!

That's terrible news.

Interesting to hear about 300 cell cats, though. Where did you get them from?

[K50 DEL]

Hoofy said:

K50 DEL said:

does make the car rather louder than stock though!

That's terrible news.

Interesting to hear about 300 cell cats, though. Where did you get them from?

They were on the car when I bought it, I'm going to ask Ricky exactly what they are when I drop the car there later in April so will post back on here then

[4321go]

K50 DEL said:

They were on the car when I bought it, I'm going to ask Ricky exactly what they are when I drop the car there later in April so will post back on here then

Most probably Larini sports cats:

https://www.larinisystems.com/collection/lamborghi...

[David_T]

For information, the Larini Sports cats linked above are 200 cells per sq in and have been since at least May 2019.
Having a quick look around Fabspeed and Tubi Style sports cats for the Gallardo are also 200 cells.
Capristo sports cats are 100 cells.
There are probably other suppliers.
I'm not sure who supplies the 300 cell cats mentioned above, or if that was the standard for a 5 year old Gen 1 car circa 2013 (2008 + 5 years = 2013)

[K50 DEL]

David_T said:

For information, the Larini Sports cats linked above are 200 cells per sq in and have been since at least May 2019.
Having a quick look around Fabspeed and Tubi Style sports cats for the Gallardo are also 200 cells.
Capristo sports cats are 100 cells.
There are probably other suppliers.
I'm not sure who supplies the 300 cell cats mentioned above, or if that was the standard for a 5 year old Gen 1 car circa 2013 (2008 + 5 years = 2013)

There is, of course, the very real possibility that they're not 300 cell at all, and I was told duff information - that's part of the reason I want Ricky to identify what I've got next month.
I always understood that 200 cell would throw the CEL though, and I've never had that, so who knows!!

[Bobley]

4321go said:

The cat problem is entirely limited to the 5.0 litre (“pre-LP”) cars. The later 5.2 litre, Audi-built engine (the 5.0 was built for Lamborghini by Cosworth) has a completely different exhaust header/cat arrangement.

Other way around, the slightly ostentatious beardy Hawaiin shirt wearing German Audi design lead didn't appear in St James Mill Road until at least 2004... I think.... I saw the odd drawing of a 5.0 engine but Cosworth (Technology) were flat out on RS4 and RS6 upto then. Its possible the guy with the drawing offered them assistance on the 5.0 but it wasn't a main programme.