^^^ no. Not worth getting any flooded car unless you plan to turn that car into a parts car, donor, or a race only car. Resale value tremendously deminished on a salvage/flood title.

 

I'd go further to say a V12 > V8 regardless of modding. Also, I'd rather have a stock car over a heavily modded one.

 

Run Forest Run!

You will never get the electronics working properly

 

All depends on the price, but as others stated already, value drops like crazy and electrical gremlins will haunt you. If the engine is no good a new one from AM dealer is $28,000 plus labor. Rebuild similar to this one is about half of AM dealer asking price for a stock motor. You will need all fluids flushed as well at the very least. I have seen cars "salvaged" as flood damaged when the water was only about 5" up the wheel. No flooding of the cabin or mechanical components. In those instances it is worth buying a "flooded" car. Otherwise no. This is how my best friend bought a fully loaded honda accord for $10,000 with only 300 miles on the odometer.

In the case of AM engines I would not trust stock engine components. Engines are built extremely cheap. Cheap to the point where the management probably went to the engineers and said to make components last the length of the warranty and then you are SOL. There is nothing good about stock AM engine components except the crankshaft. That is one nice piece. Rods, pistons, head and main bolt/fasteners, bearings, even oil pump components make me scream and wonder how such things can be put in a $160,000 car.

 

WOW, what an eye-opener, and spoken by someone who really knows. With that said, are you surprised we don't have more engine problems/failures? Are Jaguar engines built basically the same way with cheap parts? How about Porsche--I would think not.

 

Jaguar is made even more "economic" than AM. Jaguar uses a cast crankshaft(AM is forged, gun drilled through the mains, and rod pins for weight reduction), Jaguar uses powder steel fracture style rods. AM rods are forged, but look extremely flimsy. I know you cannot judge a part by its looks, but I'm sure if I sent it in to Carrillo for testing it will be inferior to the set they made me for this engine rebuild. These motors in stock form are not intended for heavy duty use. I don't think you see that many engine failures because the cars are not driven hard or they are not driven enough.

Porsche is a whole another story. Porsche engines can be classified into 2 categories:

One category is the air-cooled pre-993 engines AND 996 GT/Turbo cars. To make the Modern water cooled engines in the GT3/GT2/911 Turbo Porsche adopted the crankcase from their tried and tested air-cooled engines and added water cooled cylinder liners. In essence, Porsche GT3 water cooled engines is a 30 year old design without air cooling. Great engines that were build before Porsche corporate decided profit margins were more important that their reputation.

Second category: The Boxter, Carrera, Carerra S, Cayman. Basically any Porsche engine that never came turbocharged or in a GT car. This s a completely different engine from the first category. It is pretty crappy. Powder steel fracture rods. Powder steel crankshaft(garbage!). Cannot be repaired if damaged. Those crankshafts cannot be welded and reground. The affected area becomes too brittle and leads to crankshaft breaking. Grinding crankshafts undersize is a viable option only if someone would actually make bearings. Porsche bearings are extremely expensive and come only in standard size. Blocks like to crack.

 

^^^ Pavel is spot on I too have heard from experts that AM engines, while capable of a ton of power, need some upgrading of internals to do so, maybe that is why they are severly de-tuned from the factory? Dunno but maybe venture a guess.

As for Porsche engines, the Metzger engine in my GT2 is considered to be one of the best engines ever made of all time and hostorically documented. It's dry sump watercooled version is apparently derived from the race engine in the LeMans winning Porsche GT1

 

Aston definitely could do a better job on the internals. I saw an image of the pistons of an Aston engine (can't remember which one) and they looked like something off of a tractor.

 

+1 they are built down to a price, hence why Bamford Rose can get so much out if them with reengineering them. Ironically the factory have often tested significant engineering upgrades but never signed them off for production (guess why )

 

And yet... According to many, including Bamford Rose, stock AM V8 engines are entirely capable of running 24 hour races. Bamford Rose also increases the hp significantly (up to 475 or so, someone correct me if I'm wrong) and warranties them -- expecting them to be used very hard by their owners. Only with power increases approaching 500 (again, someone correct me if I'm wrong) do Bamford Rose require upgrading the conrods.

It hasn't gone unnoticed to me that AM does race their production V8 (and V12) engine, while endurance-racing king Porsche does NOT race their "production" (Boxster/Carrera) flat-6 anymore, and hasn't since the 986/996. It's only the "Mezger" engine -- the air-cooled engine and the GT2/GT3/Turbo (until 997.1) water-cooled engines that Porsche deems race-worthy. Even the 997.2 Turbo lacks the engine they race with. The 991 Cup car will again have the Mezger engine. I wonder which engine the 991 GT3 will have...

 

The Bamford Rose GT4 engine used for endurance racing is FAR from stock, the only thing they retain are the block & head mouldings
The 4.7 GT4 engine is ~470 BHP depending on intake & exhaust set up (usually limited by race series regulations) that used a billet crank, new conrods and forged pistons.
"Jessica" the project road car had 475 BHP
The current Bamford Rose project is my S which will be a 5.0 GT4 spec engine, custom cams, twin throttle intake, ceramic coated headers and 200 cell cats at 550 BHP
Roll on the summer!

 

Aston Martin does not race stock engines. The only things they retain are head and block castings and even production block casting are prone to failures.

Here is a scan from a recent issue of Race Engine Technology Magazine and their insight on the Aston Martin factory team efforts this year(I apologize in advance for poor scan quality)

Page 1:


Page 2:

 

I didn’t mean that AM races unmodified production engines, but rather that the engines that they race are production based, and reasonably close to what is in the road cars – similar to what Porsche used to do. Also, I was referring to the N24 and GT4 cars, not the 4.5L GTE (or GT2) cars that are discussed in the Race Engine Technology Magazine article. I’m sure that Carrillo rods (and Bamford Rose’s own rods) are better than the stock rods, but the stock rods may be better than they “appear.”

From a well-known and rather successful GT4 engine builder:
"... we have surpassed this and run 475BHP for 24 hours racing using our GT4 built 4.7L engine with our tuned equal length exhaust manifolds and 200 cell density catalysts. Pushing a sintered rod much past this performance level would really, IMHO, need an engine away from car on engine dyno and a 150 hour HST run to be certain the end result of the performance increase was not 'a rod out the side' of the engine after modifications...

"... The GT4 regulations submitted to FIA picture and detail a sintered connecting rod for V8 race cars - apart from a little blueprinting and porting within what is allowed by these regulations, foam air filter and a 200 cell density cat - that is it in terms of the little that separates a GT4 race engine from road car engine. This was developed by the factory and given to Aston Racing to copy / build."

 

Ya! true, i was planning on parting it out if the engine wasn't any good but then many parts would be hard selling if it was flooded :/

 

By chance do you have any of the old connecting rods? I would be interested in seeing one tested. As far as materials go isn't a forged crank and rods about the best? Do you know what materials are used for AM's pistons? Aren't there pretty much three categories for that? cast, hypereutectic, and forged (in order of quality)?

It's really sad to see manufactures treat buyers like fools now a days. This is pretty much the main reason I don't buy new anymore! I remember back in the old days, even my Porsche 944 Turbo had forged pistons, rods, and crank. They even went so far as to line the exhaust ports with ceramic as they were worried about heat. What a great reliable engine that can take tons of abuse.

Thanks for the feedback!