*cough* cracked diff gear *cough*

Just gonna leave this here. Car is not very reliable imho...

https://www.6speedonline.com/forums/...d-cracked.html

Is there a way to fit an actual DCT to the vehicle? Or, in its absence, a traditional automatic box?

 

You know, England's a teeny, tiny place. Scottsdale? Might as well be on the moon for us East Coasters (where most of the AM dealers are, cough, cough).

If I were setting up shop, AZ wouldn't have been my first choice...look at a map of US AM dealers, put your facility in the midst of the greatest concentration.

 

That's a real rough ride, sorry to read you went through that, and its a real shame when such a terminal failure like this occurs that mothership's fantastic customer support department doesn't kick in to life like you would have hoped it would / should have done to save the day for you.
For the repair side of BR where upgrade is last thing on these customers minds we are faced with having to recover total loss failures commonly, and a problem where no amount of servicing or care the owner could have done to prevent a particular problem, it was destined to happen, is something the owner has a real problem of faith in the brand to come back from.


For the repair side of BR in UK we don't see this particular problem in general, but we see plenty of others such as V12 engine ticking or terminal V12 failure. For race side of our business we do see trans issues though, and root cause is imperfections in components from birth when mixed with heat and duty cycle extremes of race world.

I cant say i see a way to integrate a DCT or an auto, but what BR does is make what is there rock solid robust.

Here is crown wheel caught before terminal failure. From build minor pin ***** imperfections grow until a crater turns into a complete missing tooth turns into a total loss gearbox.

The end result of our work here was a complete gear set shot peen and super polished, built by BR with precision tolerance set up. This box went to road car, but even if went to a demanding / successful GT4 team, pushing the differential on track or 'launch control', i would defy anybody to break it save absolute misuse and abuse.

When this gearbox was mated to our lightweight flywheel, twinplate clutch and TCU remap, the driving experience was something that just had to be experienced - sublime, DCT fast yet limo car smooth. That good that you would no doubt get out of the car and say "perfection", and thoughts of auto or DCT are furthest from your mind.

 

Of course you are right in some respects, the main problem is your country is just too darn big for 5 let alone 1 pin.

We didn't look at the map and say "do you know what, yeah, Scottsdale is the hub, that's where we should be at". What we did is find Greg and British Automotive Repair.
What we offer is central to having the right people, meaning even with the biggest most shiny workshop in the middle of the biggest city its all utterly worthless without the right staff inside it - What we do requires ingredient X and we found that sooo hard to find, until now that is.

So with the right man and team to be purveyor of Bamford Rose, we are left to make the map fit our pin and not the pin fit the map. We then justify in our minds at least that if customers from Singapore, Switzerland and Germany make the pilgrimage to UK, then a pick-up truck ride across US isn't that much of a problem. Then Scottsdale for LA, Texas and Vegas seems OK, but yeah, the rest of USA will need to be a pilgrimage.

 

As the owner of that there gearbox it is my experience it is smoother and quicker than DSGs, ASM1, ASM3 and the current Vanquish box
Really looking forward to driving the next update of Johnny
Mike are you going to offer the 5.0 GT4 engine to the US?

 

Once yours has passed the next durab test 5.0L will becaome a 'menu' option, yes.

A consideration with going 5.0L / 550BHP from 4.3L 380BHP is that the rest of the car will require update too, so the project will need to be; exhaust headers and cats, clutch and flywheel and brakes at minimum. Whilst a project like that will certainly take commitment, as we know, it does deliver an entry level 4.3L Vantage to territory of beating a V12 Vantage in acceleration for way less than the spend to get into a V12 seat.

 

Insane!!!

 

This is very intriguing, especially since early Vantages are going for pretty cheap lately.

Could the work be done from a 4.7 as a start point?

 

We remove cylinder liners and replace with new, so donor can be 4.3L or 4.7L

There are a couple of ways to play this project, such as convert current engine in car, or convert a failed donor engine or any other engine that is 'found'. Plus side of former is lower cost, downside is time without car whilst project is completed. Plus side of the latter is std engine is retained and only downtime without car is engine swap.

Teaspoon used a donor, the owner then sold his 4.3L. Our first 5.0L (mikeyk) used a donor engine. We have a carbon copy of Teaspoon on the go now (money penny) which is separate donor engine and client retains existing

 

Already has
V1.1 will be on test soon

 

Very interesting... On topic... there's a used engine right now on Ebay US (search for aston martin engine, sort by price descending). Around $11k.

 

Any old nail of a motor would do for a donor, the motor gets zero timed internals and vapour blasted externals so would look brand new on completion anyway.

We do have a stash of donor motors at a snip of that ebay price, especially if going into a BR project car.

The conversion to 5.0L is clearly attractive at 550 BHP, but that is our halo upgrade and is a 'reassuringly expensive' price, which is not for everybody. The route of a cheap to source 4.3L which gets converted into GT4 spec does represent a very good bang for buck return imho (this was the route project Teaspoon took). Project Money Penny took this route also (GT4 spec 4.7L) which we will display in a week or so and will have a couple of our new hardware developments included in the build spec, we are hoping to top 500BHP from that motor. Of course, those mods will equally carry across to 5.0L making that project 565BHP

Full Bamford Rose GT4 motor build is a machined from billet crankshaft (optional, std crank in reality is durable and deleting steel crank significantly reduces engine budget), steel rods, upgraded pistons, lightened and balanced to F1 standards bottom end, ported and blueprint cylinder heads with large (larger than std 4.7L) inlet and exhaust valves, lightweight flywheel and twinplate clutch, BR headers and 200 cell density cats and the all important ECU reflash to make the 4.7L GT4 sing as it should.

Bamford Rose GT4 engine and gearbox builds were first found in Rhesus Racing GT4 European Champions car;



Then in Nicholas Mee UK GT4 winning car



And ultimate achievement in 2012 with Mathol Racing, Winners of Aston Martin Global Challenge

 

Beautiful...

I wonder, why do this instead of adding a turbo or two?

 

Hi Mike,


happy to see here!

 

...and there goes that beautiful Aston exhaust sound...