Thanks! The Esprit was a labour of love! A prelude to my Aston. As for the tires, there are no traction issues, however, I don't track the car and rarely beat on her. I have been a PCA and BCA HPCCC instructor for about 13 years so have had plenty of track time with my track prepped FD. The Aston is for cruising and date night! Yes, the fronts are narrower than stock, but to get the fitment in front with the 20 inch wheels, I chose a slightly narrower tire to prevent rubbing in the fender well. And as for the 255 out back instead of the stock 275's, again, it was all to fit the wheels exactly as I wanted them to look. Performance wasn't paramount and the car only makes 340 hp at the wheels, there is plenty of grip to accelerate quickly without breaking traction from a stop. I can break the rear tires loose if I give a rev and dump the clutch, but I don't want to be replacing broken parts or burned out clutches every year!

 

Ah, I hear ya. Even with tracking this car I don't see a point in going with wider tires any time soon. If needed, I'll just get stickier tires.

Love the wedding pic, kudos on the beautiful wife and badass cars

 

How is the Vantage on track? I find the brakes somewhat underwhelming when really pushing the car hard on twisty roads. I have Porterfield R4S pads all around on the 2 piece wilwood rotors, with Motul brake fluid and still don't feel like they generate enough torque to slow down adequately for such a heavy car...

Thanks on the Kudos! I try to stay young by playing with cars! The wife, luckily second time around, loves my cars! The first hated them! I am having alot more fun this time around! Here is another pic from the wedding.

 

So I've been hyper-analytical about my wheels and I wanted to share a little more.

For those of you that want a very aggressive stance, there's room for that. I can easily go another 5mm on the front offset without risk of rubbing. If I was pushing it, I'd say 10mm more up front and 5mm more out back, but I'd probably size my tires back down to the original 235 front and 275 rear. There's also a decent amount of camber on the wheels, so the bottoms do come out a touch.

There's a little room for improvement (that 5mm up front), but this is part of the fun of being a guinea pig! As it stands, no regrets and I'll have zero concern about rubbing during hard corners. If anything, I can size up my tires to 255 front and 295 rear to fill that space, which I'll probably do once I burn these ones off. Luckily, the PSS does come in those sizes

I love it as a track car because I can drive it as hard as I want and enjoy it for the sports car that it is. That said, you can really feel its weight in tight sections, and the steering rack on the earlier ones doesn't do you any favors. I'm planning to put a quicker rack on my '07, probably the one from the V8VS (I think it's a direct swap). If you haven't tracked yours, you should definitely give it a go. It'll feel like a pig compared to your RX7, but it's such a wonderful experience.

I've got pretty much the same brakes, but haven't installed the Porterfield pads yet. I'll be putting those on once I have time but I've been stupid busy and I'm way behind on things. I bought them with my doubts as to how well they'd handle the track, but I'll be using them for all of my street driving and swapping over to something more aggressive for track days if I find they aren't up to task for being abused.

I'm running Motul 600 but also have brake cooling ducts. All said and done, I haven't had any braking issues.

However, the Wilwood rotors don't seem to have as much stopping power as the OEMs *but* I was also not standing on them like I did the OEM rotors. IAP Racing put them on the day before I went to the track and properly bedded them in. I never push anything until I've found my limits with it, especially with newly-installed parts, so I wasn't really utilizing the brakes to their fullest. I was lifting early into corners and coming onto the brakes earlier and riding through softer than I otherwise would. So the difference in braking between the Wilwood and OEM rotors is probably entirely in my head.

Btw, yesterday a buddy asked if a couple of his friends could use my Vantage as a prop for some of their wedding photos and I had to chuckle!

 

Cool feedback! I don't plan on taking the car to the track other than to meet some guys to video them maybe. I didn't get much experience with the stock rotors as they were knackered when I took possession of the car and they were seriously ridged and I changed them immediately. I have never had a chance to really bed them in properly, so perhaps I may take the rotors off and have them turned a tad and re-bed them.
The wedding thing is cool. The car is so elegant yet aggressive at the same time! My wife loves it, but she has to smile when girls ask for a ride or come talk to me about it!