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We are signed up to run at PIR at the end of July so we started working on reinstalling the original uppers with Delrin Bushings.
We cleaned the mounting faces on the subframe and applied some lithium grease to the bushing faces and mounting faces.
Since there is no give in the Delrin I was a little concerned about alignment, but the arms slid in with minimal clearance by hand.
Likewise the bolts were easily aligned and pushed thru by hand.
We applied grease before torquing to try to fill the sleeves. Plenty squeezed out when we torqued the bolts. We'll run it 50 miles and re-apply.
I was very impressed with the steering feel after installing the arms with the gen 2 bushings from Aston. It will be interesting to see what the NVH will be like on the street with solid bushings in the uppers. Will be really interesting to see how it handles at the track.
Don't forget to wipe off the excess grease it makes an awful mess.
chr
Last edited by era2076; 04-06-2019 at 11:05 AM.
Reason: Added 1st Picture, Add Title
We corrected the zerc locations. We had them at 12 as viewed from the front, but moved them to 9. In the 12 oclock position they will not clear the subframe when the arm rotates. We bolted it it together and drove it this afternoon. The steering is much, much tighter. I am going to drive it home tonight and then dis- assemble and fit each shim individually such that the arms fall under their own weight when torqued to spec. I can only imagine what it would be like with the lowers replaced.
Door edge molding added as a rub strip to the splitter.
...We bolted it it together and drove it this afternoon. The steering is much, much tighter. ...
This is really interesting news.
When I read your past statement correctly, then already mounting a new top wishbone (with a revised bushing design) tightend the steering
- and now (basically without elasticity) even more. -->seems like a small series of bushing would be an interessting idea...
Does anybody have an overview of the various wishbones and their differences?
as I understand, there are
Upper arms
2006 6G33-3091-AB
2007 4G43-3091-BE
V8VS and 2012+ 8D33-3091-AC
V12 6G33-3091-AB
Lower arms:
2006-2009 6G33-3A053-BA , 6G33-3A052-BA unclear difference
2009-2012 8D33-3A053-AC
V8VS and 2012+ 8G33-3A053-AB ones (wich also had different knuckle and changed (???) geometry.
V12 8G33-3A053-AB
Numbers quoted are front LH side.
Not on the list the the GT8 - which may have wider arms.
Yes - I originally requested sport pack arms. I purchased new uppers from VAP and IIRC was told Aston upgraded the bushing stiffness on the upper arms and all the later cars have the stiffer bushings. I believe the PN I purchased are the 8D33 - I will check this later today. I did install the front and rear and it most definitely improved the feel of the steering. That surprised me and I concluded with the sleeves pinched, the bushings are not stiff enough to keep the sprung mass from over deflecting the bushings such that the cg drifts laterally thru the bushings under cornering (and assume vertically under braking). That would make for inconsistent load at the contact patch. So my thinking was to at least control the movement of the top of the upright. The lowers do more work and would keep it aligned, but NVH would be a penalty on the street. There is NVH penalty with the uppers, but I need to drive it enough to know if I can live with it. A couple of guy's at the shop know the car and one of them has driven it on the track so I will send him out for a drive today. The other one drove it yesterday and was all smiles and stated there is more road feel being transmitted thru the steering. I drove it last night and it is very inspiring. I am going to go ahead and fit the shims individually and try to source a set of front lowers with the stiffer bushings. That will most likely be as far as I go. The car as it sits now drives and handles nothing like what I purchased.It will most likely allow us to run a bit softer shock setting on the street. We are running them at 3/4 now which to me feels a tad stiff under slow movement. It will take some work to find the right balance for the street.
To be clear - I purchased a set of OEM arms with stiffer bushings, installed them, ran them, and would not install anything softer - I still have those unmolested. We modified the original arms that came on the car and re-installed them.
I went back thru the purchasing correspondence to help shed some light.
Cool – I read the S had stiffer bushings in the front upper control arms – do you know anything about this e.g.
1) how many bushings were stiffened 2) which ones 3) will they fit in 06 arms 4) are they available
x-chr
Originally Posted by VAP
The control arms in the V8 S are the same as a regular Vantage. They are not very good. The problem with the V8 arms and early DB9’s, is the plastic sleeves that hold the bushing. The plastic sleeve slides in the aluminum arm with braking and hard cornering. Once the bushing slides, your caster is off by a good +1degree. Once the caster is out on the Vantage, this will pull on the lower arm and set camber “positive” as well..then enter another corner and brake, you’ve just shifted the problem to the other side and then pulled your other side to negative specs…constant fight for retaining correct caster.
The upper arms on a 2013+ DB9 have resolved the upper bushing issue, they’ve done away with the plastic sleeve and used a proper metal sleeve. The V12 Vantage “S” is also the same and a little stiffer.
You CANNOT swap out the bushing, the arm is aluminum and will not contract to hold a new bushing unlike steel. It is the main reason why no OEM supplier will sell bushings, will always come with the arms for liability reasons and pure safety.
So your options are complete control arm replacement to the V12VS units. But, if you’re replacing the entire control arm and you’re serious about it I would consider the AMR control arms with spherical bearings. You will also need the little spacers to fit the arm snug in the front structure. AMR just uses a generic spherical bearing and then machines these little spacers to make the arm fit correctly with the structure (believe it’s 2 per bearing so 4 total). Think you will also need their bolts/nuts for the arms.
So I purchased, installed, and ran a full set of V12VS upper arms on the street which got me thinking.
With respect to the lowers
Originally Posted by VAP
* Early Sportpack, V8 Vantage S, and also the GT8 lower arms, are all stiffer..roadsters didn’t have order option but can be installed, so if it’s a roadster with sportpack, it got the regular arms. Here’s the stiffer lower arms:*
8G33-3A052-AB is the RHF 8G33-3A053-AB is the LHF BTW, these aren’t the arms that fail(sliding bushings)..just has a stiffer bushing..but not sure it’s worth the time/money.
You'll need to run down right or left, but it should get you in there. I was a little unsure of these numbers so I checked AstonBits and they do show these numbers under the V12.
I drove the car to work this morning and noticed the rear is over damped. I had Mike take it to lunch and he too stated it was very stiff in the rear. I softened the compression in the rear 3 increments (put us back to the middle) and had him drive it again. It is very smooth and goes over manhole covers with quiet thumps and no jarring. The rear feels much more settled when you get on it. The rebound is still set at 3/4. We do not notice any abnormal NVH with the rear compression set softer. I knew the rear was somewhat over damped, but the new bushings seemed to exacerbate it. We made no changes to the front dampening. We pulled all four arms out this afternoon and will fit the shims for free articulation tomorrow.
Each bushing must be checked for fit - we used the following.
The arms were binding some when we put it together. After 25 miles a couple were really binding. We removed each arm and inspected them and then re-installed one at a time. The bushing needs to rotate around the clamped sleeve. The arm should not rotate around the bushing.
Example => on the front passenger, with both bushing bolts loosely installed and using the OEM torque spec, we torqued the rear bolt until the arm had too much resistance to rotate freely. We loosened that bolt until the arm could again move freely and then tightened the front bolt until it too was too tight to rotate. We noted the difference in torque between the two and then made an educated guess on how much to remove not wanting to remove too much. In our case it was usually .010 on one bushing and .020 on the other. One of the arms took a couple of iterations. With the bolts torqued to spec, all four now drop with minimal effort. This again changed the driving feel - I most likely will put a little compression back into the rear.
While test driving we rolled 2K miles since purchased.
Reminds me on the times when I experimented with making my own PU wishbone bushings (not on the Vantage).
It took quite some time to get the amount of preload correct (too litle-wobbly, too muchbinding) - similar but different problem to yours, as with the Delrin there should be (almost) zero preload necessary.
Any kind of binding will lead to awkward responses.
I also ended up cutting lubricant-distributing-channels (inside bushing towards sleeve) and mounting grease nipples.
Nice work - and yes, a beautiful machine it is indeed.
You'll need to run down right or left, but it should get you in there. I was a little unsure of these numbers so I checked AstonBits and they do show these numbers under the V12.
chr
The front upper arms are actually:
RHS: DG43-3084-AB
LHS: DG43-3091-AB
These fronts are on the V12VS and also the GT8.
The rear upper arms:
ED23-5K743-AA (universal sided)
The fronts can be put on any Vantage..V8/V12, doesn't matter. It's the rears that some ppl run into an issue due to the upper rears having the headlight leveling sensor attached. You could in theory just tie wrap or make your own mounting for the level sensor arm...Aston actually deleted the level sensor because it did virtually nothing with the stiff suspension(if you have the sensor, don't just keep it lose, needs to be fixed/secured to arm). Drill a hole, tap it and a 1-hole 'L' bracket works great. The cutoff for not having the rear level sensor attached to upper arm is 12.25MY.
The V12V and V12VS arms are not the same. The V12V still has the plastic bushing sleeves while the 2013+ DB9/Vanquish/V12VS all have metal sleeved bushing. The plastic sleeved bushing are known to slide/walk in the arm and the metal sleeved bushings stay in place.
FYI, when the bushing walks/slides, this offsets the caster which affects the camber, and in result sets out the toe..aka screws up your alignment and wears tires prematurely.
There's already spherical ball joint versions, but are from AMR for the GT4.
Thomas - well said with the key word being preload i.e. axial preload. I like zero, but my machinist always reminds me the consequence of going too far, which includes starting over and I hate going backwards. I have read five to eight pounds is acceptable. At some point the pickup points axial alignments will play into the friction problem. The pickup points on my car are very well aligned and everything went together very nicely. We are going to get some street miles on it next week and then disassemble again for inspection. I will try to get some drop weight numbers.
bunob - I did not record any dimensions. The bores in the control arms were mic'ed individually and the outside diameters of the bushings were turned for a .001 interference fit for each individual bore. We shortened the non-flanged end of the bushing when fitting. We used the original sleeves and fluted them to hold the grease. Delrin is self lubricating so the primary purpose of the grease is to provide a moisture barrier and to keep the bearing surfaces clean.
There are several problems running hard spherical bearings. e.g. moisture, races beat out, grime etc. I built the front suspension on my Cobra with rod ends which bring their own set of problems, but there is no discernible friction and they are very easily swapped in and out. They are dangerous because of the induced bending load thru the threads, but lots of race cars run them. One has to be committed to constant inspection and know bad things can happen. I look forward to the experience.
The Delrin bushings are a compromise of sorts. They will not last like rubber bushings, but they will last much better than spherical bearings. The Cobra is a track car. The Vantage is a street car.
Irish - thanks for setting the record straight. I was hoping one of you guy's would show up with correct part numbers.
IMO the V12VS arms are a great upgrade. The only reason I went to Delrin was for improved track performance and I had a worthless set of arms staring at me. If it proves too harsh, I can easily revert back to the V12 arms.
On headlight tracking - I just removed the actuator arms completely.
Irish - does Aston specify inspection intervals and renew of the GT4 bearings?
Hello at all
Very nice job x-chr
and thanks irish07 for the most stiffer upper arms part numbers.
Please what are now the most stiffer lower arm part numbers ?
I read Vanquish II and S since 2015 have 25% stiffer bushes in rear arms....is it the same for V12V S ?
So I plan to update my beloved DBS 75000kms with its front that understeer and rear that squirms !!
Best
Phil
06-18-2018, 10:01 PM
