Hi Gang,

It's been a long winter in the northeast; good news is the car isn't quite ready for spring as I need to get my winter mods wrapped up! The car is in pieces:






Here's a list of what I've completed or currently underway:

1. Installed dark smoked corner markers. Had to take the rear bumper off to install the rear corners and reflectors. While I’m waiting for the updated reflectors from RedPants, figured I’d powdercoat the exhaust tips flat black. Not on the car yet but they came out nice! (A friend of mine did them in his home shop. I’m now wishing I did them to give me an excuse to buy a powder coat setup to do small parts. ;-)









2. I removed the front and rear coilovers so I could send the springs to Stuart at VelocityAP so he could do his magic to configure the optimum set of his lowering springs for the V12V. He’s been looking for a customer to help him round out all the Vantage models for his lowering spring setup. Stuart believes his lowered DBS front springs and lowered rear V8 sport pack spring combo will be the ticket but we’ll know soon enough.

Pretty easy job although I had a ***** of a time removing the rear bolts to the right rear ebrake caliper. I think there was some sort of corrosion as not only was unscrewing the bolt abnormally difficult, one of the caliper sleeves was stuck to the bolt and ended up ripping one of the rubber caliper dust boot sleeves. After chasing all the threads on the bolts and spindles with tap and die, much smoother bolt engagement. The drivers side was not nearly as difficult and came off much easier with no torn boots. Weird. Anyway, picked up a new set of ebrake caliper mount boots from AstonBits—pretty cheap.



Btw, imprinted inside the new dust boot I found the following Brembo part number: 22.4646.41. After a quick Google search, it appears this is the same part used on early Viper GTS (circa 1997) and Lotus Elise, Exige and 340R. Just paying it forward for anyone who might stumble on this in the future and needs additional sourcing options. Rockauto has caliper rebuild kits for the Viper and super cheap--might be an option to source these dust boots.

3. I picked up a new set of 20” wheels and tires (Michelin Pilot Sport4s’s). The rims are forged Vorsteiner VSF-001 in 20x9F -35 (255/30 tire) and 20x11R -47 (305/25 tire). Here is a teaser pic. I test fitted the wheels with the stock suspension and it accentuates the fender gap given the lower profile tire—hence VAP springs going in. I love the traditional split spoke design offered by most wheel vendors but I opted for a little more aggressive look with Vorsteiner’s machined “veins” around the perimeter of the hub—a different twist on this classic design. Plus, these were about half the price of forged ADV.1 or other high end brands; but no sacrifice in quality and super fast manufacturing time. Decided to not install TPMS sensors to save on cost and hassle with reprogramming. Instead, picked up RedPants TPMS delete harness as a super easy and reversible alternative. (I'll update this thread once I have the springs and new rims installed.)



4. Wrapped the chrome window trim with flat black vinyl (see this post #229 here: https://www.6speedonline.com/forums/...-today-16.html). It was my first vinyl wrap job and I’m really happy with the results. YouTube was my inspiration and training. Now with some confidence, I decided to wrap the perimeter of the tail lights with gloss black. I’ve always wanted to see what my car would look like with the black trimmed (instead of light gray) tail light variant that Aston offers. Instead of buying new lights, for less than $10 in vinyl, I get to see and comes off easy if I don’t like it. The absolute necessity to this project was 3M knifeless tape—can’t do this job without it.

Comparison of OEM grey and gloss black wrap:




5. Picked up a set of carbon strakes. Given I’m removing/covering all chrome from the car, the chrome strakes had to go. And about 5lbs of weight savings—the stock strakes are beefy!



6. Did my first oil change/air filter change/annual maintenance since buying the car 11 months ago. Only put on about 1,000 miles since buying it so the oil was still golden in color. I changed the oil with Liqui Moly—I use this on my RS5. Heard great things about it. No issues changing the oil. In fact, didn’t spill a drop of oil when removing the filter as I stuffed a couple PIG oil absorbent pads down there—worked great. I’ll be installing RedPants V12 oil separator once available as I noticed a small pool of oil in the intake:



7. Researched high and low for an unobtrusive iPhone mount to use in the car. Ended up buying one of these for each of my cars since I like it so much. Works very well and no chance of marring up the dash or vents as I’ve seen with other options. Holds my iphone8 great.

8. I picked up Scrape Armor's front lip guard since I'll be lowering the car, I'll take all the protection I can get. I loosely bolted it up for now. I love that it uses the stock lip mounting bolts for secure installation. Fit and finish is perfect. Instructions say to drill 4 extra holes for additional inner and outer screw mounting but I *think* a couple strips of 3M double sided on the outer edges will do the job without drilling into a $3500 piece of carbon. If not, instead of using the supplied self-tapping screws, may install a couple "Nutserts" into the carbon and use a couple extra T30 screws. No pics yet but stay tuned.

9. Picked up VelocityAP’s tune. Haven’t installed the tune yet but will report seat-of-the-pants difference once the snow is gone and the car is back on the road.

Stay tuned for more updates as I get the car back together!

-Dan

 

Hi Dan,
A great read - thank you.
Good to see someone using the winter time productivly on a Vantage.

If your car is still jacked up - could you post some underbody pics?
I have not found any in the web. Considering the secondary cat delete and would like to see if the cats are visible or covered. If plain visible I may have issues with the authorities over here in Switzerland. Thanks.

Best - Hans

 

Great setup! what size 20" tires did you get in the front and rear?

 

 

 

Looking great!

 

Thanks, Dan. Great picture.
I see secondary cats are in the plain open - advantage is they can be changed quickly.

Honestly, coming from Porsches I have not seen such an uncovered/unprotected underbody in quite a while...underbody airflow does not seem to be of great concern.

 

wow thats quite thin on these East Coast roads!!
I'm considering 245/35 and 295/30 to give more meat to the sidewalls ha ha

 

Dan! Great to see you on here friend.

Thank you for creating this build thread for us to follow along. Subscribed for the upcoming wheel pics

 

As far as I have seen, Porsche doesn't cover their exhaust system. It's just all at the back of the car.

I've only seen Ferrari and Lotus with completely covered bellies. Even the R8 has a pretty big hole in their belly pan.

 

You are right, I know 964,993 and later GT cars. They have an underbody engine/transmission cover but exhaust and cats are partialy exposed as well.
I was mistaken since it looks tidier because all is in the back.

 

Nice mods and build thread Dan!
BTW, any update on the springs?

 

 

I thought under body panels are an option on the Vantage? Could've sworn I saw a Vantage with complete under body panels at my local AM dealer once. This was a before I bought a Vantage and assumed all AM's had them (owned an Evora at the time that had them so I thought par for the course).

 

More pics to come when I finish the install!