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Being an individual of impeccable taste and boundless capability (or at least YouTube-fueled delusions of such), I am not afraid to buy the cheapest example of any given once-great car. Also having very kind and trusting friends, I have recently discovered that the Aston V8 Vantage is much better to drive than its curb weight would suggest. With room in the budget for another project, I investigated a few options, including the Z4M coupe and Maserati 4200 Cambiocorsa, but deep down the Aston was the only choice that really appealed. That's when this entered the picture:
Oh dear.
So what do we have here? It's a 2008 V8 Vantage Roadster, with a Sportshift transmission and 60,000 miles on the clock. And yes, those are dubs.
As soon as the car was safely home, a wallet-wilting collection of parts and consumables were ordered. It being a lovely Saturday morning, however, I wasn't content to wait for their arrival to begin the project. So what can I address with just the things I have on hand?
Ah yes, the PPF, which appears to have contracted leprosy.
Ewww.
My wife was out, so I was able to "borrow' her beloved kettle...
And brew a thematically appropriate beverage.
After remembering that I don't actually enjoy tea very much, I took the kettle outside, and commenced removing the disgusting PPF using Larry Kosilla's hot water method. It worked beautifully.
I then used waterless wash to remove the dirt lines where the edges had been and applied a thorough coat of carnauba wax.
Import, Dream, thank you! It is, overall, a well cared for example, and clearly loved by the previous owners. That said, there are a lot of little things I need to address to bring it up to a standard I'm happy with.
I had my first Vantage Project - not by choice! I bought a miss-represented 2011 V8 Vantage from Fairfield Jaguar. A small dent below the headlight that looked like a bondo botch job, a dent in the bonnet, scratched from car washes head to tail but good shape mechanically and almost flawless Sahara Tan interior. When it arrived I almost sent it back because none of the photos suggested the flaws, not sure if they photoshopped it. The price was good for a 24K mile car at the time $52K which included TTL and shipping for a perfect shape car, but not mine. Anyway, I started down the fix'in route and customizing. All other Vantages I've owned were under warranty so I pretty much kept them stock. Along with this Vanatge I've also personalized a 2002 SLK32 (now about 420HP) and bought a mostly already done 2006 SLK55 Kleemann (520HP). The below link is the narrative on what I did to the three cars:
WIth the diseased PPF removed, it was time to turn my attention to the interior. The Vantage comes standard with several square cows of leather covering almost every surface, and every single one was grimy. The driver's seat and door card were the worst:
I started by using Colourlock Strong Cleaner and a Mothers leather brush, but quickly found that the brush was more abrasive than I was comfortable with and switched to Colourlock's supplied sponge. This is a VERY aggressive cleaner, and while I wouldn't recommend it for a less heavily soiled interior, it did wonders here.
Unfortunately, I found several areas on the driver's seat where the dye had worn away completely, so the appropriate Chancellor Red leather repair kit will be ordered, again from Colourlock.
Once any remaining residue from the cleaner had been wiped away with a damp microfiber, I applied two courses of United Products leather conditioner, waiting four hours between applications, and I'd say the results speak for themselves:
Some of you may have noticed this car suffered from an... unusual choice of wheels. So "unusual", in fact, that it was "unusable" due to extreme tire rubbing in both the front and rear arches. This irked me so much that before I even had the car home I'd ordered a used set of OEM wheels from a well-known internet auction site. They were a bit shabby but the price was right and they were available to ship immediately.
Two more items were needed to revert to the OEM wheels- tires and lug nuts. There are very limited choices for tires in the factory sizes, and I wanted the stiffer sidewalls of Bridgestone Potenzas to help manage the roadster's not-inconsiderable heft. Upsizing to 245/40-19 in the front made that possible.
I love the smell of fresh tires in the morning.
Aston charges a frankly ludicrous $300+ for lug nuts for a Vantage, so some judicious measurement and research turned up these, Gorilla brand part number 91107. They are dimensionally identical to the OEM nuts, lacking only the rotating collar, and cost $54 from Summit Racing.
I was thus suitably provisioned to remove the offending wheels, but as it turned out, a bit of psychological preparation would have been wise as well...
Upon removing the fronts, I encountered the first obstacle- centering rings rusted to the hubs. Fortunately(?) they were low quality plastic and easily removed with a combination of a chisel and severe indignation.
I did also find the first genuinely pleasant surprise of the project so far- H&R lowering springs fitted to leak-free OEM dampers.
At the back, however, the real horror was lurking:
Yep, that's a double stack of non-hubcentric spacers. They say a picture is worth a thousand words, but in this case it's worth sixty seconds of incoherent cursing.
Oh, yeah, none of these tires were the same make or model.
Just for fun, I decided to weigh the removed wheels and the new ones, both with tires installed. The 22in fronts came in at 59lb, and the rears at 64. The OEM are 52 and 56, respectively. To say that removing 30lb of unsprung weight from the car improved the ride quality would be putting it mildly.
Wow, over a month since I updated, time flies when you're in the garage getting greasy having fun...
Having left off with an Aston that could now move at speed without hideous rubbing noises, I next set out to extinguish the sole warning light on the dash- the TPMS. The Vantage TPMS is notoriously failure-prone and tightly toleranced, and I like to tune my own pressures, so rather than mess around with trying to recode the sensors in the new wheels and possibly troubleshoot the receiver itself, I elected to disable it. If you don't want to cut and solder any wiring, Redpants offers a defeat harness that plugs in between the receiver and the body harness. I don't mind a little lead poisoning, so I got out my soldering iron and did it myself.
All that's required is to cut the orange, brown, and black wires (shown below) on the receiver pigtail (make sure you leave about 1" before the connector) and solder them together on the connector side. Protect the cut ends of the pigtail on the receiver side, and DO NOT cut the red wire.
I reinstalled the "modified" receiver and... no more warning light. Success.
Next up, it was time to change the oil. On the coupe this is a fairly easy job, but on the roadster there's an underbody brace that has to be removed along with the front undertray. Once these were out, I was confronted with what appeared to be evidence of the dreaded timing cover leak:
Fortunately, a bit of investigation showed that this mess originated much higher up, with a leaking air-oil separator:
Gross... but not an engine-out job to fix.
I followed Redpants' procedure for the oil change. One note of caution: when removing the dry sump filters, even if you've let the tank and sump drain for an hour, there will still be HALF A QUART of oil behind each filter. Ask my garage floor how I know...
Filter, crush washer, sump plug, filter o-rings, and filter cover bolts all replaced, sump filters inspected and cleaned, and a sample off to Blackstone for analysis. Fortunately, no sign of the bad day glitter anywhere.
With the car now reasonably safe to drive, I took it on its first mountain drive in my care:
While it made many glorious V8 noises, it also bounced horribly over even moderately sized bumps and displayed an alarming tendency to pull to the right under heavy braking. Turn-in response was also poor, which I know from prior experience isn't normal for Vantages, despite the hefty curbweight.
A check of the bushings and ball joints showed everything to be in good working order, so it was clear that the alignment was more than a little off. Using the finest of man-logic, I decided to install coilovers immediately, since that would improve the body control on our notoriously lumpy mountain roads and only require the alignment to be performed once, rather than repeated after installation.
Hey look, coilovers!
These are BC Racing Vantage Roadster spec with 400lb front and 500lb rear springs. While I'm normally a diehard KW V3 enthusiast, these were an unbeatable price (free) and therefore worth trying before committing funds to any more serious options.
To install, I first measured wheel center to arch distances at all four corners:
Based on that, I decided to target 355mm front and 365mm rear after installation, as the H&R springs sat marginally too low for my taste.
Installation is again per Redpants. For anyone looking to do this themselves, I measured the motion ratios of the suspension out at 0.86 front and 0.81 rear, and to achieve my target ride heights, the collar-to-collar distances on the coilovers (after settling and adjustment) were:
FL 62mm
FR 61mm
RL 56mm
RR 55mm
Side note: some adjustment was definitely required, as my "first guess" created the mythical DBX Cabrio:
With the ride heights where I wanted them (down to the millimeter, because I have a problem), it was off to my trusted mechanic for the now overdue alignment.
Oh... that's really bad.
Much better. The alignment specs are my own, based partly on Aston's values for both the non-Sport Pack and Sport Pack cars and partly on experience setting up other front-mid-engined sports cars. I'll probably revise the toe and caster slightly at a later date (right now it's almost too pointy on turn-in and the road crown compensation isn't nearly enough), but I'm happy to report that overall, the car is much crisper and more composed on a back road.
Fantastic write-up that was incredibly enjoyable to read, even though I have zero inclination (and even less know-how) to ever take on a project as bold as this! Congrats on an excellent outcome!
07-29-2023, 12:33 PM
