DB11 power upgrade - gearbox question
Discussion
Hi All,
Bought my DB11 V12 Launch Edition a couple of weeks ago and it's currently with Aston for its Year 6 service +++
I'm considering the AMR software upgrade for £1k. I appreciate it's a topic that's probably been well covered on this forum, but I have a specific question.
I spoke with a friend who was involved with DB11 development and he suggested, that while there's no appreciable power gain, unless regularly in the 6,500 - 7,000rpm power band, they did a bunch of calibration work to the power delivery, torque shaping and transmission calibration, which makes it drive better. He advised against pursuing independent tuners, who can get close to DBS power, as he is confident it will chew through its gearbox.
Conversely, I spoke with an ex-AM master tech who said he had felt guilty charging customers for the upgrade, as it wasn't good value when compared to independent tuners and the gearbox could easily handle the power, despite not being rated as such.
Do any of you have experience of either option? Any strong opinions either way?
TIA
Bought my DB11 V12 Launch Edition a couple of weeks ago and it's currently with Aston for its Year 6 service +++
I'm considering the AMR software upgrade for £1k. I appreciate it's a topic that's probably been well covered on this forum, but I have a specific question.
I spoke with a friend who was involved with DB11 development and he suggested, that while there's no appreciable power gain, unless regularly in the 6,500 - 7,000rpm power band, they did a bunch of calibration work to the power delivery, torque shaping and transmission calibration, which makes it drive better. He advised against pursuing independent tuners, who can get close to DBS power, as he is confident it will chew through its gearbox.
Conversely, I spoke with an ex-AM master tech who said he had felt guilty charging customers for the upgrade, as it wasn't good value when compared to independent tuners and the gearbox could easily handle the power, despite not being rated as such.
Do any of you have experience of either option? Any strong opinions either way?
TIA
It depends what you want, your attitude to risk, and whether factory calibrated drivability is important to you.
The gearbox in DB11 - ZF8HP70 - is rated, as the name suggests, at 700Nm. The DB11 V12 is limited to 700Nm for this reason, important of course for the supplier underwriting of warranty while the vehicle is under factory warranty.
The AMR suite of firmware updates don’t change peak torque, as you have been correctly informed, they merely hang onto the 700Nm peak for another 500rpm thereby extracting the extra 30PS in peak power as the top end.
Remember the AMR ‘upgrade’ was not just this, it is an entirely new suite of calibration for the engine, transmission and dampers. That software is 95% of the reason that the hacks liked the AMR so much. It will be the best £1k you have ever spent, the car will be more than fast enough and you can rest easy that the transmission is still being protected.
The aftermarket tuners increase power by disregarding the 700Nm factory limit on torque. Yes you will get much more power out of the AE31, there’s nothing in theory stopping you from going to the full DBS’s 900Nm and the ultimates 770hp. It is after all precisely the same engine as in DBS.
However, the DBSS used the ZF8HP95 - it’s transmission is rated for 950Nm.
Will you lunch your transmission by running an 800Nm/680hp map? Probably not immediately. Will you risk premature detonation? - Well it likely depends how often you deploy the full monty and overload it. The risks are probably low, if you aren’t regularly pulling standing quarters at your local drag strip….
Over time, would your transmission last as long as it would have had you not increased the engines power? - almost certainly not. It’s perhaps less of a concern for our USA cousins who don’t seem to worry so much about such things, they have access to some great auto transmission rebuild specialists that can cost effectively rebuild and uprate the weaker ZF8s.
Before considering anything beyond it - my advice is to spend the tiny £1k to get that marvellous and fantastic value factory AMR upgrade done first. It might just be a long series of engine, damper and transmission firmware upgrades (takes a couple of hours to flash) but they really do represent great value when you experience the end result. GT modes remain almost unchanged, there is far greater differentiation in the sport and sport plus modes. It transforms the car. Aside from all the pops and bangs, the turbos are kept spooled up, damping is firmer and the active damping characteristics are retuned, and the transmission reacts fast and hard, so the effects are felt everywhere in the rev range. A lot of work went into that new calibration.
People who bought the ‘V12 AMR’ (2018-2021) had to pay a £20k premium, and aside from cosmetic stuff, all they got on top of what you get for £1k was some forged wheels, slightly harder subframe bushes and a 0.5mm thicker front ARB. All these hardware changes were actually disregarded as the factory went back to the original more comfortable and better insulated hardware setup for the V12 for 2022.
All the AMR firmware was retained to the end though...
Then, later, if you decide that 636hp and all the extra snap crackle and pop, violent shifting rock hard damping drama you get with the AMR maps in sport + modes still isn’t enough, and you go eyes open into it wrt your transmission, you can try an aftermarket map.
Also remember that many prospective future buyers of the car will be put off by aftermarket mods that increase transmission early failure risk, theoretical or otherwise.
The gearbox in DB11 - ZF8HP70 - is rated, as the name suggests, at 700Nm. The DB11 V12 is limited to 700Nm for this reason, important of course for the supplier underwriting of warranty while the vehicle is under factory warranty.
The AMR suite of firmware updates don’t change peak torque, as you have been correctly informed, they merely hang onto the 700Nm peak for another 500rpm thereby extracting the extra 30PS in peak power as the top end.
Remember the AMR ‘upgrade’ was not just this, it is an entirely new suite of calibration for the engine, transmission and dampers. That software is 95% of the reason that the hacks liked the AMR so much. It will be the best £1k you have ever spent, the car will be more than fast enough and you can rest easy that the transmission is still being protected.
The aftermarket tuners increase power by disregarding the 700Nm factory limit on torque. Yes you will get much more power out of the AE31, there’s nothing in theory stopping you from going to the full DBS’s 900Nm and the ultimates 770hp. It is after all precisely the same engine as in DBS.
However, the DBSS used the ZF8HP95 - it’s transmission is rated for 950Nm.
Will you lunch your transmission by running an 800Nm/680hp map? Probably not immediately. Will you risk premature detonation? - Well it likely depends how often you deploy the full monty and overload it. The risks are probably low, if you aren’t regularly pulling standing quarters at your local drag strip….
Over time, would your transmission last as long as it would have had you not increased the engines power? - almost certainly not. It’s perhaps less of a concern for our USA cousins who don’t seem to worry so much about such things, they have access to some great auto transmission rebuild specialists that can cost effectively rebuild and uprate the weaker ZF8s.
Before considering anything beyond it - my advice is to spend the tiny £1k to get that marvellous and fantastic value factory AMR upgrade done first. It might just be a long series of engine, damper and transmission firmware upgrades (takes a couple of hours to flash) but they really do represent great value when you experience the end result. GT modes remain almost unchanged, there is far greater differentiation in the sport and sport plus modes. It transforms the car. Aside from all the pops and bangs, the turbos are kept spooled up, damping is firmer and the active damping characteristics are retuned, and the transmission reacts fast and hard, so the effects are felt everywhere in the rev range. A lot of work went into that new calibration.
People who bought the ‘V12 AMR’ (2018-2021) had to pay a £20k premium, and aside from cosmetic stuff, all they got on top of what you get for £1k was some forged wheels, slightly harder subframe bushes and a 0.5mm thicker front ARB. All these hardware changes were actually disregarded as the factory went back to the original more comfortable and better insulated hardware setup for the V12 for 2022.
All the AMR firmware was retained to the end though...
Then, later, if you decide that 636hp and all the extra snap crackle and pop, violent shifting rock hard damping drama you get with the AMR maps in sport + modes still isn’t enough, and you go eyes open into it wrt your transmission, you can try an aftermarket map.
Also remember that many prospective future buyers of the car will be put off by aftermarket mods that increase transmission early failure risk, theoretical or otherwise.
Edited by Calinours on Friday 9th February 11:31
^^^ This
I have never owned a launch version V12 so cannot compare directly with an AMR flashed version which I had enabled free of charge as part of the negotiation. What I can say however is that the V12 with the upgrade is sublime. Get the ‘official’ dealer upgrade done. You won’t regret it.
Plus you get a nice little AMR badge for the engine bay too.
Edited by Octavarium on Friday 9th February 12:08
I don't think it can be as simple as saying the ZF8HP70 is rated for 700Nm max and the ZF8HP95 is rated for 950Nm max, because the new DB12 has 800Nm of torque out of the box, yet uses the ZF8HP75 gearbox, which by your logic, is only rated to 750Nm. That means the gearbox in the DB12 in underrated by design, which seems unlikely.
AMGWiz said:
I don't think it can be as simple as saying the ZF8HP70 is rated for 700Nm max and the ZF8HP95 is rated for 950Nm max, because the new DB12 has 800Nm of torque out of the box, yet uses the ZF8HP75 gearbox, which by your logic, is only rated to 750Nm. That means the gearbox in the DB12 in underrated by design, which seems unlikely.
Well, the clue to the fully validated continuous torque rating may be in the name given to each transmission variant offered by its manufacturer - ZF. As for why AML’s management have taken what many may see as a clear risk of specifying the cheaper (8HP75) ZF box on the DB12, then developing maps permitting it to be marketed and sold with a peak torque higher than it is apparently rated for by its manufacturer - this is anyone’s guess.
Who knows what careful mapping and torque profiling techniques may have been deployed, or what commercial agreement clauses exist to ensure that ZF will underwrite warranty claims for transmission failure? It’s certainly likely that the ‘800Nm’ if real, may be limited only to the higher gears, and only for short duration loads. If the component OEM rating is for continuous load, or for all ratios then such agreements will almost certainly be possible. It is going to be the case that on board data capture will be needed to verify that the warrantied component is operated within agreed parameters by the vehicles ECU. I guess it’s why they have long been made increasing difficult to ‘crack’ by the aftermarket - especially so for anything pressure charged as there’s so much more room for mischief.
What seems certain, however, is that as a result of such aftermarket tricks increasingly being deployed by the vehicle OEMs to push performance limits while squeezing costs, the days of mucking around with factory maps in warranty and not instantly and irrevocably invalidating a warranty are likely already long gone.
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