Car's not here, but the mods have begun

[KarlFranz]

Q can't just sit idle until late September, so the upgrade program has begun.

Here's a sneak peek at some of the things in store:

Edited by KarlFranz on Thursday 21st August 13:32

[KarlFranz]

W1111AM said:

Kick plate badge: that's protective yellow covering right or are you going all out for the yellow to match your stitching?

Unlike the N430, the graphics pack on the GT is optional. Unfortunately, it's an all-or-nothing affair. I wasn't to keen on having yellow on the A-pillar/Cant Rail so I decided that I'm going to do just the parts I want in yellow by myself instead. The yellow stitching and accent stripe on the seats will tie-in with the exterior yellow accents, the kick plate badges and the brake calipers.

W1111AM said:

Fibre-glass wing mirror covers: handmade, this is a seriously big effort, I am very impressive Sir! What is your experience background? You must have done this before. It's not for the faint hearted GRP style activities...?

The only other time I've attempted doing carbon fiber work was when I did some parts for my 07 V8V. I did the mirror covers for that car as well but I couldn't use them on the GT4 because the mirrors are larger.

Here's a picture of what the ones I made for the V8V wound up looking like:

[KarlFranz]

hashluck said:

So the seat switches are from a different car. Interessting to see how that goes since they are so much nicer

yeti said:

What are they, Jag?

whoami said:

If someone could find a way of easily (and cost effectively) replacing the rubbish plastic switches in the Vantage, there would be no shortage of buyers.

Laser Sag said:

Would hazard a guess at lumbar support by the look of it.

The seat controls are from the Vanquish II/Rapide. The difference between them and the ones on the Virage/DB9.2 is that they include the lumbar adjustment. Due to the seat re-design, lunbar control is no longer located on the inboard lower seat bolster itself.

The way the seat controls work is completely different from the older platic model (which is now only found on the Vantage line). In a nutshell: the new ones multiplex all the seat functions onto 3 wires whereas the older one had a dedicated pair of wires for each individual seat motor. This is the reason that some who tried to get Aston to change their seat controls when ordering a new car were denied their request. It's not a simple swap of parts. In fact, in order to do the change I will be designing a new circuit board for the new switches so that they interface to the car the way the older switches do.

[KarlFranz]

Laser Sag said:

Be interesting to see it all progress, can't think I would ever be taking a brand new AM and carrying out alterations to it.

I always feel the need to create and be unique. As long as you have the skills to do a good job and can afford it, there's nothing wrong with making these mods. Every alteration I have made to Astons was done with a goal of being fully reversible to original specification. I accomplish this by either buying spare parts or fabricating my own.

So far, my modificaton work has paid off: I sold my 07 V8V last month for $25,000(US) more than what the AM dealer offered me in trade for the new 2015 GT I ordered. In fact, I wound up selling the 07MY for almost the same amount I bought it for alsmost 4 years earlier.

Edited by KarlFranz on Thursday 21st August 14:23

[KarlFranz]

mikey k said:

So what re you planning got the Vanquish steering wheel controls

I'm thinking of installing those instead of the standard switches because I like the look better. I even contemplated using the "Sport" button on the right as a mute button for my radar detector. I'm not sure yet. The circuit is slightly different in the Vanquish controls. They both use a type of resistor ladder that varies the resistance across two terminals depending on which switch is pressed. However, the resistor values are different and they are surface-mounted onto the circuit board, so I may have to do a bit of surgery on the new controls to make them work like the older ones.

[KarlFranz]

divetheworld said:

The steering wheel controls are multiplexed before the clock spring. Being that the common factor is that the inputs are simply two state devices, you at worst should be able to cut the tracks on the vanq board and hard wire to an OEM board after removing the surface mount microswitches.
The hard part will be adding a function that wasn't there before like using the Sport button. Back in the 90's I built a new steering wheel that included full controls for an Alpine unit. The job was easy once I realised that there was no way to use the clock spring. I used RF control. you have the clues in front of you.
How often will you replace the battery on your remote for the exhaust valves? Years? Wire the remote switch to the "S" button and hide the remote in the steering wheel.
Just a thought.

The clock spring on the Vantage has a couple of unassigned pins, I was thinking of using those if I decided to repurpose the Sport button to the radar mute function. I do like your line of thinking regarding the wireless remote though. The only problem is that it actually uses two dedicated buttons to open and close the relay respectively so I would need a latching circuit on the relay side to toggle the state using just one button.

The left switchpack also has a spare button (for the adjustable suspension on the Vanquish). However, I would rather not dedicate both spare buttons to control the exhaust only. It's a lot easier to program both exhaust remote buttons to the spare Home Link buttons instead.

Your idea of using both circuit boards (one for the switches and one for the actual circuit) is actually pretty clever. I don't know if you have looked at the guts of the Vantage cruise control or audio switchpacks, but they are unbelievably old-school. They use leaf-spring switches, full-size LEDs and resistors and the plastic housing is sort of a unibody chassis that holds those components in place. The Vanquish switchpacks, by comparison, use surface-mount components, micro-switches and is well laid out on a 2-layer board.

[KarlFranz]

Biggriff said:

I understood all of that .... Right up to the point where you started typing.

LOL