"Restoring" a 2008 Aston Martin DBS Manual
Discussion
After being fortunate enough to try many different and interesting cars over the years, I came to realise that my one true love is in fact the 2008 spec DBS manual. It's just such a brilliantly well rounded and judged package for the road, and has always been chronically misunderstood and under appreciated I believe.
amongst the other marques, my past history up till now included six different Aston Martins, some bought from new, some used. Spread over the last 15 years, these were a Vantage 4.3 Manual, Vantage 4.7 Manual, Vantage 4.7 Speedshift, a DB9 auto, a DBS Manual (Lightning Silver) and another DBS Manual (Casino Royale).
So having come to this realisation, with some good fortune, I by chance managed to find one to purchase again (yes, for the third time!) during the COVID lockdowns. Not something that occurs lightly, given I have been told there were only 10 manuals ever sold here in South Africa, making it very rare.
And fortunately, this one it seems has been fairly well looked after it, all things considered. Overall I found it to be really in decent condition, but with lots of niggles or issues related to age that need resolving to bring it back up to scratch, like I remember it from when the DBS first launched.
And, speaking of when it launched -- as it happens, it turns out the car I've ended up with happens to be the very dealer demo car that was my first ever drive of a DBS, in August 2008. I still remember that time clearly, found old pictures and videos even. Funny how things have come full circle, turns out me and this car have a history! The dealer lent it to me for an entire weekend back then, and what fun we had. I also uncovered pictures from the pre-launch, where they brought round the prototype car, built on a DB9. I'll share some of these below.
So here starts a journey to try and somewhat return this car to its former glory. In case anyone's interested, I thought it may be worth documenting the steps and details I take to "restore" the DBS, which I consider to be Aston's best modern car.
Right, so to start with, here's some pics of the car as I received it, in the archetypal James Bond Casino Royale launch spec:
amongst the other marques, my past history up till now included six different Aston Martins, some bought from new, some used. Spread over the last 15 years, these were a Vantage 4.3 Manual, Vantage 4.7 Manual, Vantage 4.7 Speedshift, a DB9 auto, a DBS Manual (Lightning Silver) and another DBS Manual (Casino Royale).
So having come to this realisation, with some good fortune, I by chance managed to find one to purchase again (yes, for the third time!) during the COVID lockdowns. Not something that occurs lightly, given I have been told there were only 10 manuals ever sold here in South Africa, making it very rare.
And fortunately, this one it seems has been fairly well looked after it, all things considered. Overall I found it to be really in decent condition, but with lots of niggles or issues related to age that need resolving to bring it back up to scratch, like I remember it from when the DBS first launched.
And, speaking of when it launched -- as it happens, it turns out the car I've ended up with happens to be the very dealer demo car that was my first ever drive of a DBS, in August 2008. I still remember that time clearly, found old pictures and videos even. Funny how things have come full circle, turns out me and this car have a history! The dealer lent it to me for an entire weekend back then, and what fun we had. I also uncovered pictures from the pre-launch, where they brought round the prototype car, built on a DB9. I'll share some of these below.
So here starts a journey to try and somewhat return this car to its former glory. In case anyone's interested, I thought it may be worth documenting the steps and details I take to "restore" the DBS, which I consider to be Aston's best modern car.
Right, so to start with, here's some pics of the car as I received it, in the archetypal James Bond Casino Royale launch spec:
Here are some photos from the pre-launch, with the prototype car. You can see how closely the final DBS ended up. Visible changes to the end product were the dropping of the jet exhaust tips, the aluminium racing style fuel filler cap, the all alcantara interior, and the upgrading of the centre console armrest area with the facelift design that included cupholders.
Edited by jus on Monday 17th August 16:02
Edited by jus on Monday 17th August 16:02
Edited by jus on Monday 17th August 16:03
Right, first things first. On one of the first few drives I did, under a bit of acceleration, the glovebox lid abruptly dropped open onto my passenger's lap, and wouldn't hold closed.
On closer examination, the plastic bit that the electronic closing mechanism grabs onto, was broken off at the screw mounts from the glovebox lid. Looks like it may have been forced open at some point, perhaps it got stuck closed?
This was pretty easily fixed with some Pratley automotive epoxy, which I simply used to re-attach the plastic screw mounts to the glovebox lid. It set with a nice tight fit and everything is back to the way it was again, you wouldn't know a thing.
On closer examination, the plastic bit that the electronic closing mechanism grabs onto, was broken off at the screw mounts from the glovebox lid. Looks like it may have been forced open at some point, perhaps it got stuck closed?
This was pretty easily fixed with some Pratley automotive epoxy, which I simply used to re-attach the plastic screw mounts to the glovebox lid. It set with a nice tight fit and everything is back to the way it was again, you wouldn't know a thing.
Then, driver's seat leather. The bolsters in sports cars always get rubbed off from ingress and egress, and this one is no different. We decided to try a leather reconditioning system called Colour Lock, which I had seen had some amazing results. It is basically a kind of leather re-dying process. So, off the car went.
Before Colour Lock treatment:
After Colour Lock treatment:
There was also this nick in the back of the seat, which has also been disappeared successfully.
Before:
After:
The results look very good! We'll see how well this holds up. Luckily the leather itself is in good nick overall, and the alcantara and stitching has held up perfectly.
The rest of the interior leather is all perfectly fine, there are just some touch points where elbows tend to sit etc that will benefit from a proper interior valet and detailing deep cleanse, which will come later. The steering wheel leather rim is very shiny and worn, and that will be replaced.
The only real alternative for the seat would be to order a whole new set of seats from the factory trim shop, but that would be a significant expense, so won't be done lightly. Let's see how it goes!
Before Colour Lock treatment:
After Colour Lock treatment:
There was also this nick in the back of the seat, which has also been disappeared successfully.
Before:
After:
The results look very good! We'll see how well this holds up. Luckily the leather itself is in good nick overall, and the alcantara and stitching has held up perfectly.
The rest of the interior leather is all perfectly fine, there are just some touch points where elbows tend to sit etc that will benefit from a proper interior valet and detailing deep cleanse, which will come later. The steering wheel leather rim is very shiny and worn, and that will be replaced.
The only real alternative for the seat would be to order a whole new set of seats from the factory trim shop, but that would be a significant expense, so won't be done lightly. Let's see how it goes!
Next up, I noticed one of the tyres kept going flat over night. I also noticed that the tyres were a bit hard and old, with a 2013 stamp on them, and they didn't offer great grip. As it is, due to its unusually low diff ratio, the DBS has a very torquey delivery to the rear wheels and can light up the rears in the lower gears, but it was really battling with these old tyres, spinning up the rears in the dry with even just a bit of a prod in 2nd gear. Given this car has only done around 3,500 km a year in its life on average, it hasn't seen many sets of tyres!
We diagnosed the deflation problem as badly re-painted wheels. The paint had started flaking off where the tyre meets the rim, resulting in a bad seal, and air leaking out slowly. So the car went off to sit on a lift, the wheels were all taken off, paint removed, and fully reconditioned and repainted beautifully.
New Pirelli tyres were also ordered and fitted. I considered trying the latest generation tyre technology in the form of the popular Michelin PS4's, but was advised that the DBS suspension is carefully tuned to the stiffness of the OEM spec Pirelli PZeros, and that you would feel a difference with another tyre. So I decided to stick to the original spec tyres, to preserve the ride and handling characteristics, which is already great from my perspective.
You can see the flaking paint on the rims, from bad prior re-painting:
The finished articles after full reconditioning and repainting:
Alignment was also done while it was there. We will send the car for high precision wheel balancing on a Roadforce machine as well, which by the way apparently all Astons benefit from, as there is a lot of transmission of forces through the steering wheel and only light dampening, which is part of what makes for such great steering feel, but it also means you feel every little imperfection in the setup.
The DBS was also notorious for a wheel balancing problem on early cars, which led to the infamous "wheel wobble" sensation, which I had on all mine. Best I could establish over time, was that Brembo supplied carbon disc brakes that weren't properly balanced out of the factory, so the discs and wheels need to be balanced together on a high precision balancing machine. This was the official solution mandated to dealers by the factory. You'll know if it's been done on a car by the marking left behind to align rim and brake rotor.
We diagnosed the deflation problem as badly re-painted wheels. The paint had started flaking off where the tyre meets the rim, resulting in a bad seal, and air leaking out slowly. So the car went off to sit on a lift, the wheels were all taken off, paint removed, and fully reconditioned and repainted beautifully.
New Pirelli tyres were also ordered and fitted. I considered trying the latest generation tyre technology in the form of the popular Michelin PS4's, but was advised that the DBS suspension is carefully tuned to the stiffness of the OEM spec Pirelli PZeros, and that you would feel a difference with another tyre. So I decided to stick to the original spec tyres, to preserve the ride and handling characteristics, which is already great from my perspective.
You can see the flaking paint on the rims, from bad prior re-painting:
The finished articles after full reconditioning and repainting:
Alignment was also done while it was there. We will send the car for high precision wheel balancing on a Roadforce machine as well, which by the way apparently all Astons benefit from, as there is a lot of transmission of forces through the steering wheel and only light dampening, which is part of what makes for such great steering feel, but it also means you feel every little imperfection in the setup.
The DBS was also notorious for a wheel balancing problem on early cars, which led to the infamous "wheel wobble" sensation, which I had on all mine. Best I could establish over time, was that Brembo supplied carbon disc brakes that weren't properly balanced out of the factory, so the discs and wheels need to be balanced together on a high precision balancing machine. This was the official solution mandated to dealers by the factory. You'll know if it's been done on a car by the marking left behind to align rim and brake rotor.
Edited by jus on Monday 17th August 17:14
Edited by jus on Tuesday 18th August 08:37
Meantime, the box from the great people at AstonInstallations.com arrived, which will allow us to upgrade the car's obsolete infotainment to modern wireless Apple CarPlay in an OEM style fully integrated fashion, using the existing pop-up screen and audio system. It's a very neat solution.
This will only be installed when we get to the workshop jobs on the car, of which I have already worked up a growing snag list of small things so far.
There is also a box on the way from AstonMartinBits.com with some replacement goodies!
This will only be installed when we get to the workshop jobs on the car, of which I have already worked up a growing snag list of small things so far.
There is also a box on the way from AstonMartinBits.com with some replacement goodies!
Another small problem that I fixed myself: the little glass crescent on the bottom of the starter slot fell off, the bit that says "START" on it.
It's just the glass face that fell off, only a few millimetres thick.
You have the option of replacing the entire thing with a part from Astonmartinbits.com for £127.08, as shown below, but really it's just the thin bit of glass on the front that needs to be re-attached. I decided to try and glue this back on.
Be sure not to use any form of superglue / cyanoacrylate as this will cause a white fog on the glass. Instead I used a tiny sliver of a building contractor product, a clear "Sticks Like s
t" glue, which among other things is designed to bond to glass, and it worked perfectly.
The glass face only has a very thin rim around its edge that makes contact with the starter unit, so you want to be careful to only put adhesive on that tiny rim, and not to get any on the transparent face where the START text is.
Problem solved! No visible adhesive, and it's back where it belongs, for very little cost. So far its remained securely in place.
It's just the glass face that fell off, only a few millimetres thick.
You have the option of replacing the entire thing with a part from Astonmartinbits.com for £127.08, as shown below, but really it's just the thin bit of glass on the front that needs to be re-attached. I decided to try and glue this back on.
Be sure not to use any form of superglue / cyanoacrylate as this will cause a white fog on the glass. Instead I used a tiny sliver of a building contractor product, a clear "Sticks Like s
t" glue, which among other things is designed to bond to glass, and it worked perfectly. The glass face only has a very thin rim around its edge that makes contact with the starter unit, so you want to be careful to only put adhesive on that tiny rim, and not to get any on the transparent face where the START text is.
Problem solved! No visible adhesive, and it's back where it belongs, for very little cost. So far its remained securely in place.
ClaphamGT3 said:
This thread has perfectly illustrated why, although I love Astons, owning one would do my head in.
I don't expect old cars to be perfect - God knows none of mine are - but I do expect them not to demonstrate kit car levels of build quality and durability.
Hmm, they don't they are exceptionally well-made cars.I don't expect old cars to be perfect - God knows none of mine are - but I do expect them not to demonstrate kit car levels of build quality and durability.
cayman-black said:
ClaphamGT3 said:
This thread has perfectly illustrated why, although I love Astons, owning one would do my head in.
I don't expect old cars to be perfect - God knows none of mine are - but I do expect them not to demonstrate kit car levels of build quality and durability.
Hmm, they don't they are exceptionally well-made cars.I don't expect old cars to be perfect - God knows none of mine are - but I do expect them not to demonstrate kit car levels of build quality and durability.
jus said:
Right, so to start with, here's some pics of the car as I received it, in the archetypal James Bond Casino Royale launch spec:
I believe the DBS launch spec was Lightning Silver, as unveiled at the official DBS launch at Pebble Beach in 2007. Why Aston Martin didn’t launch it in Casino Royale, being as the movie premiered a year earlier is a little surprising. Maybe they thought LS made the car pop a little more in photos and under showroom lighting. DB9VolanteDriver said:
I believe the DBS launch spec was Lightning Silver, as unveiled at the official DBS launch at Pebble Beach in 2007. Why Aston Martin didn’t launch it in Casino Royale, being as the movie premiered a year earlier is a little surprising. Maybe they thought LS made the car pop a little more in photos and under showroom lighting.
Actually you are right, and in fact my first one was in Lightning Silver, which was an excellent colour, and probably my favourite. It did have very high contrast and pop. What I meant to say was the James Bond Casino Royale movie spec, which is probably thought of by many people as the archetypal original spec, that being Casino Royale paint, manual gearbox, 2+0 configuration. Also, the 2008s came with the beautiful carbon door caps, which seemed to revert back to ordinary leather soon thereafter with the arrival of the Auto model in 2009, for some odd reason!
There are some interesting production numbers on this blog here: https://aston1936.com/2019/03/29/dbs-production-nu... (By the way, the picture of the launch car at Pebble Beach in Lightning Silver is also there).
"Casino Royal-painted cars account for a huge 368 DBS V12 Coupes, almost 15% of total production. Of these, 251 can be considered as true Bond replicas with both 2+0 seating and a manual gearbox. Quantum Silver cars are also popular with 354 built but interestingly, as these were built later in production, only 32 had the authentic 007 manual gearbox and 2+0 seating combination. This number actually includes the 10 especially made for the film so making them especially desirable, even though these cars are not actually a licensed 007 product."
ClaphamGT3 said:
This thread has perfectly illustrated why, although I love Astons, owning one would do my head in.
I don't expect old cars to be perfect - God knows none of mine are - but I do expect them not to demonstrate kit car levels of build quality and durability.
Based on my observations, I don't really believe this to be the case, at least relative to the world of older exotics. Actually in the thread so far, the only defect you could perhaps point a finger at Aston for is the glass face falling off the starter slot, which is very minor, and no doubt this part was supplied by an external supplier. I don't expect old cars to be perfect - God knows none of mine are - but I do expect them not to demonstrate kit car levels of build quality and durability.
The majority of snags I am finding so far I would say are mostly to do with use, the passage of time, or bad fixes in the past from previous owners. Nothing out of the ordinary with used exotics with some years on them from my experiences. To my eye, the materials are great and the cars are nicely made, with tight fits -- but as the dealer mechanic often reminds me, they are still handbuilt cars and you can expect some quirks.
That said, in my experience I have seen far worse from the other exotic marques' products from this period. The Ferrari F430 and Lamborghini Gallardo come to mind. Even expensive modern day McLaren's have some bits attached with double sided tape, believe it or not. Seen it myself in the workshop!
Overall I think the DBS has weathered it's 12 years rather well for a handbuilt exotic. Absolutely everything still works on the car! More than I can say for any of the Ferrari's I owned for instance.
The handbuilt nature perhaps forms part of their character. Objectively the most well built and flawless car I've had to date, a Huracan, is also perhaps the most sterile in personality. Which car do I enjoy the most..? Well, it's telling that I'm back at Aston yet again...
Edited by jus on Tuesday 18th August 08:40
Edited by jus on Tuesday 18th August 08:41
I love this, for two reasons:
1. I can see myself switching my N420 for a DBS, it's probably my favourite V12 of that gen
2. I adore little projects at small or no cost to improve little things and problems, it's so satisfying
On the glovebox problem, it might have been caused by the weight of the owner's manual, can I suggest to leave it at home and have the PDF version on your phone all the time?
https://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?h=0&...
1. I can see myself switching my N420 for a DBS, it's probably my favourite V12 of that gen
2. I adore little projects at small or no cost to improve little things and problems, it's so satisfying
On the glovebox problem, it might have been caused by the weight of the owner's manual, can I suggest to leave it at home and have the PDF version on your phone all the time?
https://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?h=0&...
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