Aston martin V8 Vantage club sport type thing
Discussion
Ok, so will try and get this stuff down in one hit, so this may be quite a long one.
With little time to go things were getting a bit busy, i had no confidence that rh Zestino softs would last the trip, but the Z4 race car that i co own with ollie runs a compatible tyre size and that car is currently on NS2-R's which we also had some spares for. So i asked ollie to chuck a pair in the discovery to give me a bit of backup and ordered a pair of 285/18 NS2-R's for the rear. We know from experience that the NS2-r's just last forever even on quite a heavy car, and while they are the last word in absolutely nothing being quite a slow tyre in track tyre terms, they are more than fine for having a bit of fun.
I still had PDC holes in the front bumper so printed out a pair or blanks and painted them with a brush with the left over paint from the bumper (pebble beach here i come).
I also needed to be able to properly charge devices as its a long old drive, i printed out this weird looking thing:
cut a sheet of aluminum to replace the existing "cup holder" base and painted it black, i then nicked the voltmeter / usb ports out of the m3 race car and connected it to a little clip in spur loom that runs off the fag lighter.
I will re make this in a few weeks as although its ok, it could be better and more functional. it did however give me a way to track battery drain and give me for warning of any "no start" condition something the tracker has been giving me too frequently.
At this point the new rear boots turned up and were thrown on the back , i did make a half hearted attempts at getting some geometry on the car, but ultimately i had left it too late, the car drives straight but the toe is unequal and its a bit blunt, still sometimes you just have to work with what you have.
So just the commute aspect of the trip looked like this, plus 3 days on track, 2 days at SPA with RMA and then a day at zolder with Skylimit
That map incorporates me going to see my mum in the Cotswold's and a trip to AHM to get the car mapped, the EGR coded out and the tracker decommissioned, air bag lights shut off etc etc etc.
So, rocked up at my old dears at 3am then off at 7am same day to get down the AHM. Nice easy drive and a nice setup at AHM, adrian seems a very decent chap and doesn't blow smoke about anything he doesn't know which was refreshing.
All the software changes were completed though the complete removal of the secondary sensors may take another tweak. Post changes the car felt a good bit stronger, throttle response was finally something worth talking about most of the lights were out and the tracker didnt run the battery flat in two days. so all in all a bit of a result.
Bill was a bit aston martin-y which is why all else is DIY but somethings you just cant do, and sadly i dont have the knowledge or AMDS to self serve on coding side. Either way, good people to deal with and a good job done so a thumbs up from me. You also get to spend some time in Hartley Wintney, where you will feel simultaneously poor and like an extra in mid summer murders.
With the coding work done, i caught up with my family for a day (about 6 hours too long) before heading down to folkstone to catch the sea tube, then onto Spa.
This was as you can imagine, a fair hike but the car was drama free and was reporting considerably improved economy post remap as you no longer have to fuel cool the cats.
Day one at Spa greeted us with bright sunshine and post the standard briefing and arm banding we were good to go. Worth noting that these days run to Euro rules, to its over taking both sides, not just on the straights etc etc.
I popped out just to start re familiarizing myself (been 12 months since last at Spa) particularly as the car on track is new to me, when i noticed Ollie in the grass at Stavelot so came in to see what the drama was, turned out that the e36 had eaten its own face off when the front splitter had been dragged under the front wheels, this had pulled the rad into the pullies killed the belts etc etc
We spent some time getting it fundamentally back straight before Ollie jumped back in with me for a few laps. (it made a full recovery later in the day with the addition of a bag of zip ties).
At this point i thought i would see if i could get away with running the exhaust open. which it seems i cant, but only just.
Here is a little footage with the flaps open. its all a bit tentative and a bit of a mess, but really this is just for the sound.
Shortly after this, i was black flagged for noise (expected)
As you can see from my posterity mugshot, the car was pumping out 104db, the limit was 105, as such i think they were a bit concerned that i would be at some point infringing the limit, so a set the flaps to closed and carried on without issue as the car is whisper quiet when baffled, too quit really as it gives you a little bit less audible signal that you would ideally want.
Day one passed without incident, many many laps, many many tanks of fuel and the zestino's were unsurprisingly looking a bit sad, some of this will have been down to Geo as the centers still looked pretty good but the inner and outer were pretty skinny and largely attached to the wrong side of the rim.
on the plus side brake cooling was looking spot on with the temp trackers showing no signs of anything concerning even after 40 minute stints.
Here is the car in pride of place (outside the lower paddock bogs) and covered in a thousand miles of road grime and rubber and a few of it going round where even though i am too cheap to but the images you can see its minging in the thumbnails
The evening was spent talking b
ks, and eating carpaccio and steak on a rock and pinoccio's
carpaccio, is something that you just don't see in the uk, and its a real shame, I think its something to do with our aversion to raw things.
Then onto day 2, where it was fking tiling it down.
With my front tyres being a bit iffy i buggered off to try and get the nankangs fitted, this involved visiting a number of Belgian garages , in once case where the proprietor was chatting with his mate in an empty garage where i was told he was far to busy for my bullst 
ultimately a kindly local showed me a place in Malmedy "Mr Pnus" who understood my rubbish French and fitted both tyres in 5 minutes flat for 40 eur, use these guys if your in a jam at Spa.
With the tyres fitted i returned to the track and just got on with it, frankly the car was really not bad at all in the wet and the NS2-r's which have been frankly a bit frightening on the z4 on anything other than a dry track seemed to work really quite well all things considered.
As the day progressed the climate became kinder and the track largely dried.
This resulted in a sub 3 minute time in the car which i was pretty pleased with considering the modest tyre, vehicle weight and carrying 85kgs of penalty bacon (ollie passengering).
Some slightly more cohesive laps here:
Please note, these sound super boring as the exhaust is quiet, and there is the occasional odd noise from the passenger as he was looking at times. best lap probably starts at around 9mins so you don't have to be subject to the preceeding tedium, Also as i am not in a audi TDI and am not ithe reincarnation of Fangio, I wasnt able to set an all out track record to the soundtrack of fat of the land.
With all this "positivity" there was bound to be some fail, coming to the end of Kemmel i slightly fked and upshift resulting in me having to give the gear lever a bit of a shove, which then felt weird, and then revealed itself at the downshift at Les Combs to be buggered in that once again i was left with a floppy shaft and no drive.
We coasted to a stop at Bruxelles to enjoy some marshal hospitality
Having created a rolling yellow to get recovered i got under the car and burned my arm on the gearbox to find that the securing clamp had opened up and buggered off resutling in the cable doing its usual trick of coming off .THe CV had vented a little grease on the same side so initially that looked a bit concerning. Fortunately the clamp had not gone far and was sitting on top of the transaxle (located with a bit of hand in oven feeling about) so i hammered it back into shape, put the cable back on, did the clamp up really really tight and carried on lapping to the end of the day.
From there it was a case of not bothering to wash the car and getting packed up for the trip to Zolder, this was preceded by a trip to see Valient Ecosse and the Ring, to spend a load of euros on something unnecessary and stupid but will cover that at another time.
More when i get a chance.
With little time to go things were getting a bit busy, i had no confidence that rh Zestino softs would last the trip, but the Z4 race car that i co own with ollie runs a compatible tyre size and that car is currently on NS2-R's which we also had some spares for. So i asked ollie to chuck a pair in the discovery to give me a bit of backup and ordered a pair of 285/18 NS2-R's for the rear. We know from experience that the NS2-r's just last forever even on quite a heavy car, and while they are the last word in absolutely nothing being quite a slow tyre in track tyre terms, they are more than fine for having a bit of fun.
I still had PDC holes in the front bumper so printed out a pair or blanks and painted them with a brush with the left over paint from the bumper (pebble beach here i come).
I also needed to be able to properly charge devices as its a long old drive, i printed out this weird looking thing:
cut a sheet of aluminum to replace the existing "cup holder" base and painted it black, i then nicked the voltmeter / usb ports out of the m3 race car and connected it to a little clip in spur loom that runs off the fag lighter.
I will re make this in a few weeks as although its ok, it could be better and more functional. it did however give me a way to track battery drain and give me for warning of any "no start" condition something the tracker has been giving me too frequently.
At this point the new rear boots turned up and were thrown on the back , i did make a half hearted attempts at getting some geometry on the car, but ultimately i had left it too late, the car drives straight but the toe is unequal and its a bit blunt, still sometimes you just have to work with what you have.
So just the commute aspect of the trip looked like this, plus 3 days on track, 2 days at SPA with RMA and then a day at zolder with Skylimit
That map incorporates me going to see my mum in the Cotswold's and a trip to AHM to get the car mapped, the EGR coded out and the tracker decommissioned, air bag lights shut off etc etc etc.
So, rocked up at my old dears at 3am then off at 7am same day to get down the AHM. Nice easy drive and a nice setup at AHM, adrian seems a very decent chap and doesn't blow smoke about anything he doesn't know which was refreshing.
All the software changes were completed though the complete removal of the secondary sensors may take another tweak. Post changes the car felt a good bit stronger, throttle response was finally something worth talking about most of the lights were out and the tracker didnt run the battery flat in two days. so all in all a bit of a result.
Bill was a bit aston martin-y which is why all else is DIY but somethings you just cant do, and sadly i dont have the knowledge or AMDS to self serve on coding side. Either way, good people to deal with and a good job done so a thumbs up from me. You also get to spend some time in Hartley Wintney, where you will feel simultaneously poor and like an extra in mid summer murders.
With the coding work done, i caught up with my family for a day (about 6 hours too long) before heading down to folkstone to catch the sea tube, then onto Spa.
This was as you can imagine, a fair hike but the car was drama free and was reporting considerably improved economy post remap as you no longer have to fuel cool the cats.
Day one at Spa greeted us with bright sunshine and post the standard briefing and arm banding we were good to go. Worth noting that these days run to Euro rules, to its over taking both sides, not just on the straights etc etc.
I popped out just to start re familiarizing myself (been 12 months since last at Spa) particularly as the car on track is new to me, when i noticed Ollie in the grass at Stavelot so came in to see what the drama was, turned out that the e36 had eaten its own face off when the front splitter had been dragged under the front wheels, this had pulled the rad into the pullies killed the belts etc etc
We spent some time getting it fundamentally back straight before Ollie jumped back in with me for a few laps. (it made a full recovery later in the day with the addition of a bag of zip ties).
At this point i thought i would see if i could get away with running the exhaust open. which it seems i cant, but only just.
Here is a little footage with the flaps open. its all a bit tentative and a bit of a mess, but really this is just for the sound.
Shortly after this, i was black flagged for noise (expected)
As you can see from my posterity mugshot, the car was pumping out 104db, the limit was 105, as such i think they were a bit concerned that i would be at some point infringing the limit, so a set the flaps to closed and carried on without issue as the car is whisper quiet when baffled, too quit really as it gives you a little bit less audible signal that you would ideally want.
Day one passed without incident, many many laps, many many tanks of fuel and the zestino's were unsurprisingly looking a bit sad, some of this will have been down to Geo as the centers still looked pretty good but the inner and outer were pretty skinny and largely attached to the wrong side of the rim.
on the plus side brake cooling was looking spot on with the temp trackers showing no signs of anything concerning even after 40 minute stints.
Here is the car in pride of place (outside the lower paddock bogs) and covered in a thousand miles of road grime and rubber and a few of it going round where even though i am too cheap to but the images you can see its minging in the thumbnails
The evening was spent talking b
ks, and eating carpaccio and steak on a rock and pinoccio's carpaccio, is something that you just don't see in the uk, and its a real shame, I think its something to do with our aversion to raw things.
Then onto day 2, where it was f
king tiling it down. With my front tyres being a bit iffy i buggered off to try and get the nankangs fitted, this involved visiting a number of Belgian garages , in once case where the proprietor was chatting with his mate in an empty garage where i was told he was far to busy for my bulls
t ultimately a kindly local showed me a place in Malmedy "Mr Pnus" who understood my rubbish French and fitted both tyres in 5 minutes flat for 40 eur, use these guys if your in a jam at Spa. With the tyres fitted i returned to the track and just got on with it, frankly the car was really not bad at all in the wet and the NS2-r's which have been frankly a bit frightening on the z4 on anything other than a dry track seemed to work really quite well all things considered.
As the day progressed the climate became kinder and the track largely dried.
This resulted in a sub 3 minute time in the car which i was pretty pleased with considering the modest tyre, vehicle weight and carrying 85kgs of penalty bacon (ollie passengering).
Some slightly more cohesive laps here:
Please note, these sound super boring as the exhaust is quiet, and there is the occasional odd noise from the passenger as he was looking at times. best lap probably starts at around 9mins so you don't have to be subject to the preceeding tedium, Also as i am not in a audi TDI and am not ithe reincarnation of Fangio, I wasnt able to set an all out track record to the soundtrack of fat of the land.
With all this "positivity" there was bound to be some fail, coming to the end of Kemmel i slightly f
ked and upshift resulting in me having to give the gear lever a bit of a shove, which then felt weird, and then revealed itself at the downshift at Les Combs to be buggered in that once again i was left with a floppy shaft and no drive. We coasted to a stop at Bruxelles to enjoy some marshal hospitality
Having created a rolling yellow to get recovered i got under the car and burned my arm on the gearbox to find that the securing clamp had opened up and buggered off resutling in the cable doing its usual trick of coming off .THe CV had vented a little grease on the same side so initially that looked a bit concerning. Fortunately the clamp had not gone far and was sitting on top of the transaxle (located with a bit of hand in oven feeling about) so i hammered it back into shape, put the cable back on, did the clamp up really really tight and carried on lapping to the end of the day.
From there it was a case of not bothering to wash the car and getting packed up for the trip to Zolder, this was preceded by a trip to see Valient Ecosse and the Ring, to spend a load of euros on something unnecessary and stupid but will cover that at another time.
More when i get a chance.
Edited by IainWhy on Monday 26th September 00:44
Edited by IainWhy on Monday 26th September 01:11
seefarr said:
Great stuff. The noise with the valves open is pretty bloody addictive - I swapped to my good headphones to get the full experience!
Yea, it does sound great but its a little much really, the issue i now have is that quiet is a bit too quiet and loud is a bit too loud, i need to find the goldilocks' zone. i think i know how to do it but until i test the idea i wont know if i am just fantasizing BrettMRC said:
That's awesome - the brakes seem to be holding up really well too!
They really did, there is a bit of air in the rear still as once fully upto temperature the pedal feel changes (firms up) which i think is pressure in the system so another fluid change is on the cards.Carlos24 said:
I can’t believe how much quieter the exhaust is with the flaps shut, sounds mega with them open. Do you get any reduction in performance with the flaps shut at all?
Yea, its a real polar opposite, basically with the flaps open it bypasses the v12 backbox entirely so its more or less straight through.Its hard to know performance wise, with the map and other adjustments the car should be making over 400HP (until i dyno it this is pure speculation) so if having the flaps shut costs you 10 hp would you notice? i ran the car down kemmel flat out with the valves open and shut, and didnt notice any significant drop in pace with the flaps shut, but then so much of that is how many of my balls i extracted from my purse into la source so its hard to know.
Ultimately, i think its something for a dyno run to decide at some point
I can’t imagine it loses anything going through the V12 backbox to be fair I didn’t realise that it just bypassed it in full noise mode but that makes sense from hearing it. I remember hearing a normal V8 vantage and thinking it sounded brilliant (not sure if it was a 4.3 or 4.7) so yours in the flesh must sound amazing, I’m fairly surprised I can’t hear it occasionally as I live by the coast in heysham/Morecambe haha
Carlos24 said:
I can’t imagine it loses anything going through the V12 backbox to be fair I didn’t realise that it just bypassed it in full noise mode but that makes sense from hearing it. I remember hearing a normal V8 vantage and thinking it sounded brilliant (not sure if it was a 4.3 or 4.7) so yours in the flesh must sound amazing, I’m fairly surprised I can’t hear it occasionally as I live by the coast in heysham/Morecambe haha
Its a little bit too loud as it currently is, certainly not something you can use near people, it also telegraphs your speed over a bit too long a distance for my liking, as in on the right day with the right wind, i recon you could hear it it Heysham therealsamdailly said:
Thanks for the update. I love this thread so much, it gets better everytime
Thanks dude, always nice to know people get something out of it.Ok so aiming to wrap up this trip and talk a bit about what next.
Picking up from where i left off, we packed up and headed down to Zolder, or at least i did, Ollie decided that it was far too late to be trailering st about in the pissing rain so i aquaplaned my way down the motorway for a bit, then faffed about trying to wake someone up in the hotel to let me in. I was just about hitting the point where i was starting to come to terms with it being a night trying to sleep in a bucket seat when the intercom came to life and i was informed that there was a key at reception and i could find my own damn room
Following a good kip and a superb breakfast it was still absolutely tiling it down. At this point i kind of chickened out a bit, Zolder is probably my favorite all round circuit experience, but it also feels like somewhere you could have a good accident. I have come off there before at the end of the pit straight when i blew a coolant hose, and while its funny now, it could have been a pretty bad do.
As such when ollie rocked up[ in the morning we signed on dumped the car and trailer in the paddock and buggered off across belgium to pick up a load of old e30 Group A parts, this took fking ages.
By the time we made it back it was midday and it was still pissing it down. I finally managed to get a solitary testicle out of my purse and get out, where upon it was absolutely fine, the tender springs produced some grip where higher rates wouldn't and the car felt largely stable even at reasonable pace with only 4wd's and those on wets running significantly quicker. This was a bit annoying as ultimately i had wasted quite a bit of track time by being a fanny.
There are only a few pictures of the car as even though it started to dry up, i think the photographer had sacked tit off early as a st job, which to be fair was entirely understandable.
So Leason leaned, stop being a fanny when it rains and you dont have wets.
towards the very end of the day the track was starting to dry and get greasy which lead to some faster is slidier laps. I did crack the exhaust open which resulted in a pretty much immediate black flagging. In all the times i have been to zolder i have come to the conclusion that they honestly dont give a solitary toss about anything other than noise. "you want to go 4 abreast into over a blind crest into a chicane, no worries, just do it quietly" Its ont of the reasons its always an exciting day.
We lapped until the closing minutes of the day where another red flag closed the day down 10 minutes early, before heading off to the onsite bar for a celebratory beer and bizarre cigar.
The return leg was as you would image a drive from zolder to welshpool to be, long, faffy and not in any way fulfilling other than having made it without significant issue.
By the time i arrived at Ollies my car was so minging that if you drushed against the outside you needed a change of clothes.
The above picture doesnt adequately convey the ming but you can see on the sill where just by getting in and out i have cleaned part of the skirt with my leg, the whole car was sort of brown.
Given that Ollie has just set up a fancy New storage facility " Apex storage " I availed myself of all his cleaning gear and set to work. to be fair this is probably the cleanest its been in months, but i felt i should reward it for generally being good (weird i know).
#
From here i pressed on the following day upto Heysham to complete my ferry back home.
All in all the car had covered the best part of 2500 miles in a week with a good number of those being on track, before leaving i had changed the oil for Shell Helix 10-60 racing which to be honest i swaer by (i run it in all my track cars and also in the engines produced for Ollies and its always been excellent at keeping the insides on the inside) It still looks golden so the internal temperatures look to have been good, never the less it will be changed again in the next week or two (another 10 litres of liquid gold
)
So whats next?
Yea, the n24 dash, this is what i went off to buy in Germany
It was really expensive and probably really unnecessary, but i had decided i wanted it. It will enable, eventually some significant weight saving but will also be a complete knob to fit as all the electronics that are integrated into the center console form part of both the CAN gateways and the MOST network so if anyone knows someone who is a particular genius on these cars electronically I would love to hear about it!
It is i believe one of 2 left, all the GT4 cars are flappy paddle, so only the N24 cars had a manual console, and there were only 25? i think, n24 cars produced.
It will be a long old job to fit it properly, but i hope, it will be worth the effort. Its in raw prepreg but i have waxed it just to keep it looking nice.
That, is where i am at currently, i will continue to update as things progress.
Thanks for reading!
Picking up from where i left off, we packed up and headed down to Zolder, or at least i did, Ollie decided that it was far too late to be trailering s
t about in the pissing rain so i aquaplaned my way down the motorway for a bit, then faffed about trying to wake someone up in the hotel to let me in. I was just about hitting the point where i was starting to come to terms with it being a night trying to sleep in a bucket seat when the intercom came to life and i was informed that there was a key at reception and i could find my own damn room Following a good kip and a superb breakfast it was still absolutely tiling it down. At this point i kind of chickened out a bit, Zolder is probably my favorite all round circuit experience, but it also feels like somewhere you could have a good accident. I have come off there before at the end of the pit straight when i blew a coolant hose, and while its funny now, it could have been a pretty bad do.
As such when ollie rocked up[ in the morning we signed on dumped the car and trailer in the paddock and buggered off across belgium to pick up a load of old e30 Group A parts, this took f
king ages. By the time we made it back it was midday and it was still pissing it down. I finally managed to get a solitary testicle out of my purse and get out, where upon it was absolutely fine, the tender springs produced some grip where higher rates wouldn't and the car felt largely stable even at reasonable pace with only 4wd's and those on wets running significantly quicker. This was a bit annoying as ultimately i had wasted quite a bit of track time by being a fanny.
There are only a few pictures of the car as even though it started to dry up, i think the photographer had sacked tit off early as a s
t job, which to be fair was entirely understandable. So Leason leaned, stop being a fanny when it rains and you dont have wets.
towards the very end of the day the track was starting to dry and get greasy which lead to some faster is slidier laps. I did crack the exhaust open which resulted in a pretty much immediate black flagging. In all the times i have been to zolder i have come to the conclusion that they honestly dont give a solitary toss about anything other than noise. "you want to go 4 abreast into over a blind crest into a chicane, no worries, just do it quietly" Its ont of the reasons its always an exciting day.
We lapped until the closing minutes of the day where another red flag closed the day down 10 minutes early, before heading off to the onsite bar for a celebratory beer and bizarre cigar.
The return leg was as you would image a drive from zolder to welshpool to be, long, faffy and not in any way fulfilling other than having made it without significant issue.
By the time i arrived at Ollies my car was so minging that if you drushed against the outside you needed a change of clothes.
The above picture doesnt adequately convey the ming but you can see on the sill where just by getting in and out i have cleaned part of the skirt with my leg, the whole car was sort of brown.
Given that Ollie has just set up a fancy New storage facility " Apex storage " I availed myself of all his cleaning gear and set to work. to be fair this is probably the cleanest its been in months, but i felt i should reward it for generally being good (weird i know).
# From here i pressed on the following day upto Heysham to complete my ferry back home.
All in all the car had covered the best part of 2500 miles in a week with a good number of those being on track, before leaving i had changed the oil for Shell Helix 10-60 racing which to be honest i swaer by (i run it in all my track cars and also in the engines produced for Ollies and its always been excellent at keeping the insides on the inside) It still looks golden so the internal temperatures look to have been good, never the less it will be changed again in the next week or two (another 10 litres of liquid gold
) So whats next?
- Loads, too much to go in to really, more work on the suspension side though bushing and geometry related this time.
- I need some sort of cage and harness solution. i had rubbed the skin off my left knee holding myself in the seat against the tunnel by the end of the 3rd day.
- I need some sort of final solution for the gearbox cables as it cant keep on coming off
- more weight out
- maybe some sort of moderate aero
- some quality of life upgrades
- make "loud" less loud so i can make a bit more noise without it being so excessive
- probably a little bit of tarting about (not much)
- Fit the n24 dashboard
Yea, the n24 dash, this is what i went off to buy in Germany
It was really expensive and probably really unnecessary, but i had decided i wanted it. It will enable, eventually some significant weight saving but will also be a complete knob to fit as all the electronics that are integrated into the center console form part of both the CAN gateways and the MOST network so if anyone knows someone who is a particular genius on these cars electronically I would love to hear about it!
It is i believe one of 2 left, all the GT4 cars are flappy paddle, so only the N24 cars had a manual console, and there were only 25? i think, n24 cars produced.
It will be a long old job to fit it properly, but i hope, it will be worth the effort. Its in raw prepreg but i have waxed it just to keep it looking nice.
That, is where i am at currently, i will continue to update as things progress.
Thanks for reading!
Edited by IainWhy on Thursday 29th September 12:01
Great project. Thanks for sharing.
Do you still have the standard pedal setup? I found heel & toe was virtually impossible with the Grand Canyon sized gap between the brake and throttle so got an extended throttle peddle which helps, although it's still not as good as my son's Clio 197's standard setup. Perhaps that says something about the driving intentions of the target market which is a bit sad.
Looking forward to the next update ........
Do you still have the standard pedal setup? I found heel & toe was virtually impossible with the Grand Canyon sized gap between the brake and throttle so got an extended throttle peddle which helps, although it's still not as good as my son's Clio 197's standard setup. Perhaps that says something about the driving intentions of the target market which is a bit sad.
Looking forward to the next update ........
V8V Pete said:
Great project. Thanks for sharing.
Do you still have the standard pedal setup? I found heel & toe was virtually impossible with the Grand Canyon sized gap between the brake and throttle so got an extended throttle peddle which helps, although it's still not as good as my son's Clio 197's standard setup. Perhaps that says something about the driving intentions of the target market which is a bit sad.
Hi Pete,Do you still have the standard pedal setup? I found heel & toe was virtually impossible with the Grand Canyon sized gap between the brake and throttle so got an extended throttle peddle which helps, although it's still not as good as my son's Clio 197's standard setup. Perhaps that says something about the driving intentions of the target market which is a bit sad.
No, I just have the factory pedals, though your comment resonates as When ollie drove the car he commented on the exact same thing, for me the issue was less that I couldn't get my heel to the pedal (why that's the case i dont know, i have fairly large feet perhaps?) but that the pedal required a significant push to generate the required pickup in RPM. This was improved by the "light" fly and clutch assembly but not enough for it to feel truly natural. Post the re-map with AHM (which puts a particular emphasis on throttle response) this was much improved. ultimately this will just have changed the relationship between the pedal potentiometer and the throttle actuator, but it does work, though there is a level of "price to pay" in that the cruise control becomes a but brutish, but given how rarely i use it its not an issue for me. I dare say it may be possible to change that but would require changes to the mapping of the cruse control graduations, not worth the faff for me but could be a concern for some.
I had originally considered making adjustments to the pivot of the potentiometer on the pedal to achieve the same effect but the remap was far simpler and with the raised rpm limit makes the shift light functional, improved the economy and potentially improved the power output (i say potentially as although I have no reason to believe otherwise, and the car feels faster i have not run the car up on a dyno to be able to prove to myself that this is the case).
IainWhy said:
Post the re-map with AHM (which puts a particular emphasis on throttle response) this was much improved.
Yes. I've had a remap too and the tubular manifolds and 200 cell cats also help with response. The "dead spot" at the top of the throttle pedal's travel/mapping combined with the super heavyweight OEM clutch/flywheel make the OEM setup pretty laughable really when the Vantage was supposed to be the "sports car" compared to the GT DB9. Thank goodness for the good people in the aftermarket that can make the Vantage more of the car it should have been when it left the factory.olv said:
Pete, is that the Ultimate pedals throttle from the States or another option? I would like one but not so much at the current exchange rates.
I got it second hand from a forum member who was selling his car a few years ago but I'm as sure as I can be that he said it was the Ultimate Pedals one. It's definitely worth it if, like me, you haven't got massively wide feet/boots.V8V Pete said:
I got it second hand from a forum member who was selling his car a few years ago but I'm as sure as I can be that he said it was the Ultimate Pedals one. It's definitely worth it if, like me, you haven't got massively wide feet/boots.
I've found an old post of yours where you tried out a modified brake pedal from an auto, did you keep that in the end?olv said:
V8V Pete said:
I got it second hand from a forum member who was selling his car a few years ago but I'm as sure as I can be that he said it was the Ultimate Pedals one. It's definitely worth it if, like me, you haven't got massively wide feet/boots.
I've found an old post of yours where you tried out a modified brake pedal from an auto, did you keep that in the end?V8V Pete said:
Yes I did but if anything the gap is a bit tight now. When I get around to it I think I will get someone (perhaps Ultimate Pedals because I think they do custom stuff) to make me a pair of custom pedals or definitely a custom brake pedal to go with their throttle pedal. My car's a keeper and life's too short not to have the optimal pedal setup (especially when you've got small feet and slightly dodgy knees).
Obviously no one wants cheesy ripspeed pedals but i would have thought that some generic OMP pedals could potentially work?https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/323484340243?_trkparms=...
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