Aston martin V8 Vantage club sport type thing
Discussion
Cool updates, the carbon fibre console slab looks nice, I assume because Aston the factory one is hewn from glass and iron then coated in flimsy plastics to make it fit or something?
With regards to pedals, I imagine it depends on how one actually does the heel & toe. If it's a literal heel and toe (toes on brake pedals, leg / knee twisted, heel pressing accelerator) then that gap doesn't look too awful, but can understand if you're one of those side to side chaps that do big toe on the brake and little toe on the throttle that'd be impossible.
I never warmed to the side to side method, I can imagine it's more relaxed and easier on the road at mild brake pressure, but it always feels a bit sketchy having so little foot on the brake pedal.
With regards to pedals, I imagine it depends on how one actually does the heel & toe. If it's a literal heel and toe (toes on brake pedals, leg / knee twisted, heel pressing accelerator) then that gap doesn't look too awful, but can understand if you're one of those side to side chaps that do big toe on the brake and little toe on the throttle that'd be impossible.
I never warmed to the side to side method, I can imagine it's more relaxed and easier on the road at mild brake pressure, but it always feels a bit sketchy having so little foot on the brake pedal.
SturdyHSV said:
Cool updates, the carbon fibre console slab looks nice, I assume because Aston the factory one is hewn from glass and iron then coated in flimsy plastics to make it fit or something?
With regards to pedals, I imagine it depends on how one actually does the heel & toe. If it's a literal heel and toe (toes on brake pedals, leg / knee twisted, heel pressing accelerator) then that gap doesn't look too awful, but can understand if you're one of those side to side chaps that do big toe on the brake and little toe on the throttle that'd be impossible.
I never warmed to the side to side method, I can imagine it's more relaxed and easier on the road at mild brake pressure, but it always feels a bit sketchy having so little foot on the brake pedal.
To be fair to aston, it is all fairly well built, overbuilt in many respects (all the suspension fasteners are huge for example, m14/m16) and that follows through to the cabin, the gear surround for example, is a piece of solid billet alloy as is the console, more importantly again there is a giant pile of toss behind the dash like not very good 6 cd changers etc etc and the sat nav out of an early 200's volvo that i will remove without regret!With regards to pedals, I imagine it depends on how one actually does the heel & toe. If it's a literal heel and toe (toes on brake pedals, leg / knee twisted, heel pressing accelerator) then that gap doesn't look too awful, but can understand if you're one of those side to side chaps that do big toe on the brake and little toe on the throttle that'd be impossible.
I never warmed to the side to side method, I can imagine it's more relaxed and easier on the road at mild brake pressure, but it always feels a bit sketchy having so little foot on the brake pedal.
I think you may be correct on the technique point, i am a leg twist toe and heel man not an ankle twister, this is why the throttle response was such an issue in that you found yourself with your heel at 45 degrees to your toe (unless you were standing on the brake) just to get enough of an rpm increase that would do the actual job.
Brief Update:
As agreed its been back to the wrapper (Isle of Wraps) as he was not happy with the amount of stretch required, to be frank it was fine, but I wanted to make some changes anyway
The bonnet stripes have gone leaving the later style n430 / gt4 (even i don't care) livery in red, profile has changed on the A pillar, but yea, meh. Also all the chrome has been wrapped black. Its an incredibly neat job and just knocks a bit more of the golf club off the car.
Do i prefer it? Probably. i will do something with this car paint / wrap wise at some point, but i just don't know what, or when. But the grey is enormously dull, i think it was popular due to the (incredibly tedious and frankly rather tragic) "James Bond" association that makes me cringe, so the more i can distance myself from that demographic the better.
My switch panel is on its way so i can start to think more seriously about fitting the centre section of the dash, ideally what i want to do is to scrap all the electronics , but retain the t1/t1 and Read buttons so i can clear warnings and put the wipers in rest. I would also like to integrate some sort of MOST amp gateway so i can put a receiver to it and retain the factory amp and speakers, while they are not great it minimises the disruption. Aston installations think i am in for trouble but time will tell
Now in 2006 when other manufacturers were offering you the world in options, aston were still shafting you for a dipping mirror. An excellent Gentleman in the aston section of pistonheads had figured out that you could use the mirror from a 2001-2008 s
troen c5 as it had a 16mm ball socket. So i snapped one up from ebay (£28) saving myself about £230. My fitting was a little different but ultimately comprised of drilling holes through the old aston mount to feed the wire, then wiring it into one of the roof console plugs (i do need to find some nice compact plugs and re do this bit as its making my brain itch)
To complete the absolute tedium of this update I have also bought some more oil, annoyingly I couldn't get the 20l drums i usually get so had to order it in 4ltr jugs, being that it came from Germany this triggered the VAT man to take a view on my imports and bend be over for a further £50
My wife loves this st, some women come home to flowers and a cooked meal, mine gets 48 litres of 10-60 helix racing, what more could she ever dream of, lucky girl.
As agreed its been back to the wrapper (Isle of Wraps) as he was not happy with the amount of stretch required, to be frank it was fine, but I wanted to make some changes anyway
The bonnet stripes have gone leaving the later style n430 / gt4 (even i don't care) livery in red, profile has changed on the A pillar, but yea, meh. Also all the chrome has been wrapped black. Its an incredibly neat job and just knocks a bit more of the golf club off the car.
Do i prefer it? Probably. i will do something with this car paint / wrap wise at some point, but i just don't know what, or when. But the grey is enormously dull, i think it was popular due to the (incredibly tedious and frankly rather tragic) "James Bond" association that makes me cringe, so the more i can distance myself from that demographic the better.
My switch panel is on its way so i can start to think more seriously about fitting the centre section of the dash, ideally what i want to do is to scrap all the electronics , but retain the t1/t1 and Read buttons so i can clear warnings and put the wipers in rest. I would also like to integrate some sort of MOST amp gateway so i can put a receiver to it and retain the factory amp and speakers, while they are not great it minimises the disruption. Aston installations think i am in for trouble but time will tell
Now in 2006 when other manufacturers were offering you the world in options, aston were still shafting you for a dipping mirror. An excellent Gentleman in the aston section of pistonheads had figured out that you could use the mirror from a 2001-2008 s
troen c5 as it had a 16mm ball socket. So i snapped one up from ebay (£28) saving myself about £230. My fitting was a little different but ultimately comprised of drilling holes through the old aston mount to feed the wire, then wiring it into one of the roof console plugs (i do need to find some nice compact plugs and re do this bit as its making my brain itch) To complete the absolute tedium of this update I have also bought some more oil, annoyingly I couldn't get the 20l drums i usually get so had to order it in 4ltr jugs, being that it came from Germany this triggered the VAT man to take a view on my imports and bend be over for a further £50
My wife loves this s
t, some women come home to flowers and a cooked meal, mine gets 48 litres of 10-60 helix racing, what more could she ever dream of, lucky girl. 
Appreciate its been quite some time sine I updated this, but as always that does not mean nothing has been done. Many things have been given a fairly tick coat of looking at, in some cases I have even managed to turn this into an actual outcome.
Hard to really put all this into a cogent set of events as i have been too slack in keeping my updates never the less i will give it a shot.
S as per my last update I have an Aston martin N24 center section, you know its an n24 one as its a manual. Fitting it, is actually a lot of work and needed a lot of parts to be accumulated for this to happen, even just on the basis of the things you think you will need, let alone the bits you actually do.
While these bits have been accumulated i have been chatting with a specialist tube bender that Jim from M3 cutters put me onto, The reason for this is that they are the supplier to prodive and made up the cages for both the Gt4 Cars and more importantly for me the AMR pro which has the cage below:
Have had a good chat with the guys there it emerged that while they still had all the programming to make the cage, the actual Jig to make it had gone missing. With that established, i opted to just get a set of tubes and get on and DIY
As is so often the case ollie did a sloid and picked it up once all the components were cut out and brought it over during a visit. some very funky cuts in its production.
Some time passed while I was looking at other things, but as the weather got slightly better I summoned up some enthusiasm to rip the interior out get down to my mates unit and start drilling holes.
Access is not good in these cars so it was everything out to get the main hoop in, initial test fit suggested that it would be best to weld up the rear stays as a unit then get on with the rest.
Much faffing and swearing later it was all in place and taped into position
To say that the cage fit and accuracy was exceptional really would be under selling it.
|https://thumbsnap.com/zzSrLqeJ[/url]
As this point the entire cage was tacked up so that there was no movement once it was removed. Protecting the interior was a concern hence the stainless steel "blast shield" on the headlining
With this done the entire cage was removed as one and welded up outside of the car
[url].
At this point I vacillated over painting it or powder coating, ultimately I went for powder coating on the basis that this would form part of the luggage area and the additional durability would be good. Having being absolutely set on getting it done in boring (but safe) silver, I folded to peer pressure
And a few days later did the initial fit
Lots more on the go so will continue to update this in the near future
Hard to really put all this into a cogent set of events as i have been too slack in keeping my updates never the less i will give it a shot.
S as per my last update I have an Aston martin N24 center section, you know its an n24 one as its a manual. Fitting it, is actually a lot of work and needed a lot of parts to be accumulated for this to happen, even just on the basis of the things you think you will need, let alone the bits you actually do.
While these bits have been accumulated i have been chatting with a specialist tube bender that Jim from M3 cutters put me onto, The reason for this is that they are the supplier to prodive and made up the cages for both the Gt4 Cars and more importantly for me the AMR pro which has the cage below:
Have had a good chat with the guys there it emerged that while they still had all the programming to make the cage, the actual Jig to make it had gone missing. With that established, i opted to just get a set of tubes and get on and DIY
As is so often the case ollie did a sloid and picked it up once all the components were cut out and brought it over during a visit. some very funky cuts in its production.
Some time passed while I was looking at other things, but as the weather got slightly better I summoned up some enthusiasm to rip the interior out get down to my mates unit and start drilling holes.
Access is not good in these cars so it was everything out to get the main hoop in, initial test fit suggested that it would be best to weld up the rear stays as a unit then get on with the rest.
Much faffing and swearing later it was all in place and taped into position
To say that the cage fit and accuracy was exceptional really would be under selling it.
|https://thumbsnap.com/zzSrLqeJ[/url] As this point the entire cage was tacked up so that there was no movement once it was removed. Protecting the interior was a concern hence the stainless steel "blast shield" on the headlining
With this done the entire cage was removed as one and welded up outside of the car
[url]. At this point I vacillated over painting it or powder coating, ultimately I went for powder coating on the basis that this would form part of the luggage area and the additional durability would be good. Having being absolutely set on getting it done in boring (but safe) silver, I folded to peer pressure
And a few days later did the initial fit
Lots more on the go so will continue to update this in the near future
olv said:
The cage looks nicely done. Will you get the interior trim back in without hacking it up too much? Or are you leaving it in its more rural state?
Very interested to see how the centre console comes together.
Ah, all the interior will be going back in , or at least as much is possible, i have enough cars with nothing sinside but a seat, so its certainly not something i would be looking to replicate. its horribly noisy with it removed i think due to the aluminium construction and absence of underseal. Very interested to see how the centre console comes together.
Centre console is a pain in the balls tbh, lot of work
IainWhy said:
olv said:
The cage looks nicely done. Will you get the interior trim back in without hacking it up too much? Or are you leaving it in its more rural state?
Very interested to see how the centre console comes together.
Ah, all the interior will be going back in , or at least as much is possible, i have enough cars with nothing sinside but a seat, so its certainly not something i would be looking to replicate. its horribly noisy with it removed i think due to the aluminium construction and absence of underseal. Very interested to see how the centre console comes together.
Centre console is a pain in the balls tbh, lot of work
olv said:
Haha wow. Rapidly scrubbing that off my wish list.
To be honest that's the easy bit.in a nutshell:
Remove all the dash and interior panels
Remove all dash instruments
Complete CAN Gateway circuit
Establish replacement hifi (all of this is lost with the removal of the centre stack )
Wiring for t1 and read switches
Wiring for interior lights
Amplification replacement as you lose the MOST gateway
Sort out power seat controls
make switch bosses for all retained components
Make switch boss for starter button
Make gaiter and surround
Strip out all defunct hardware
Its not a small job if you want a nice result and to retain the correct level of road comfort.
NickXX said:
Crazy amount of work!
Thanks for keeping this thread updated - always very interested to see how you're progressing this.
I think i would probably still chose to do it knowing what it entails, but its certainly not straight forward if you want something nice at the end. Obviously you could just tex-felx the switches in, bridge the canbus and slap it all in, but i think it would look and if I am honest, feel shÏte.Thanks for keeping this thread updated - always very interested to see how you're progressing this.
As the the thread, no worries. its hard to know if there is much interest as its a rather niche thing but it at least it covers some topics that could help others if anyone else chooses to be so odd in the future.
IainWhy said:
its hard to know if there is much interest as its a rather niche thing
It's always difficult judging whether your thread has much interest on PH with no 'like' function, often people don't want to just post 'Nice car' or something equally banal.But there are quite a few of us, I think looking at this with interest (I have a 'clubsport' type Cayman so appreciate what you're doing).
Well, this has all taken a very very long time. This has been due to a few factors. Primarily that the amount of work that is required to fit all this stuff in nicely (or as nicely as i could manage) takes a very very long time. Lots of stuff needed to be deigned and made to make all of this work. these are in the main boring parts, plastic parts to hold the switches in the starter button, the gear surround. Also as a lot of trim needs to be cut to pass the roll cage i ended up stripping off all the leather and re trimming it myself in Alcantara. On top of this you need to ditch the complete infotainment system and i drew a number of short straws here with some very annoying component failures that I then had to wait for replacements. Basically its been a right ball ache.
Anyway, on with it.
I figured that being that i was ripping the car to bits to fit the cage there was no point doing the job twice i should get on and fit the console at the same time.
Firstly: fitting the cage.
Fitting the cage was a complete d1ck, the rear stays are simple, cut out foam drop in bracket bolt in, the sill mounts are not. to fit it to the sills you need to access in the internal boxed to fix the spreader plates. the boxes are all separate. To access each you need to remove all the arch liners, to are most easily accessed from the rear as this is a short run of tube, the others are only accessible from the front and require the removal of the washer bottle and bump and on the other side the abs pump need to be moved out of the way. you then need to tape your spreader plates to a long long pole and while assistant A (my wife) trys to poke a screw though the hole you wiggle the pole about though t the sill to her "instructions" i am sure some couples can manage this without an argument, we are not that couple.
The best tool for this (that i found) was a long length of plumbing tube with the ends flattened (spreader plates are just steel plate with serrated nuts tacked on) it is a annoying and thankless task.
With all that bolted up i spent some considerable time cutting and shaping the interior panels to profile round the cage and replacing the grey leather with black Alcantara (i preserved all the leather panels in case they are of use to someone)
As i had over ordered glue and fabric, i also trimmed the upper dash sections ass the reflection at Spa was horrible
With that (largely) out of the way (please note there is some license taken here in terms of the order the trim needs to go back in to make the pictures make sense).
I needed to nail the infotainment replacement. This was a problem as it all had to go to fir the carbon center, given its ancient volvo origins i wasnt too sorry but had hoped to retain the amp. I discussed this problem with Aston Installations who were exceptionally help full and talked through a few idea's, i had originally planned to use a MOST RCA gateway to hijack the MOST fiber optics and just inject the audio from another source, Aston Installations were not at all convinced it would work and also suggested the original amplifier was not much to get excited about. Instead it was suggested to get Bury Handsfree kit which supports streaming and replace the amp completely.
With this in mind i went off and bought a cheap Pioneer amp and a used Bury kit, (the used bury kit was later to bite me in the @rse) I then removed the entire system.
As various audio systems were optioned for the car there was middle loom that connected the low rent amp to the rest of the body loom (for those with basic systems the rear speaker wiring is already present and i suspect the stock amp would use it if connected) so i used this to create a plug in loom for the bury kit and amp, meaning that if needed the entire thing can just be unscrewed and unplugged (i did not regret this)
At this point i re-ran the wiring from the rear of the car and re fitted all of the rear boot trim.
no sooner had i done this than the Bury kit stopped turning the screen on, this was hugely annoying, so i bought another used one which was also goosed, then bought a used parrot asteroid that turned up without the main data lead before having a strop and buying one at hugely over rrp locally in an effort to avoid more delay. An annoying illustration of buy cheap buy 3 times over. this cost me about 2 weeks as i couldn't refit without a working solution.
With that bull$hit out of the way it was down to thinking about the console (in the real world much of this was in parallel).
The console has no provision for parking sensors, heated front or rear screens, power seat adjustment or for that matter any additional switches, in addition the small screen present in the original setup houses a CAN Gateway and finally there is no way of integrating the T1/Read buttons in the supplied panel
Que the faff.
First up, small momentary switches to pin into the loom and provide read and T1/2
these are just contacts to ground, in retrospect i should have done them with a shared earth tbh.
Then onto the seat adjustment, i decided to mount these under the seats, i dont need backrest adjustment so this was desoldered from the controller, then all the controller cables made longer to enable the relocation and give enough slack to move the seat, these were then over braided in nylon to make sure nothing nasty happened to them.
Finally some small alloy panels were just and to make them feel less hostile to the hand covered in alcantara
More as soon as i get a chance to write it all out!
Anyway, on with it.
I figured that being that i was ripping the car to bits to fit the cage there was no point doing the job twice i should get on and fit the console at the same time.
Firstly: fitting the cage.
Fitting the cage was a complete d1ck, the rear stays are simple, cut out foam drop in bracket bolt in, the sill mounts are not. to fit it to the sills you need to access in the internal boxed to fix the spreader plates. the boxes are all separate. To access each you need to remove all the arch liners, to are most easily accessed from the rear as this is a short run of tube, the others are only accessible from the front and require the removal of the washer bottle and bump and on the other side the abs pump need to be moved out of the way. you then need to tape your spreader plates to a long long pole and while assistant A (my wife) trys to poke a screw though the hole you wiggle the pole about though t the sill to her "instructions" i am sure some couples can manage this without an argument, we are not that couple.
The best tool for this (that i found) was a long length of plumbing tube with the ends flattened (spreader plates are just steel plate with serrated nuts tacked on) it is a annoying and thankless task.
With all that bolted up i spent some considerable time cutting and shaping the interior panels to profile round the cage and replacing the grey leather with black Alcantara (i preserved all the leather panels in case they are of use to someone)
As i had over ordered glue and fabric, i also trimmed the upper dash sections ass the reflection at Spa was horrible
With that (largely) out of the way (please note there is some license taken here in terms of the order the trim needs to go back in to make the pictures make sense).
I needed to nail the infotainment replacement. This was a problem as it all had to go to fir the carbon center, given its ancient volvo origins i wasnt too sorry but had hoped to retain the amp. I discussed this problem with Aston Installations who were exceptionally help full and talked through a few idea's, i had originally planned to use a MOST RCA gateway to hijack the MOST fiber optics and just inject the audio from another source, Aston Installations were not at all convinced it would work and also suggested the original amplifier was not much to get excited about. Instead it was suggested to get Bury Handsfree kit which supports streaming and replace the amp completely.
With this in mind i went off and bought a cheap Pioneer amp and a used Bury kit, (the used bury kit was later to bite me in the @rse) I then removed the entire system.
As various audio systems were optioned for the car there was middle loom that connected the low rent amp to the rest of the body loom (for those with basic systems the rear speaker wiring is already present and i suspect the stock amp would use it if connected) so i used this to create a plug in loom for the bury kit and amp, meaning that if needed the entire thing can just be unscrewed and unplugged (i did not regret this)
At this point i re-ran the wiring from the rear of the car and re fitted all of the rear boot trim.
no sooner had i done this than the Bury kit stopped turning the screen on, this was hugely annoying, so i bought another used one which was also goosed, then bought a used parrot asteroid that turned up without the main data lead before having a strop and buying one at hugely over rrp locally in an effort to avoid more delay. An annoying illustration of buy cheap buy 3 times over. this cost me about 2 weeks as i couldn't refit without a working solution.
With that bull$hit out of the way it was down to thinking about the console (in the real world much of this was in parallel).
The console has no provision for parking sensors, heated front or rear screens, power seat adjustment or for that matter any additional switches, in addition the small screen present in the original setup houses a CAN Gateway and finally there is no way of integrating the T1/Read buttons in the supplied panel
Que the faff.
First up, small momentary switches to pin into the loom and provide read and T1/2
these are just contacts to ground, in retrospect i should have done them with a shared earth tbh.
Then onto the seat adjustment, i decided to mount these under the seats, i dont need backrest adjustment so this was desoldered from the controller, then all the controller cables made longer to enable the relocation and give enough slack to move the seat, these were then over braided in nylon to make sure nothing nasty happened to them.
Finally some small alloy panels were just and to make them feel less hostile to the hand covered in alcantara
More as soon as i get a chance to write it all out!
Gassing Station | Readers' Cars | Top of Page | What's New | My Stuff