Aston Martin V8 Vantage

[shainiac]

Servicing CVs sucks. When I built my Ronin axles, I looked like the Tinman. I'm pretty sure my snapring pliers will never rust now, though.

Is clearance the issue for the fill port, or is it just the hex got mangled?
For DCTs, people use AN banjo fittings and fill from under the car with a transfer pump. Some people (myself included) use small Jiffy-Tite dry break fittings so you can overfill past time point of the fluid leaking back out of the fitting. Probably not ideal for a transaxle, but the DCTs like being overfilled. The banjo definitely frees up clearance since the fitting points down.

[digitalsolo]

It's a combo issue.  I have very little clearance to get anything but a key on it (can't use a bit on a wrench) and it twisted the one I put on it.  Hex in the actual plug is fine.  I am sure I'll have the drivetrain moved around at some point and I'll hit it with a propane torch for a bit and put a better hex bit on a socket wrench and it'll be fine.

I actually did a sorta similar thing.  The return for the diff coolant pump is high on the side of the diff so I just put an AN fitting on my transfer pump and pumped it in that fitting.  The transmission has separate fluid and filled up just fine.

I adjusted my e-brake, so that I could lock the rear hubs and torque the axle shafts (and so that I have a working e-brake...) and torqued down the rest of the rear suspension.  I then jumped in and fired the car up and made sure nothing made terrible noises (so far, so good) and tested the clutch and forward/reverse gears.   So far, so good.  I have gears!

I need to get the wideband going before I run it too long, and see what fueling looks like.  It smells a little rich, but I didn't run it up to temp, so that's not shocking.  Hopefully a few hours on Sunday and I can at last back it up/forward in the garage, anyway.

[Exidous]

I've been meaning to look into the ADV sensors. How do they compare to the 4.2 and 4.9?

[digitalsolo]

The ADV is supposed to be a little more durable, a little more accurate and a little faster.   It was only a little more expensive, so I am trying one. 

[Exidous]

MaxxECU uses the 4.2 almost exclusively because it's more robust than the 4.9. I wonder if the hardware exists to got to the ADV....hrm.

[digitalsolo]

I drove it!

A solid 4’ forward and backward in the garage.  Haha

I have a rattle in the clutch/front of the torque tube area when it’s in neutral with the clutch engaged (no pedal).   Pressing the pedal fixes it, bringing RPM up fixes it.   It’s not in the engine at least.   It seems like the cam surge at idle causes it.   Wonder if they left something loose in the torque tube internally?

[Cobranut]

I drove it!

A solid 4’ forward and backward in the garage.  Haha

I have a rattle in the clutch/front of the torque tube area when it’s in neutral with the clutch engaged (no pedal).   Pressing the pedal fixes it, bringing RPM up fixes it.   It’s not in the engine at least.   It seems like the cam surge at idle causes it.   Wonder if they left something loose in the torque tube internally?

Congrats on the first drive. 

[digitalsolo]

I think I posted about this before, but I've been looking into the rattle I have at idle with the clutch out (so neutral, no clutch engagement) and apparently it's pretty common with unsprung, twin disc clutches and especially with a decent cam and an aluminum flywheel, and it's gear rattle with the engine pulse.  It's... louder than I'd have expected, but doesn't sound like "oh no, the car is coming apart".

I'll keep an eye on it, but it immediately goes away when I press the clutch (made me think throwout bearing at first) or if I bring RPM up at all (made me think not throwout bearing, haha).  I obsessively measured all of my distances and everything is new, the torque tube was built by RPM, who definitely know their stuff, all its guts are new (ceramic bearings, upgraded couplers, new hardware) and the internal propshaft is a DSS unit and balanced, so again, all of that should be good to go.   I think the best test will be "put it in netural with clutch released while rolling at speed" as that should minimize gear rattle and isolate the possible causes.

Anyway, just paranoid.  If it is indeed "ok" I'll put some sound deadening in the tunnel/floor/on the torque tube and see if that shuts it up a little bit.  Maybe next clutch will be a steel flywheel and sprung discs, LOL.

Going to try to get a hand on the car this week and finish testing the electrical work and re-bleed the brakes (they feel very... bad... currently) and test the cooling system a bit more.

[MPbdy]

Which clutch do you have? This is my roman empire.

I'm onto my third clutch.

Just wait till you run it uphill in 4th at 1800 rpm.  Hope for your sake it isn't as bad as what I experienced in the FD.  In my tin can it felt like the car was going to shake apart.

I started with an LT1-S twin, moved to an RPS BC2 clutch, and now I have a Tilton sprung hub and strapped floaters clutch lol.

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/O968KfqG2pU

[MPbdy]

Also, fwiw, my old stock C5Z with very low miles used to make a hell of a racket at idle, especially after getting off the freeway.  Would sit at the stoplight sounding like parts were falling out the bottom lol.  Other times it was perfectly smooth.

[Exidous]

Twin or triple disc without strapped floaters are obnoxious. Had one. Do not recommend unless race car.

[digitalsolo]

You all make me feel better, haha.   It threw me because I've never had any noise in past setups, but I also ran smaller cams and I think most (all) of my clutches were sprung disc.

Clutch is a McLeod RXT with aluminum flywheel.

FWIW, I'm used to floater rattle with the clutch in;  my Mustang (Spec Billet Super Twin) rattles like a damn dry clutch Ducati when I have the clutch down.   The Aston confused me because it rattles with the clutch out, but is silent with it in.

I'm hoping to get the car out and around the block next weekend, it'll be interesting to see how it feels/sounds not in an echo chamber of a garage.  I started it up for my wife yesterday and her comment was "did it always sound like that?" but she was talking about the exhaust note, which is pretty high pitched on the Aston due to the muffler setup and x-pipe.  (And yes, it did always sound like that).  That was actually my goal as it pretty closely mimics the Aston stock note, minus the clear cam lope at idle.   I can also definitely smell the high flow cats (200 cell) but hopefully it'll smell a little better once they get hot enough to fire off. 

[shainiac]

Congrats on the first drive! Definitely upload a sound clip once it's out of the shop. It's always interesting to hear LS engines with non-standard LS-car exhausts. Duals to an X-pipe and straight-through dual mufflers usually ends up sounding Corvette-ish.  It'd be cool if it keeps some Aston character.

+1 for the clutch rattle. My Monster LT1-SC sounded like the engine was hitting the firewall at certain RPMs on cold start or that dreaded 1800rpm harmonic. I had the flywheel balanced twice thinking something was wrong lol.

Any guesses for what the new setup weighs?

[digitalsolo]

I have scales, I just need to set the car on them.   I'll do it sometime soon.    I am guessing it's within 50-60 lbs of stock, so somewhere in the 3400-3500 lbs range.

Ran the car for ~15 minutes today.   Oil pressure looked good, everything sounds good.   Coolant temps stabilized at 194-196, checked the tune and it's setup for a 190* stock thermostat and 194* cooling fan "start" at 30% duty cycle.  I have a 160* stat so the tune will need adjusted a bit, but the big thing is it worked properly (yay for vacuum bleeding with my custom cap I built).  I also watched the temp come up to ~183* then drop to 172* and creep back up, which I'm pretty sure was the thermostat opening.

I took a couple of 1 minute videos of the car idling, but my phone apparently chose not to record any audio, so it's just 2x 1 minute videos looking at a bumper and an engine, so that's not helpful.  The tune needs some work on idle as the target is 800 and it's hunting around between 650-950, typically on the lower side so she's a choppy sucker right now.   The idle sounds pretty "Corvette" but the tune gets a lot more shrill as the RPM comes up which sounds much more like an Aston.

I did have some smoke wafting around the garage and cabin, but this is the very first time the car has come up to temperature, at least the first time it's run >2 minutes, so that's not super concerning.   I'll take a look underneath it before I take it out to make sure nothing looks hot/scorched, but all of the OEM heat shields are still in place so it should be fine.  I did clean EVERYTHING with multiple cleaners, so that's probably what I'm seeing/smelling.   Nothing appears to be leaking, which is a good start.

I ordered the stuff I need to hook my vacuum pump to the brake master, and I need to re-bleed the brakes again, but once that's done, it should be "check for loose wires/bolts/etc." "fill tires" and "reactivate insurance" and then take it out for a test drive.  I want to put some miles on it (assuming wideband numbers look good-ish) and debug it before taking it for the dyno/street tuning.

Oh, BTW, this blower sounds awesome.  I was worried I wouldn't be able to hear it, but I definitely can.

[digitalsolo]

Small things;  finished the vacuum feed to the booster and hooked the pump back up.  Done.   Also took out the shifter cover plate and put some sound deadener on the torque tube, shifter shaft, and shifter plate, and made some small adjustments to better seal up the shifter plate.   We'll see if the sound deadening does anything at all, LOL.