Aston Martin V8 Vantage

[digitalsolo]

I'm not 100% sure on the angles, so I'll sneak up on them at home.  I've got a 20 ton press brake, I've bent 3/4" steel on it before.

[digitalsolo]

So I remembered I bought a 3D scanner.   Going to try it out for my custom AC bracket design.   We shall see how it goes.

[Cobranut]

So I remembered I bought a 3D scanner.   Going to try it out for my custom AC bracket design.   We shall see how it goes.

Ain't it cool when you suddenly remember you already have that great new tool you were thinking about??? 

[digitalsolo]

I was out there with calipers and went “wait a minute…”

First test bracket is 3D printing now…

[Cobranut]

I was out there with calipers and went “wait a minute…”

First test bracket is 3D printing now…

What type of scanner, and how well does it work?

[digitalsolo]

RevoPoint Inspire, and actually, surprisingly well.  My "V1" bracket bolted directly to the AC compressor as printed, and was very close on the engine.  I honestly think the only issue I had with it being perfect everywhere was some slight misalignment in my CAD.   I'm printing "V2" right now.

Here's some shots of the work/bracket design:

Engine:



With idler/compressor:



Adapter bracket in place:



Bracket on AC/Idler:



And "v2" bracket finished and ready to print:

[MPbdy]

Damn, that's nice!  I have the Creality lizard but gave no thought to the fact that I don't have a PC with a GPU so I start lagging massively about 10 seconds after I start scanning.  Really a bummer because it works well for what it is.  I wanted to digitize my engine bay while the engine was out but not looking like that'll happen now.

[digitalsolo]

I use a Macbook Pro (14" M1 Pro).  It works fairly well, though 3d scanning is the first time since I bought it where i stopped and looked at what the newest/fastest ones cost, hah.

[Exidous]

I've used my every day laptop with a 3070gtx built in and had no issues. Battery life is quite good while tuning since the card isn't doing anything then.

Asus zenbook.

[Sacrilegious-FD]

Good lump choice, not read the whole thing, but have you seen dynotorques lt4 aston build? Chat that did my lt4 fd

[digitalsolo]

I have.   I’ve actually chatted with Craig about his for some tips.   Super nice guy.

[digitalsolo]

"V2" of my bracket was "close enough" to produce a final one in aluminum.  I'm having the big plates cut out of aluminum by SendCutSend, and machining the central piece out of aluminum.   Ordered the billet today and the SCS pieces last night, hopefully get that put together this weekend.

I received the Holley pieces and modified the water pump for clearance.  I always love buying a brand new part, taking it out of the box and hitting it with the angle grinder...

I also found out, to my chagrin, that the Corvette alternator and one of the pulleys doesn't fit.   That's a bummer, so another 400 bucks in accessory drive bits.   Oh well.

The big aluminum brick I had cut by SendCutSend to tie the crossmember back together did come in yesterday, and I was able to pick up a torque tube/bellhousing.   The engine mount pieces should be here this week.   Once I get the engine mounts built, I'll pull the engine off the subframe, finish clearancing the subframe for the headers and dry sump fittings, then weld in the reinforcement, plate everything in, then I should be able to drop the engine back in place for a while and get started on the rear of the car.

[freeskier7791]

The 3D scanning looks pretty cool.  glad it worked out.  It seems like accessory drive always trips us up with swaps. 

[digitalsolo]

Engine mount pieces came in, if I've still got any energy after Taekwondo class tonight, I'll start assembling them.   I planned to yesterday, but 3 hours of training after 9 hours of the day job usually equals early bed time.

I did get the crank pulley swapped to an ATI with a swappable lower pulley to adjust boost.   I'm not going to spin the blower super hard, since I have experience doing that in my GTP days and it just makes a heater.   I have a 2.31" upper pulley (came with the junkyard engine) and a 5% over lower pulley.   From my research, this should be okay with my bigger heat exchangers I'm planning to run, particularly if I put the on car on ~E50.  If I port the blower later, I'll probably need to put a cam in it to get +30% on the fuel lobe with the stock pump.   All of that combined should get me 700+ RWHP eventually, which is honestly all this chassis needs.   I'd love to get 708 RWHP, just because the highest power factory Aston (other than the Valkyrie) is 707 flywheel...

The pieces to complete the accessory drive will be here before the weekend, so I'm hoping to get that machined and built, along with the subframe mods and engine mounts this weekend.   That will let me actually bolt the engine into its final position, on its own mounts.  Then I'll sanity check the torque tube clearance, and start on transmission mounts.   I need those done to figure out torque tube length, and axle half-shafts, both of which I'll have to farm out, so I want to get on those ASAP to keep things moving forward.

[digitalsolo]

Progress on the subframe!   New cross brace is in place and welded in and plated up.   Pretty happy with how it came out, though some of the welds are "meh" visually.  Hard to keep the welds perfect on the dirty casting metal.   I'm fairly confident it won't fall off though.









I wish I had one of those vapor blast chambers to clean all this stuff up perfectly, but I don't think I'm interested in it enough to spend the money to buy one, or pay someone to do it, so brakeleen and a powerwash is all she's getting.