Aston Martin V8 Vantage

[cholmes]

A standing joke with me and my wife:

Her: What are you looking at on the net?

Me: Porn.

Her: So, car parts again. Porn would probably be cheaper.......

[digitalsolo]

LOL, you guys are cracking me up. 

This accessory drive, man, what a pain in the ass.  Clearance is TIGHT all over, but it fits.   New lid is on, and AN fittings are welded to the thermostat housing and water pump.   I like that the LT water pump is separate from the housing, so I don't have to worry about redoing mods, welding, etc. when the pump needs replaced.









Torque tube clearance mods.   It looks ugly in pictures, but actually looks okay in person.   Light reflecting weird or whatever.   This wasn't the most fun welding job ever.

[digitalsolo]

Next up, cooling system.

I had quite a few ideas on how I wanted this to work, but here's the basic concept:

Ordered a radiator that roughly matched the stock unit, but was dual pass, passenger side inlet/outlet, to better fit the LT4 coolant layout.  Cut the barbs off and welded in -16 AN top and -20 AN bottom.   I still need to add a -6 ORB fitting for the expansion tank.   I bolted the Chevy Volt cooling fan up after a tiny bit of clearancing work.

I then machined small aluminum blocks, drilled/tapped them, bolted them to the OEM Aston AC condenser and then welded them to the radiator.







The stack is very close in overall size to the OEM setup, and fits roughly in the same place.  The OEM isolators won't work, but the bolt-in radiator "crossmember" that came on the car was close enough.   I cut up some hockey pucks, added rivnuts to the crossmember, and bolted the pucks in to isolate/locate the bottom of the radiator.  It's not stupid if it works. 

Next up was the oil cooler.   The car had a stock one that wouldn't fit my needs well, so I picked up a basic aftermarket bar/plate unit that was similar in size to OEM.  The OEM until also had a duct that routed the hot air out the bottom of the front undertray, so I figured I'd copy that design as well.   The stock piece was plastic and a little fragile, so I made the new one out of aluminum, and bolted it to the radiator crossmember.   The upper mounts for the oil cooler mount to the crash bar (more rivnuts) and the lower mount is the fabricated crossbar you see in the pictures below.









The oil cooler hoses are also routed.   I'll add some heat protection and chafing protection/routing control later, but they're in the correct area at least.





This last remaining gap is where the heat exchanger for the supercharger will slot in.  Hopefully I'll have that finished up next week, then build the radiator hoses, finish the power steering lines, and start sorting out dry sump tank mounting and supercharger reservoir/hoses.

[Cobranut]

A standing joke with me and my wife:

Her: What are you looking at on the net?

Me: Porn.

Her: So, car parts again. Porn would probably be cheaper.......

Me: But not nearly as satisfying.  LOL

[cholmes]

HA! Exactly right Cobranut!

[tai-lun]

Cooling system layout looks wicked with all the ducting, it looks like so much more room than the cramped FD bay... but still pretty tight. Awesome progress.

[digitalsolo]

The factory design makes the cooling system work easy, overall.  A lot of the car is built like a racecar or very fancy kit car, with lots of aluminum extrusions and rivnuts setup to re-purpose Jaguar/Ford parts.   Makes it easy to adapt to my will.

The front and rear 1/3 of the car have full ducting/bracing flat floor plates that bolt on/off.   Makes life easier for ducting it all.    The middle of the car is also flat-ish, it looks a lot like a late model Corvette, but with even more aluminum everywhere.

Engine bay has tons of room for everything but the engine. I had to pull some sound deadening off the firewall and trim the heat shielding.   I then put gold heat reflection foil on the whole firewall and transmission tunnel (err, torque tube tunnel) then reinstalled as much of the OEM heat shield as I could to help reject as much heat as possible.  Clearance for the engine is about 5/16" to the rack, 1/4" to the firewall, 5/16" to the crossmember and 3/8" to the cowl.   So the engine can basically go EXACTLY here, and nowhere else.   Headers have miles of clearance, other than some subframe modding in one area, and they're well clear of the steering, etc.

I'll end up with a BIG intake tube to make sure the LT4 can breathe, but I don't think it'll be too bad.   I'd like to add some brake cooling ducts up front at some point as well. 

Once the heat exchanger is mounted I'll sort out where hoses need to go, then probably order some high density foam to seal it all up around the edges and force the air to go exactly where I want it.  That's how Aston did it stock and makes sense overall.

I have a spot for the dry sump tank, and I think I can reuse the OEM power steering reservoir, along with about 90% of the OEM AC lines and the entire low pressure power steering setup (lines + cooler) so that saves a lot of work.   I -might- be able to make the OEM coolant reservoir work, which would really make my life easier.   If all that goes well I just need to stuff the Radium breather tanks somewhere and fit the intercooler pump and tank, both of which will probably go where the passenger side airbox was stock (OEM it had dual airboxes).

[Cobranut]

The factory design makes the cooling system work easy, overall.  A lot of the car is built like a racecar or very fancy kit car, with lots of aluminum extrusions and rivnuts setup to re-purpose Jaguar/Ford parts.   Makes it easy to adapt to my will.

The front and rear 1/3 of the car have full ducting/bracing flat floor plates that bolt on/off.   Makes life easier for ducting it all.    The middle of the car is also flat-ish, it looks a lot like a late model Corvette, but with even more aluminum everywhere.

Engine bay has tons of room for everything but the engine. I had to pull some sound deadening off the firewall and trim the heat shielding.   I then put gold heat reflection foil on the whole firewall and transmission tunnel (err, torque tube tunnel) then reinstalled as much of the OEM heat shield as I could to help reject as much heat as possible.  Clearance for the engine is about 5/16" to the rack, 1/4" to the firewall, 5/16" to the crossmember and 3/8" to the cowl.   So the engine can basically go EXACTLY here, and nowhere else.   Headers have miles of clearance, other than some subframe modding in one area, and they're well clear of the steering, etc.

I'll end up with a BIG intake tube to make sure the LT4 can breathe, but I don't think it'll be too bad.   I'd like to add some brake cooling ducts up front at some point as well. 

Once the heat exchanger is mounted I'll sort out where hoses need to go, then probably order some high density foam to seal it all up around the edges and force the air to go exactly where I want it.  That's how Aston did it stock and makes sense overall.

I have a spot for the dry sump tank, and I think I can reuse the OEM power steering reservoir, along with about 90% of the OEM AC lines and the entire low pressure power steering setup (lines + cooler) so that saves a lot of work.   I -might- be able to make the OEM coolant reservoir work, which would really make my life easier.   If all that goes well I just need to stuff the Radium breather tanks somewhere and fit the intercooler pump and tank, both of which will probably go where the passenger side airbox was stock (OEM it had dual airboxes).

Such a cool build Blake.  I'm looking forward to seeing this thing on the road. 

Your suggestion for foam board has me thinking I may use it for ducting in my racecar.
It looks like it would be easy to cut and bend, and cheap to replace in the event of damage.
I looked at it online, and there seem to be a lot of different types.
What are you planning to use?

[digitalsolo]

I explained that badly.   Just foam tape for my uses, to fill some ~1” gaps.

I’ve never considered using foam board, though there are probably some kinds that would work well.

[Cobranut]

Thanks.  They make some with plastic facing.
I've also seen corrugated plastic, similar to cardboard, with smooth plastic on each side.
That might work as well.  Just thinking of what would be cheap and easy to fab, to use in damage prone areas like the nose and tail.
It's probably also less likely than aluminum to damage a cooler or radiator if it gets crunched.

[digitalsolo]

Yeah, I've seen some SCCA guys make undertrays out of aluminum/plastic sign board materials.  It seems like a solid option.

On the "escalation" front, it turns out the later Vantage has a faster steering rack, which would be kinda nice.  I think I'll add that to the "Stage 2" list, along with new coilovers and poly bushings all around.

[spacevomit]

Very interested to see what this thing can do.

[digitalsolo]

So the mounts for the heat exchanger changed like 4x during the process, but it came out really well eventually.

I basically mirrored the design from the AC condenser, with machined blocks tapped and welded to the radiator, then brackets that run up to the heat exchanger.   Fitment worked out well and it's easy to service/change later if I ever need to.  The brackets also stay out of the way of airflow.   I don't have good photos, but I do have the power steering lines finished up.  Lower radiator hose is also completed.

[digitalsolo]

Finished up the upper/lower radiator hoses.   -16/-20 AN hoses are a real pain.

Dropped off the torque tube at RPM to get it modified.   Should be back in 4-6 weeks.

In the meantime, working on mounting up the dry sump tank now, then finishing the rest of the coolant lines, breather lines, etc.   Basically everything but wiring.   Then... wiring.

[Exidous]

I messed with some -20. Mega pain. So stiff too.