Aston V8 Vantage 4.3
Discussion
After following many Reader’s Car threads with interest and benefitting from lots of them I thought I would share my own for once. Vantages always have had a decent following on PH, and lots of enthusiastic owners, but there seems to be a renewed appetite for these beautiful, bank breaking machines recently and lots of people modifying them so I am documenting mine.
This is my second Vantage after going from a Boxster to a Vantage, back to a Boxster, on to a 911 and now back to a Vantage again. The first one I had for 2 years, drove it everywhere, went as far as Italy in it, did my first track day in it at Silverstone and generally loved it. The intention when I set out to get another one was to get a fundamentally good example but one that I would not be afraid to mess about with as I had plans from the outset. So, I was looking at the lower end of the market, was not afraid of miles but wanted to avoid anything that had been really neglected. I also really didn’t want another grey with black interior car.
After lots of scouring I naturally bought the first one I viewed. It was a private sale and the car was serviced and MOTd by McGurk’s as part of the sale. They provided a condition report for the car so I was fully aware of what I was getting myself in for. There were some significant things to note but with a slush fund set aside I ploughed on. Overall, the car had never missed an annual service, had receipts and history covering its history from purchase, and have been known to and retailed by McGurk’s over the last 8 years, so it fit the bill. The elephant in the room at this point is that the condition report noted a noisy top end of the engine, suspected cam to valve bucket clearances needed addressing. Knowing that it was potentially costly (engine out of its intake valves) but not much in it than say a new clutch or replacing the front timing cover seal properly, I adopted a weird need to buy it anyway and make sure it continued onward. It’s a 2007 4.3 V8 manual in midnight blue with blue leather and 72,000 miles.
Collection day greeted me with the familiar Volvo fob, nothing says “I drive an Aston” like a Ford Transit key and an early 2000s Volvo fob.
It was a sweltering day in June nudging 30 degrees but fortunately the AC was blowing ice cold and the short journey back across London was uneventful (actually I got fined £80 which was nice).
I stopped for a scenic pic but the midday sun and heat were doing the paintwork no favours.
?
Back home and it was clear it had not seen any wax for a while and as the car had been kept outside under a cover much of the time the paintwork could use some attention but that could wait.
I really like the colour, the blue has a real electric pop under the right light.
I had a local mobile guy come and give it a good clean inside and out to properly start my ownership fresh.
I treated it to a quick coat of spray wax to give it a bit of protection and it came up looking pretty decent.
One of the Vantages unusual strengths is how practical they are. I took a double mattress to the tip in the boot of my old one. And I collected my dog as a puppy in it (when it was our only ‘do everything’ car) and it was good to see he could still fit on the back .
(Obviously I’m not going to tether him like that for any journeys before you call the RSPCA.)
Onto the fun bits. The Vantage’s biggest aesthetic flaw is its factory stance. It sits too high and the wheels look weedy in the arches. Dynamically the stock dampers ride quite hard and bouncy on rough roads but also allow a lot of roll in corners and whilst I think a stock Vantage drives better than many people would expect, there’s room for improvement so the first step was to sort these things. I had researched before purchase and knew I was going to send it to DAE in Somerset for Nitron dampers so I got that booked. It really needs spacers for the look so I fitted these before it had the suspension swapped and the alignment done.
20mm bolt on hubcentric for the rear and 8mm slip on for the front.
If you don’t have the 5 spoke lightweight sport pack wheels then you have to cut the original wheel studs down to stop them fouling the inner face of the wheel.
At stock ride height things are much improved but it’s still too high so off to DAE for some Nitron goodies. The benefit of the Nitron kit is that they’re adjustable for ride height and firmness and use the stock top mounts so don’t have some of the harshness of the full coilover kits. Other options include Vantage S suspension from the later cars, or there’s a well regarded Ohlins kit from Valiant Ecosse in Germany who do wicked things with Vantages. I think some people are running KW V3 with success too.
Dropped off and ready for upgrades.
The facilities at DAE are great, they’re really accommodating and comms throughout the work with updates was fantastic. They did a couple of bits for me like bonnet struts and fitted their seat airbag delete resistors. They also measured the valve clearances whilst they had it to give me a sense of how many and which valves would need attention.
The drive down revealed that the front slip on spaces were too thick, did not allow enough of the hub to centre the wheel properly and I had an irritating wobble at 70mph so they’ve come off now.
With a tweaked ride height it looks much better but importantly the ride and handling is much improved. The Nitrons do that clever trick of being both firmer with better body control and much more settled on bumpy roads but also far less crashy and harsh. The drop is subtle and isn’t so low that you smash into every speedbump but looks much better for it.
Whilst the car was at DAE for the week I had some more presents delivered for the car.
From the outset I knew that very quickly I wanted to sort the suspension and the seats. The intention was to make it a slightly more focussed car but still useable. I wasn’t going to chase power or noise, I just wanted it to be an exciting car to get in and steer. Ideally I’d have bought a car with the Aston carbon fibre buckets, but they’re hard to come back, and non-existent at the bottom end of the market. A number of people had fitted Cobra Nogaros which have a similar look to the Aston buckets and what really tipped me over the edge was IainWhy’s clubsport build on here where he retained the electric seat base of the stock seats to give a wider range of adjustment, just like the OEM buckets. I want to be able to use the car for long distances so having a fixed position would have been a compromise.
I’m not made of money and haven’t got this involved before so the next steps were with a large degree of trepidation and the help of my wingman.
Starting on the passenger side was a sign of my level of confidence, if this took some time I could still move the car around…
Not what I thought I’d find under it.
Seat out! Heavy beasts, around 30kg.
The seat base, its motors and wiring is fixed to the seat with 4 bolts, two locating tabs and there are two wiring harnesses. The hardest part was having to man handled the seat back into the car to plug into the hardness to power the motors so that I could rise the seat into the highest position to get access to the bolts. Not fun when the car is four floors away in the basement. It’s not easy to separate the wiring, and given the market for second hand seats with the bases missing, I estimated at zero, I ploughed on and took the easy option and chopped them.
Marrying the Cobra mounts up to the factory bases was straightforward, cut off the alignment tabs, drill a pair of extra mounting holes and bolt it all together with some suitable hardware.
You’ll obviously notice the centre cushions are missing there. I was really conscious I did not want the finished product to look horribly aftermarket, there are examples of people who had had theirs beautifully trimmed in matching leather and in time I’ve got plans to trim the interior. But in the meantime I enlisted the help of my talented and patient mum to help tie them in with the car. Armed with a photoshop of what I imagined, we found some suitable fabric to replace the centres and she used her wizardry to embroider the wings into them.
Trial run, elected for mono after the colour proved too fiddly for the machine.
Very biased but I think the end result is superb.
Armed with my trusty helper it was straightforward to repeat on the driver side.
Whilst they’re obviously not OEM, I think the blue centres make a huge difference and tie the interior together and I am really happy with how it looks. Having tilt adjustment makes it really easy to find a good position, and no, it’s probably not quite as low as the manual bases but you are still nice and low slung in the car.
I had the car back together in time to go to the Aston Martin Heritage Festival at Brooklands where I parked against its much more grown up siblings.
A simple but satisfying task next was a deep clean of the steering wheel.
?
We had a longer trip planned to Derbyshire which meant I had to crack on with improving the stereo connectivity. The sound quality of the Premium sound system is great, but there’s no phone connectivity for music.
These Mr 12 Volt boxes piggyback on the MOST connectivity of the headunit and allow Bluetooth streaming.
You have to pop out the waterfall console, which can be done without tools (don’t do this if you have piano black finish, it’s prone to cracking). Then it’s a case of connecting up the piggyback wiring harness and feed it down the back of the dash to the fusebox in the passenger footwell.
This was a during a test fit, I’d bought the unit off ebay for a Volvo S80 so was not 100% sure it would work but it was great from the off.
This meant we were road trip ready. Slightly apprehensive and cautious that it was with totally rose tinted glasses that my love for the Recaro Pole Positions I had in a TT quattro Sport, more than a decade ago, that I would have ruined the cars GT abilities with crippling seat, now that I were older (and probably not any wiser).
I need not have worried though, it is still a very comfy cabin to be in, no aches or pains or peeling yourself out at the other end after 4 hours. Happy passengers too so a big success all round. It was a good chance to hit some more interesting routes and the car drives really nicely.
This also gave the chance to claybar and wax the paint properly.
An issue that needed addressing was the vibration from the larger of the two radiator fans that could be felt through the wheel(!) when it kicked into its highest speed setting. A replacement fan housing from Aston is £900, it’s exactly the same as a Jaguar part which can be had fairly easily second hand for £200 but they all looked in worse condition than that in my car and with no new Jaguar stock that I could find I tried to diagnose the issue.
The fan pack for the radiator comes out easily once you’ve taken off the front engine panel. The bearings and fans felt smooth without any play so it was possibly a balance issue. I noted an incredibly slim missing sliver of one fan blade so roughly moved one of the blade weights to compensate which has largely removed the vibration for now.
A big frustration of the Vantage that let’s down the driving, especially coming from 987 and 997 with pretty much perfect primary controls, is the pedal spacing and throttle response is poor, heel and toe is difficult at anything other than maximum attack and spoils a bit of the fun. Part of the problem is the throttle position mapping is incredibly lazy, you get an inch or two of travel before the throttle opens at all, and the pedals themselves have quite a gap. The stock flywheel is very heavy too which dulls the engine response. I started with the easiest to address which was to use the brake pedal from a sportshift auto car, an idea I pinched from another owner on here. There is an Ultimate Pedals throttle pedal you can buy from the USA but at £150 landed in the UK at the minute it’s more than I was willing to risk as the core issue is still the software mapping and flywheel weight.
A decent improvement by the pedal needed cutting down slightly to make it more comfortable in some throttle positions.
Proving the Vantages practical abilities, the boot swallows up a road bike really easily.
I took a trip up to Bamford Rose to discuss addressing the valve clearances and popped into Caffeine & Machine for the first time whilst I was nearby. Parked up next to a lovely 996 Turbo, will have to go back when it’s a bit of lively and the weather isn’t so grim.
The engine doesn’t seem to be in as tragic state as was my worst case and I’ll get the offending shims replaced over winter ready for more miles next year.
Took the chance to pose in a posh London street on the way how, as if I were the first owner 15 years ago.
And that basically brings things up to now. A friend of mine is a long-term Vantage owner which he’s evolved over the years so we met up to bore each other with Aston chat.
Regency1
Regency2
Regency3
Regency4
Still a small list of things to do. Valve clearances sorted, throttle remap and sports cats at BR over winter. I have some small cosmetic bits to sort over time, and I’ve got rear brake pads waiting to go on it. I’d like to retrofit cruise control and an auto dimming rear view mirror. Its got the awful OEM Bridgestones on the front and PZERO on the rear so that needs sorting. But for now just enjoying it. I shall try and keep this updated with bits and bobs as I go.
This is my second Vantage after going from a Boxster to a Vantage, back to a Boxster, on to a 911 and now back to a Vantage again. The first one I had for 2 years, drove it everywhere, went as far as Italy in it, did my first track day in it at Silverstone and generally loved it. The intention when I set out to get another one was to get a fundamentally good example but one that I would not be afraid to mess about with as I had plans from the outset. So, I was looking at the lower end of the market, was not afraid of miles but wanted to avoid anything that had been really neglected. I also really didn’t want another grey with black interior car.
After lots of scouring I naturally bought the first one I viewed. It was a private sale and the car was serviced and MOTd by McGurk’s as part of the sale. They provided a condition report for the car so I was fully aware of what I was getting myself in for. There were some significant things to note but with a slush fund set aside I ploughed on. Overall, the car had never missed an annual service, had receipts and history covering its history from purchase, and have been known to and retailed by McGurk’s over the last 8 years, so it fit the bill. The elephant in the room at this point is that the condition report noted a noisy top end of the engine, suspected cam to valve bucket clearances needed addressing. Knowing that it was potentially costly (engine out of its intake valves) but not much in it than say a new clutch or replacing the front timing cover seal properly, I adopted a weird need to buy it anyway and make sure it continued onward. It’s a 2007 4.3 V8 manual in midnight blue with blue leather and 72,000 miles.
Collection day greeted me with the familiar Volvo fob, nothing says “I drive an Aston” like a Ford Transit key and an early 2000s Volvo fob.
It was a sweltering day in June nudging 30 degrees but fortunately the AC was blowing ice cold and the short journey back across London was uneventful (actually I got fined £80 which was nice).
I stopped for a scenic pic but the midday sun and heat were doing the paintwork no favours.
?
Back home and it was clear it had not seen any wax for a while and as the car had been kept outside under a cover much of the time the paintwork could use some attention but that could wait.
I really like the colour, the blue has a real electric pop under the right light.
I had a local mobile guy come and give it a good clean inside and out to properly start my ownership fresh.
I treated it to a quick coat of spray wax to give it a bit of protection and it came up looking pretty decent.
One of the Vantages unusual strengths is how practical they are. I took a double mattress to the tip in the boot of my old one. And I collected my dog as a puppy in it (when it was our only ‘do everything’ car) and it was good to see he could still fit on the back .
(Obviously I’m not going to tether him like that for any journeys before you call the RSPCA.)
Onto the fun bits. The Vantage’s biggest aesthetic flaw is its factory stance. It sits too high and the wheels look weedy in the arches. Dynamically the stock dampers ride quite hard and bouncy on rough roads but also allow a lot of roll in corners and whilst I think a stock Vantage drives better than many people would expect, there’s room for improvement so the first step was to sort these things. I had researched before purchase and knew I was going to send it to DAE in Somerset for Nitron dampers so I got that booked. It really needs spacers for the look so I fitted these before it had the suspension swapped and the alignment done.
20mm bolt on hubcentric for the rear and 8mm slip on for the front.
If you don’t have the 5 spoke lightweight sport pack wheels then you have to cut the original wheel studs down to stop them fouling the inner face of the wheel.
At stock ride height things are much improved but it’s still too high so off to DAE for some Nitron goodies. The benefit of the Nitron kit is that they’re adjustable for ride height and firmness and use the stock top mounts so don’t have some of the harshness of the full coilover kits. Other options include Vantage S suspension from the later cars, or there’s a well regarded Ohlins kit from Valiant Ecosse in Germany who do wicked things with Vantages. I think some people are running KW V3 with success too.
Dropped off and ready for upgrades.
The facilities at DAE are great, they’re really accommodating and comms throughout the work with updates was fantastic. They did a couple of bits for me like bonnet struts and fitted their seat airbag delete resistors. They also measured the valve clearances whilst they had it to give me a sense of how many and which valves would need attention.
The drive down revealed that the front slip on spaces were too thick, did not allow enough of the hub to centre the wheel properly and I had an irritating wobble at 70mph so they’ve come off now.
With a tweaked ride height it looks much better but importantly the ride and handling is much improved. The Nitrons do that clever trick of being both firmer with better body control and much more settled on bumpy roads but also far less crashy and harsh. The drop is subtle and isn’t so low that you smash into every speedbump but looks much better for it.
Whilst the car was at DAE for the week I had some more presents delivered for the car.
From the outset I knew that very quickly I wanted to sort the suspension and the seats. The intention was to make it a slightly more focussed car but still useable. I wasn’t going to chase power or noise, I just wanted it to be an exciting car to get in and steer. Ideally I’d have bought a car with the Aston carbon fibre buckets, but they’re hard to come back, and non-existent at the bottom end of the market. A number of people had fitted Cobra Nogaros which have a similar look to the Aston buckets and what really tipped me over the edge was IainWhy’s clubsport build on here where he retained the electric seat base of the stock seats to give a wider range of adjustment, just like the OEM buckets. I want to be able to use the car for long distances so having a fixed position would have been a compromise.
I’m not made of money and haven’t got this involved before so the next steps were with a large degree of trepidation and the help of my wingman.
Starting on the passenger side was a sign of my level of confidence, if this took some time I could still move the car around…
Not what I thought I’d find under it.
Seat out! Heavy beasts, around 30kg.
The seat base, its motors and wiring is fixed to the seat with 4 bolts, two locating tabs and there are two wiring harnesses. The hardest part was having to man handled the seat back into the car to plug into the hardness to power the motors so that I could rise the seat into the highest position to get access to the bolts. Not fun when the car is four floors away in the basement. It’s not easy to separate the wiring, and given the market for second hand seats with the bases missing, I estimated at zero, I ploughed on and took the easy option and chopped them.
Marrying the Cobra mounts up to the factory bases was straightforward, cut off the alignment tabs, drill a pair of extra mounting holes and bolt it all together with some suitable hardware.
You’ll obviously notice the centre cushions are missing there. I was really conscious I did not want the finished product to look horribly aftermarket, there are examples of people who had had theirs beautifully trimmed in matching leather and in time I’ve got plans to trim the interior. But in the meantime I enlisted the help of my talented and patient mum to help tie them in with the car. Armed with a photoshop of what I imagined, we found some suitable fabric to replace the centres and she used her wizardry to embroider the wings into them.
Trial run, elected for mono after the colour proved too fiddly for the machine.
Very biased but I think the end result is superb.
Armed with my trusty helper it was straightforward to repeat on the driver side.
Whilst they’re obviously not OEM, I think the blue centres make a huge difference and tie the interior together and I am really happy with how it looks. Having tilt adjustment makes it really easy to find a good position, and no, it’s probably not quite as low as the manual bases but you are still nice and low slung in the car.
I had the car back together in time to go to the Aston Martin Heritage Festival at Brooklands where I parked against its much more grown up siblings.
A simple but satisfying task next was a deep clean of the steering wheel.
?
We had a longer trip planned to Derbyshire which meant I had to crack on with improving the stereo connectivity. The sound quality of the Premium sound system is great, but there’s no phone connectivity for music.
These Mr 12 Volt boxes piggyback on the MOST connectivity of the headunit and allow Bluetooth streaming.
You have to pop out the waterfall console, which can be done without tools (don’t do this if you have piano black finish, it’s prone to cracking). Then it’s a case of connecting up the piggyback wiring harness and feed it down the back of the dash to the fusebox in the passenger footwell.
This was a during a test fit, I’d bought the unit off ebay for a Volvo S80 so was not 100% sure it would work but it was great from the off.
This meant we were road trip ready. Slightly apprehensive and cautious that it was with totally rose tinted glasses that my love for the Recaro Pole Positions I had in a TT quattro Sport, more than a decade ago, that I would have ruined the cars GT abilities with crippling seat, now that I were older (and probably not any wiser).
I need not have worried though, it is still a very comfy cabin to be in, no aches or pains or peeling yourself out at the other end after 4 hours. Happy passengers too so a big success all round. It was a good chance to hit some more interesting routes and the car drives really nicely.
This also gave the chance to claybar and wax the paint properly.
An issue that needed addressing was the vibration from the larger of the two radiator fans that could be felt through the wheel(!) when it kicked into its highest speed setting. A replacement fan housing from Aston is £900, it’s exactly the same as a Jaguar part which can be had fairly easily second hand for £200 but they all looked in worse condition than that in my car and with no new Jaguar stock that I could find I tried to diagnose the issue.
The fan pack for the radiator comes out easily once you’ve taken off the front engine panel. The bearings and fans felt smooth without any play so it was possibly a balance issue. I noted an incredibly slim missing sliver of one fan blade so roughly moved one of the blade weights to compensate which has largely removed the vibration for now.
A big frustration of the Vantage that let’s down the driving, especially coming from 987 and 997 with pretty much perfect primary controls, is the pedal spacing and throttle response is poor, heel and toe is difficult at anything other than maximum attack and spoils a bit of the fun. Part of the problem is the throttle position mapping is incredibly lazy, you get an inch or two of travel before the throttle opens at all, and the pedals themselves have quite a gap. The stock flywheel is very heavy too which dulls the engine response. I started with the easiest to address which was to use the brake pedal from a sportshift auto car, an idea I pinched from another owner on here. There is an Ultimate Pedals throttle pedal you can buy from the USA but at £150 landed in the UK at the minute it’s more than I was willing to risk as the core issue is still the software mapping and flywheel weight.
A decent improvement by the pedal needed cutting down slightly to make it more comfortable in some throttle positions.
Proving the Vantages practical abilities, the boot swallows up a road bike really easily.
I took a trip up to Bamford Rose to discuss addressing the valve clearances and popped into Caffeine & Machine for the first time whilst I was nearby. Parked up next to a lovely 996 Turbo, will have to go back when it’s a bit of lively and the weather isn’t so grim.
The engine doesn’t seem to be in as tragic state as was my worst case and I’ll get the offending shims replaced over winter ready for more miles next year.
Took the chance to pose in a posh London street on the way how, as if I were the first owner 15 years ago.
And that basically brings things up to now. A friend of mine is a long-term Vantage owner which he’s evolved over the years so we met up to bore each other with Aston chat.
Regency1
Regency2
Regency3
Regency4
Still a small list of things to do. Valve clearances sorted, throttle remap and sports cats at BR over winter. I have some small cosmetic bits to sort over time, and I’ve got rear brake pads waiting to go on it. I’d like to retrofit cruise control and an auto dimming rear view mirror. Its got the awful OEM Bridgestones on the front and PZERO on the rear so that needs sorting. But for now just enjoying it. I shall try and keep this updated with bits and bobs as I go.
Edited by olv on Wednesday 16th November 12:50
Edited by olv on Wednesday 16th November 13:12
Nice very nice
Had one hence the username, got rid due to reliability and went 996TT X50 but the two side by side show how well AM did with the design on this!
Tempted by a VanquishS at the moment but I dont think the interior is as good as they once were……. Think Bentley CGTV8S instead.
My amv8 mapped to 420 and felt special, just broke down too much. Yours looks 👍🏻 happy motoring
Had one hence the username, got rid due to reliability and went 996TT X50 but the two side by side show how well AM did with the design on this!
Tempted by a VanquishS at the moment but I dont think the interior is as good as they once were……. Think Bentley CGTV8S instead.
My amv8 mapped to 420 and felt special, just broke down too much. Yours looks 👍🏻 happy motoring
Dr Imran T said:
Very nice, is that underground car park Romney House by any chance? Looks very familiar.
Haha no, just generic underground car park. I think they all look the same. Thanks for the comments. I forgot another important incoming piece is a matching seat for the dog. More on that soon.
olv said:
It really is a Volvo fob. They cover it in leather but it wears and peels off over time revealing the truth. Someone makes a nice 3D printed (I think?) replacement but it’s £100 and I don’t care that much.
I bought the jag XK shell from eBay for about a fiver. The interior electronic components mirror the same button layout so swap straight over. Bought a cheap Aston pin badge that I cut the pin off and then glued onto the shell. 
This is great, and i am please that if only in a small way i have triggered another owner on the path to "ruin" their aston by making it much better to drive 
May nick your pedal idea btw.
Heal and toe is fine with the gt4 clutch, light fly and a map, but the gap is probably still bigger than you would ideally want
May nick your pedal idea btw.
Heal and toe is fine with the gt4 clutch, light fly and a map, but the gap is probably still bigger than you would ideally want
IainWhy said:
This is great, and i am please that if only in a small way i have triggered another owner on the path to "ruin" their aston by making it much better to drive
May nick your pedal idea btw.
Heal and toe is fine with the gt4 clutch, light fly and a map, but the gap is probably still bigger than you would ideally want
Very glad I saw your build when I did. I'm looking forward to seeing how your get on with your GT4 centre console.May nick your pedal idea btw.
Heal and toe is fine with the gt4 clutch, light fly and a map, but the gap is probably still bigger than you would ideally want
I need to pony up the ££££ for a twin clutch and light flywheel but not a priority right now, especially as the current only has 20k miles on it and still feels absolutely fine. Hopefully a remap will improve things enough for the time being.
olv said:
Very glad I saw your build when I did. I'm looking forward to seeing how your get on with your GT4 centre console.
I need to pony up the ££££ for a twin clutch and light flywheel but not a priority right now, especially as the current only has 20k miles on it and still feels absolutely fine. Hopefully a remap will improve things enough for the time being.
Still waiting on the switch bosses at the moment, but became bored waiting and ordered a half cage, so 50/50 what gets done first I need to pony up the ££££ for a twin clutch and light flywheel but not a priority right now, especially as the current only has 20k miles on it and still feels absolutely fine. Hopefully a remap will improve things enough for the time being.
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