Aston Martin Engine Development: 1984-2000 E-Book

Arthur Wilson

• Herausgeber: Old Pond Books
• Kategorie: Fachliteratur
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2020

Seitenzahl: 195

Beschreibung

The pace at which technology progresses within the motor industry can be incredibly fast. What may have seemed an almost insurmountable problem in the late 80s and early 90s and therefore a major achievement when resolved, would now seem a minor inconvenience due to the advances made in component technology. Aston Martin Engine Development thoroughly details the design and development of Aston Martin engines including the 580X Vantage, the Virage, and the V8 Coupe. In particular it focusses on the twin supercharged 32 valve Vantage engine - an engine which set new standards, being the most powerful production car engine in the world at the time of its release in 1992. Illustrated with photographs from that time and including power and torque curves, this book provides a unique look into a period of Aston's history, written by one of the key men involved in making it happen. It gives an insight into life at the AM factory at Newport Pagnell; an understanding of the benefits of Supercharging at the time of manufacture; and a historic record of engine design, development and production that would otherwise have been lost to time.Aston Martin Engine Development will appeal to Aston Martin owners and enthusiasts and to anyone else with an interest in engines and high-performance cars.

Leseprobe

Aston MartinEngine Development

1984–2000

Aston MartinEngine Development

1984–2000

Arthur G. Wilson

Arthur G Wilson

Arthur George Wilson was born in Bletchley, Bucks in June 1936. He was educated at the local secondary school and then at Wolverton Technical College. He started a six year apprenticeship at the London Brick Company and specialised in engines. He joined Aston Martin in the early part of 1959 on engine build and soon transferred to the rectification department to look after engines and engine tuning. He then moved to the experimental department as test bed engineer. This progressed to development engineer and senior development engineer at Aston Martin Tickford. During this time he worked on the early Lagonda, the Vantage and the 1980 versions of all three engines and many of the racing customer’s engines including the John Pope Special twin turbo, the Tickford endurance race engine and the V12 Weslake engine, the Tickford Capri and the Frazer Metro.

In 1984 he was offered the position in charge of engine development back at AML where he developed the 580X Vantage engine, the 32-valve engine and the design and development for the twin supercharged 32-valve Vantage engine, and the engine for the normally aspirated V8 Coupe. He is married with one daughter and has an interest in classic cars, which has resulted in him restoring an MGA and an MG Midget. He also owns a Jaguar XJ6 and a 1988 Vauxhall 3.0 GSi Carlton.

In Memory of my friendJohn Pope who passed awaypeacefully 18th June 2013.

Contents

Foreword by David Morgan

Author’s preface

1

London Brick Co to Aston Martin Lagonda

2

Starting at Aston Martin Lagonda

3

Experimental Department

4

V12 Engine

5

Aston Martin Tickford

6

AML Engineering Department, 1984

7

Changing Times

8

Engineering Directors

9

Engineers

10

Engine Development Test Bed

11

1984 Engine Status

12

Vantage 580X

13

Four Valves Per Cylinder

14

32-Valve Engine Development

15

1987 Vantage

16

Vantage Target Objectives

17

Why Supercharging?

18

Engine Management

19

Base Engine Preparation

20

Exhaust Gas and Noise Emissions

21

200 mph

22

Further Development

23

Last Days

24

A Photo Record of the Last Days of Engine Manufacture at Newport Pagnell

Foreword by David Morgan

Iwas very honoured when Arthur asked me to write a forward for his book. We are both engineers at heart, and had very similar introductions to life inside Aston Martin. In my case I joined Aston in 1964, in a position as a fitter in the Experimental Department. It was an excellent time to join Aston, as the Experimental Department was just being transferred to Newport Pagnell and the existing staff didn’t want to leave London! Initially we commuted up to Feltham daily, usually in the ‘Brown Bomber’, a rare early Aston fitted with an estate body and a DB4 engine!

Once settled in the three-storey building at Newport Pagnell, I was fortunate to be handed the build of the first V8 and continued to be involved with the V8 until I left Aston, so as you can imagine I have great affection for it! I continued to be fortunate to rise within Aston Martin, to engineer and eventually chief development engineer. As you might expect there were many high and low points during this period. Some of the memorable ones are developing and supporting the Lola Aston Martin at Le Mans in 1967. While unsuccessful at Le Mans, the exercise resulted in a major redesign and the very strong V8 engine that went into production.

During the early 1970s, I had been promoted to senior development engineer and I needed someone to replace my hands-on work and Arthur was the perfect choice. He was working his magic on the production cars at the end of the line and I needed those skills in engineering. I was soon to realise that I had a genius on my team.

Arthur’s skill and enthusiasm is very rare, he has a great love of cars and of engines in particular, as you will discover while reading his book. While Arthur mainly worked on engine projects, the Bosch Injection systems and subsequent carburettor versions, this was Aston Martin and you had to be flexible! Arthur would be involved in all of the many projects – from driving emission durability cars and riding shotgun in the Bulldog to running all manner of engines on the dynamometer. Whatever Arthur was involved in he gave it 100 per cent and his attention to detail was always impressive. Arthur’s restored cars are perfect examples of his exceptional abilities and his eye for detail, they are all absolutely immaculate.

Among the lighter moments were the trips to Le Mans to support the V8 engines in the various chassis – the long 24-hour vigilance; the hectic pit stops to identify misfired and block off injectors on the non-firing cylinders but still managing to get the car home in a well-earned seventh place; the ‘if onlys’, like when a clutch cylinder leak lost one of the cars a top five finish. We had some happy times too!

While Aston Martin has been well documented over the years, this book gives you a unique detailed inside look into a period of Aston’s history from a person who was a part of actually making it happen.

I write this foreword in the grateful appreciation of Arthur’s friendship and help to me over very many years. I’m full of admiration at the abilities he so clearly demonstrated in the Aston Martin 32 valve Vantage that he created.

David Morgan.

Formerly Chief development engineer, Aston Martin.

(1964-1981) Tickford, Engineering Ltd.

Director of Engines (1981–2002).

Author’s Preface

When I first started to write these notes I was not sure what I would do with them or why I should write about the period of AML engine history that happened during my stewardship. But I had started at a time when so much of what had gone before appeared to be of little value and was being thrown away. I suppose that I just felt that with all of the changes that were occurring during the mid-nineties there was a strong possibility that an important part of our history would be lost forever or worse still, rewritten. I am by nature a shy person, much happier in a test bed or on a test track with a box of jets and E tubes rather than in any spotlight. I have been interviewed by journalists and authors on a number of occasions and I can only say that I sympathise with them – the term “blood out of a stone” springs to mind. So if I don’t actually write something down myself then my version of events will surely be lost. Therefore I am a slightly reluctant author and I fear not a very polished one – my first attempt and all that but here goes.

I have written about engine development at AML mainly during the period 1984 to 2000 but with some background reference to my time at AML leading up to that period. I write with the reasonably well-informed Aston Martin enthusiast in mind, sufficiently well informed to understand the effects of legislative constraints on motor manufacture as opposed to the relative freedom of aftermarket modification and racing. Naturally my comments in this book will mainly apply to the former. It is simply a book about engine development at AML.

One thing that became very obvious as I wrote was the pace at which technology progresses within the motor industry, particularly the components used to respond to environmental issues. When I started to write I was writing about the technical innovation of recent times but as time went on I was aware of being overtaken by the pace of change. Technical innovation is a very perishable subject to write about so the content in this book on that subject should be looked at with the early to mid-90s in mind. What may have seemed an almost insurmountable problem at that time and therefore a major achievement when resolved would perhaps now seem a minor inconvenience due to the advances made in component technology, particularly as regards catalytic converters and electronic engine management. Having said that, anyone who knows the business will appreciate that the 32 valve Vantage engine in particular did set new standards. It was the most powerful production car engine at the time of its release and the design philosophy behind the supercharged approach was appropriate for the challenges of the time.

London Brick Co to Aston Martin Lagonda

I was about seven years of age when I first fell in love with a motor car. Up to that time and bearing in mind that I was born in the same year as the Spitfire made its first flight, it had been aircraft that had been my main interest. The subject of my new affection was our first family car, a 1934 Wolseley Hornet Special known as Phoebe II. As was the practice of the time, the name had been professionally sign-written on the offside front of the long bonnet and was there when my parents bought the car. To a young lad, Phoebe was everything that a real sports car should be. The engine was a lovely little six-cylinder with single overhead cam, twin Skinners Union (SU) carburettors and loads of chrome oil pipes. It made a wonderful noise and smelled of hot oil mixed with a sort of hot electrical insulation material, all scary stuff. It still gives me a tingle when I think about it, funny how smell is such an important part of one’s memories of old cars. From then on I was hooked, particularly on 1930s sports cars.

When I left school at the age of 15, I began a six-year apprenticeship as a motor fitter at the London Brick Company (LBC) at Newton Longville, note the old term ‘fitter’ rather than ‘mechanic’. I would be working on the fleet of lorries used to transport the company product, not the sports or racing cars that I would have liked. But I was told that the standard of fitting required on diesel engines of the time was much higher than for the run-of-the-mill petrol engine and would stand me in good stead for later. Also the LBC provided one of the best apprentice schemes local to me at that time.

The lorries were mostly diesel engine AEC with a couple of ERF that I remember did not have starter motors. They were started on the handle that in the depths of winter sometimes required a team of men on a long rope and a guy in the cab with a flare down the intake to get them started. The flare was a piece of welding wire twisted around a piece of rag at the end, which was dunked into the fuel tank, set alight and held over the air intake while the engine was cranked. The flare procedure was common practice for all of the diesel engines in cold weather. There was also a number of side valve petrol engine Morris Commercials for more local deliveries and a small fleet of vans, buses, coaches and an ambulance to maintain.

We occasionally had manager’s company cars in for work. These were mostly Morrises or Wolseleys, which I remember as increasing in Royal Automobile Club-rated horsepower in line with the status of the manager. The chairman of the company had a beautiful dark green Aston Martin DB2/4, which sometimes came in for a wash and polish. Unfortunately that was all – we didn’t get to work on the car; I expect that it went back to Feltham for any service work. But it was a rather special treat for those of us who were motor enthusiasts just to be able to admire such a beautiful car at close quarters. He also had an ash green Jaguar XK120 that came in for the same treatment. I must admit that I slightly favoured the looks of the XK120; it was just so stunningly beautiful with a great looking engine. But I also recognised that underneath that beautiful body, the mechanical bits were less impressive – the workmanship on the Aston was far superior. The engineering on the Aston had a beauty of its own and it was really just as good looking but in a more refined way.

I completed my apprenticeship in June 1957, having specialised on engines. At the beginning of 1959 I was surprised to see an advert for engine builders at the Aston Martin factory at Newport Pagnell. I knew that Aston Martin had a factory at Feltham and hadn’t realised that the company had set up just a few miles away from Bletchley where I lived. With the image of that beautiful DB2/4 in mind I just had to apply. So after making an appointment by phone and armed with every qualification, certificate, commendation and prize certificate that I could lay my hands on I drove to Newport Pagnell in my pride and joy, an Austin Healey 100.

It would be an understatement to say that I was very nervous during the interview; even the slightest possibility of working for such a prestigious motor manufacturer gave me goose pimples. I just had to get the job. Happily I did and started soon after as third man in what was then the DB4 engine pre-production build area in the Olympia building, so called because of the shape of the roof. This was before the end was cut off at an angle for road widening, which if I remember correctly happened during the winter of 1960. I remember that the pay was slightly less than I was getting at the LBC and I would have to drive to work each day. But I didn’t mind too much, after all I was going to be working for Aston Martin.

I have one regret about that time and that is that in the excitement I didn’t have the grace to properly thank the LBC guys that I had been working with and in particular the manager Chris Johnson for all of their help and patience during my apprenticeship. Self-centred youth, I suppose.

Starting at Aston Martin Lagonda

Starting at Aston Martin Lagonda (AML) engine build, Ray Perkins had the first bench, George Wardle had the second and I had the next one. For the first week I was put to work with George to get to know what was expected. He introduced me to the subtleties of building an aluminium engine as opposed to the iron lumps that I was used to. Starting on the same day but at about 11 o’clock was my long-term friend Les Brooker.

Behind me there were a number of old hands who were building the engines for the DB2/4 Mk III, which was the current production car of the time. They were Fred Woodland, Harry Absolem, Seth Costall and Fred Watters. Eric Pointer made up the subassemblies and prepared the engines for installation into the chassis after the engine test. Sid King balanced crankshafts, etc. Fred Woodland was later to become famous as Mr Duckhams in the engine oil adverts of the time. They were a friendly lot and full of fun. I recall that there was a slightly mischievous attempt at winding up rivalry between Harry Absolem, who had a TR2, and the new boy, me with my Austin Healey. But it was all in good fun.

One of the highlights of my first year at AML was when all of the drivers for the 1959 Le Mans team visited the engine shop prior to the race.

All engines were run in and power tested by Bob (whose surname I cannot recall) and Ernie Mod. Every fifth engine was then stripped for inspection after power testing. At that time the cylinder heads were built on a separate line by Bob Clare, Peter Riley and Dick Joyce. There was someone else but I am afraid that I can’t remember his name; he left shortly after I started. The other half of the building was used to assemble the Mk III chassis prior to pushing it across Tickford Street to the coach-building side of the factory for body and trim, etc. In those days, the separation of the company into two parts by Tickford Street was a little more than geographic. The Olympia side of the road was Associated Engineering Union territory. The other side was traditionally the Coach Builders Union side, in line with its Tickford coach building roots.

Figure 2.1 Old 1959 photo of me (on the right) with Martin Irish and Marina Jones in the car park before the service department was built. Note the building in the background, which became known as the Sunnyside office. It was then home to the factory manager and had a nice orchard to the left. My Austin Healy is in the background.

(I eventually crashed the Healey on the way to work one morning. I ran into a bus carrying young ladies to the Rodex clothing factory in Bletchley, which is how I met my wife to be, she was on the bus.)

My first introduction to the ups and downs of the exotic motor business was at Christmas 1960. Suddenly there were cutbacks that resulted in people being made redundant. Sadly this included my brother Stuart, who had started that year on inspection in the engine shop. But I just survived – I would have been next to go if there had been one more redundancy. My friend Les Brooker, who started the same day as me but at 11 o’clock, was made redundant, that’s how close it was. (First in last out was the rule on these unhappy occasions. And last out, first back on the return trip, unless one had blotted one’s copy book.) That was the first of many ups and downs during my time at AML, the closing down at the end of 1974 being the most traumatic for everyone.

About midway through my first year at AML it was discovered that there was a problem with the connecting rod bolts, which meant that all engines had to be stripped and rebuilt with new bolts. Seth Costal and I were given this task. Soon after we had completed the rebuilds, I developed dermatitis on my hands, possibly due to prolonged exposure to engine oil during this process. This was strange, as I had not had any problems while working on the diesel engines in my previous employment. The outcome of this was that I was put onto building subassemblies for a while, but this also made me available to resolve engine-related problems that occurred during engine tests and road tests. Somewhere during my misspent youth I had developed something of a talent for setting up an engine and its carburettors. This was probably due to involving myself in fiddling with most types of multicarburettor layouts on the various sports or sporting saloons that my friends and in particular my car-mad family had owned. This eventually resulted in a permanent transfer to the road test and rectification department, looking after general engine problem-solving and engine tuning. And then eventually a position in the experimental department of the time and finally to end up in charge of the engine department at Newport Pagnell. So dermatitis is not such a bad thing after all.

Pip Aires and Dick Bolton were the road testers in the road test and rectification department when I worked there, looking after engine tune and rectification. Bill Jackson had been on road test but had moved over to become a service engineer. Just for interest, there is more than a 95 per cent chance that any reader with a six-cylinder car from DB5 onwards will have had his or her engine tuned by me before it left the factory, nearer to 100 per cent if it was a Vantage. The same would apply to the Bosch-equipped V8 engines and early V8 carburettor cars.

Setting up the throttle linkage to get the correct progression on the Bosch V8 can be a bit tricky and as I had developed a procedure for doing this, I will very briefly outline the procedure for the benefit of any owners reading this book. Other readers can just skip this part.

Assuming that all else is as per the instruction book for these cars, you will need a threaded 2BA rod with a ball connector to enable connection to the main throttle lever on the cross shaft and a sliding hook over the rod to be hooked over the bonnet landing rubber at the bottom of the scuttle. A knurled 2BA nut is then required to screw onto the rod to enable fine adjustment of the throttle opening to the various settings.

The cross shaft has a lever at each end to operate the throttle opening. These levers have a clamp bolt to enable the lever to be set at zero with throttles closed. The throttle levers are connected to the main throttle assembly by double ended, L&R threaded rods with lock nuts.

Initially I would concentrate on three positions, zero, 4.6 and 50.5 degrees on the metering unit. Zero, 2.5 and 40 degrees throttle respectively. If these positions are correct then all other check positions should fall into place.

Ensure that all pointers read zero and that throttles are closed on the stops with no free play and also that the metering unit is on its closed stop. Adjust the throttle setting tool via the knurled nut to open the throttle to 4.6 degrees metering unit and 2.5 degrees throttle. If this is not correct, recheck the zero setting and also that all three pointers start to move at the same time. Continue to open the throttle to give 50.5 degrees on the metering unit. The throttle indicator pointer should show that both throttles are 40 degrees open. If this is not so, release the lock nuts and adjust the double-ended (left- and right-hand thread) throttle rods, each side to double the error (i.e., if the reading is 42 degrees then double this to read 44 degrees, or if 38 degrees adjust to 36 degrees, and retighten the lock nuts). Adjust the tool to return the metering unit to zero on its closed stop and release the clamp bolt on the outer throttle levers and reset the throttles to zero on the stops, with no free play.

Repeat the above until all three readings are correct, after which a full range check should confirm that all is in order.

Metering unit degrees

Throttles degrees (A & B bank)

Zero

Zero

4.6

2.5

8.8

5.0

12.7

7.5

16.3

10.0

23.1

15.0

29.3

20.0

40.5

30.0

50.5

40.0

59.4

50.0

67.4

60.0

74.4

70.0

81.0

80.7

Figure 2.2 Me in a DB5 Vantage Show car. I can’t remember which show but car is left-hand drive with air-conditioning, so could be for the USA.

Figure 2.3 Engine bay of same show car, just been set up.

The DB5 Vantage pictured in Figures 2.2 and 2.3