early v8 vantages

haha, then i guess you haven't done much research into these cars. the fix only involves changing out gaskets, but is a 20 hour job. you'll see why when you check out the details here

Replacing The Timing Cover Gasket

 

A qualified independent would do this job for a fraction of what was quoted above. Still a nasty job, but its just mechanical bits. Can be solved without too much undue pain. Good thing to watch for when checking one of these cars out though!

 

true, but qualified independents that you'd trust to work on an AM is probably harder to come by and man, 20 hours is still a looooong time.

 

If mine ever begins to leak I plan on fixing it myself. Can't be anymore difficult than when I pulled the engine to do a major on a 348 I once owned. Like the gentleman said above, it's just mechanical bits that you take apart and then put back together. Being retired, time is what I have plenty of.

 

I've read the Grant Neal book, but haven't spent a ton of time digging through forums and such. I just didn't recall seeing that particular item in the book, although it may be in there....been a while since I read it.

That said, unless my car was absolutely gushing oil, I think I'd live with a little drip before I'd spend $4K or several weekends of my life fixing it. I've got a garage full of old British and Italian cars, the only ones that don't leak a little are the ones that are out of oil! It's what they do.

 

haha fair point sir! i've read of those dealing w/the leak and honestly unless you were tracking the car every wkend, i don't know there's a ton of harm that could come to the car from it.

 

As to the reliability of the vantage; we just completed a trip from north west PA to Glacier National Park Montana and back. We covered 4955 miles over the 16 day trip. Our average fuel use was 23.5 mpg. Our vantage is a 2010 with manual transmission. We had zero issues with the car. It was comfortable with enough room for the luggage needed. One complaint often expressed is the navigation system is poor, after a bit of practice we became familiar with its function and had no problems.( not as good as our BMW,but not bad) love the car ! Have never driven the 4.3 but have no issues at all with the 4.7.

 

Got any pics of the Glacier trip? Sounds like a grand adventure!

 

Anyone have thoughts on where pricing of these say 06-09 vantage a will go. Kind of all over the board, but low end is mid $40k, most though are still around $60$. Are they still going down or is this about the bottom?

 

I'd been looking at V8Vs for a little over a year before I pulled the trigger. Imho it's about at the bottom of that depreciation curve. Anything low 40s and high 30s tend to be high mileage or cars with stories.

 

Clutch is also a weak point, both on the ASM equipped cars, and on manuals. (ASM is worse, but manuals apparently have issues as well). I'm replacing mine at 28k miles The pivot in the pressure plate broke, and slave cylinder looks pretty ratty as well.

 

At 30000 mi I just replaced the clutch at 20% remaining because the clutch actuator failed... 2009 V8V. Sigh. Second F1 clutch to go and I don't drive it hard!

SV

 

I replaced the clutch and flywheel in my manual V8V at 12,000 miles.

I installed a custom lightweight billet steel flywheel made to use the V12 dual-disc clutch assembly. The whole thing is 7 pounds lighter and the clutch can hold well over 500 ft-lbs. The stock single-disc clutch should never have been used in these cars. It is completely inadequate.

 

Looks like you bought very, very well.