Rebuilding an Abandoned Aston Martin Vantage

This is an abandoned 2008 Aston Martin Vantage. But not just any Aston, this Aston you might recognize. And that's because this Aston was rebuilt by our friend Chris over at BS4Build. He built this car on YouTube about eight years ago and since then it's seen better days. It's been left outside for dead. It's rough and it's filthy. It's even got moss growing on it. Ew. But it still has a ton of potential. This naturally aspirated 4.3 liter V8 makes over 380 horsepower. No turbos, no gimmicks. Just sound, balance, and feel. This V8 produces one of the best exhaust noises of its era, especially when you let it breathe. This car is also a six-speed manual, which is awesome. This car is getting a much-needed suspension upgrade. Some much-needed maintenance. A fresh set of new wheels and tires. Not to mention we're doing a full complete new paint job on this Aston Martin that you're definitely not going to want to miss because this thing is going to be one of one. And a new aero kit to sharpen the looks and completely change how this thing drives. So buckle up because this Aston Martin is about to get transformed. Now to get this build kicked off, we're going to get this thing outside and clean it as best as we can. Get the dirt off. Get the moss off. Get everything off. But first, let's see if it starts. Got it! It doesn't start. Let's get this thing fired up. So I'm going to start right here. Get all this crap out, and then we'll work on the engine bay. Because I know this stuff is probably going to fly outside of the car, so we'll clean the outside last. Ready? So the moss is blasting off actually really nicely. Look at this. Before and after. Hopefully the rest of this will come off as nicely. I feel like I'm doing yard work and car work at the same time. Is it coming off? Oh my god, it is! Oh my god, that's so good. That's got to be satisfying too. The pressure washer worked amazing. Got most of it off. Now we're going to hit it with some suds. We have wires in here. We're going to love this thing. The Aston is cleaned up, dried off. It looks way better. The car is still not great, but this thing turned out amazing compared to what it was. We blew off all of the moss. All of it is gone. It's actually one color. It looks fantastic. So now let's get this thing inside so we can actually start working on it. The first modification we're going to be doing to the Aston now that it's clean is a set of Nitron coilovers. We've got Guy here who is the owner of Nitron. Tell me a little bit about your suspension here. Okay, so this kit here that we've got is we call it an R1 kit. And the R1 kit really is one grade up from what we call road type kits. This is really a performance-based kit. And the main difference is we've got a bearing here and a bearing at the top. We're not using any of the rubber parts that come in the car as standard. And so we're getting this direct action. So anything that you get from the road is transferred up through the shock, through the bearings, directly into the chassis. You're getting that damping effect immediately. There's no compliance in any rubber. So maybe not the most friendly kit for the road, but certainly it's got this direct action that really makes it a joy to drive. It's very direct. So you're taking all the softness out of the factory suspension and you also have no rubber here to wear down. That's absolutely right. See, here we can see these are bearing mounted. Pretty stiff at this stage, but this is designed to effectively comply with the car's movements in camber. So we call that mechanism our GT3 conversion. And the GT3 conversion comes from GT3 race cars, where they would take the pin top going through the rubber type mount, machine some top plates that have some tangs that came down. So you'd have mounts like this above and below it. And then you can run a racing coilover. So that was the GT3 conversion. That's the origin. So we've got a guy here helping us for the day. He's worked on Astons. I never have. So we're going to be using his expertise and advice to get his coilovers in the car. So let's get started. So this car has an aluminum chassis. The front's kind of fairly normal. It's like a double arm set up. But look, the rear is pretty weird. So it looks to me like this aluminum plate bolts to the car and that's what the shock bolts to. So kind of a trick setup. So I'm kind of curious to get this off and see what it actually looks like. I think we're going to start at the front because it's a little bit easier and it'll be quicker to do. And then we'll get on the back. Yeah, we'll take these off. That will access the top of the shocks underneath here. And then we'll get to work. Okay, so the strut bar's off. Now we're going to take the top hats off one per side and then we can start working in the wheel well. So there's a ride height sensor on this side of the car. I'm going to take off so we don't damage it because I don't want to know how much that is to replace. So the way they put the bolt in, I ran it all the way back and it's hitting the inner tie rod or the outer tie rod. So now we got to pop the tie rods off to be able to get those shock bolts out because it won't lift up. Yeah, here we go. Look at that. Too easy. We got it, we're dialed. I wouldn't say too easy. Now let's replicate that on the other side and then we'll get the new stuff in. Another one. All right, there we go. Time to get the new nitrons in. You ready? I'm ready. I'm ready, absolutely. All right, it's installed. Let's get it tight. Driver's side is done. Let's move on to the passenger front. Okay, second one. Fronts are completely done. Buttoned up back together. Now we're going to move on to the rears. Let's do it. Apparently these are the tricky ones. So why are these the trickier ones? Got to take all this arch liner out. Okay. There's no access from inside the car. Once the arch liner is out, you'll see the access to the top of the shocks is under here and it's accessed through a metallic box and the mounts are in the wheel arch. So there's the nuts and bolts in the wheel arch. So is that that big plate back here? That's what that bolts to? The top of that, yes. Interesting. All right, start taking the wheel liners out. So now we're under here. This is where the action happens. We've got to take these off and this whole cradle comes out with the shock and then we can swap it out on the bench and then put it back in. We got the four top plate bolts off on the other side. We're going to do this side real quick. So when we start prying on things, we're not fighting the sway bar. All right, so now we're going to take the bottom bolt out and try and wrangle the shocks out. So with guys' help, we got the parking brake off of here. We got this control arm loose. So now I think that's enough for us to be able to sneak this out. So we're going to try. Ricky, tag in Bobby. What are we doing? Getting the strut out. Strut out, strut out, strut out, strut out. What are we doing here? I'm used to doing shenanigans here. It's easy. What are we doing here? Look at this. So this is how the shock mounts. So this whole plate assembly bumps to the chassis. Oh, that's sick. That's actually pretty smart. It makes it easier for us to do. I wouldn't say that, but it definitely. I mean, it was easy for me. All right, Ricky, I'm tagging you in. You're helping me pull the other side out. I'm freaking hanging on this thing, dude. Look in here. You're good, you're good. Here we go. Easy, come on. All right, let's get the old shocks on the table. Get the nitron swapped in. Okay, so here we can see the architecture of these shocks here. It looks very different to these shocks here. However, when we turn this around, we can now see they start to look the same. We'll put these studs in here. Put them at the top. Fit the shocks. Job done. Rears are ready. We got our top hats on. Let's get it back in the car. Nitron suspension is done. Front and rear on the Aston Martin. What do we got right here? So these are the setting cards. That gives us all the information on the shocks as they're fitted. We check them. Settings are good. So the car is good to go from a shock point of view. Perfect. So I cannot wait to drive this thing on the suspension once we get it completely done. Thank you so much, guy, for coming down, helping us out, getting these things in the car. I'm really excited. We have a ton of work still to do on the Aston Martin. So let's keep going. Have you ever noticed the hardest part of a build isn't actually building the car? It's not cleaning the thing because it's been sitting. It's not installing Nitron suspension. It's just finding the car. The right spec, the right mileage, at the right price. That is where autotempest.com comes in. Instead of jumping between a ton of different websites, a million tabs open, and trying to keep track of everything, Autotempest pulls listings from all over the web into one place. Dealers, auctions, private sellers, all searchable, all side by side so you can actually compare cars without wasting hours. And now they've got a new price trend feature, and this is huge because you can see how cars are priced compared to the market. Is it a deal? Is it overpriced? Is it right where it should be? No more guessing, no overpaying, just smarter buying. So whether you're looking for something like this Aston Martin Vantage, a drift build, or a track car, or your next daily project car, you can filter by price, mileage, distance, transmission even, whatever matters to you. Find the right car at the right price sooner. Stop searching everywhere and start building sooner. So head over to autotempest.com, click the link in the description down below, or scan the QR code on screen to start searching for your next project car. It is my time to step into the Aston project, and one of the main things I want to do is clean this headlight before we start putting all the body panels on. These headlights look pretty freaking bad, and I want to try to do my best to clean them up because they're very expensive, that's one. Number two, I'm going to be using a whole lot of MacGyver's products. These are the top three products that I use for cleaning headlights and a few pads, a polisher, a sander, and a rag. So let's get to work. You guys see this right here? We need to get rid of that. This area needs to match the upper area. All this needs to blend in. All right, I sanded the headlight down all the way with a 2000 grit sandpaper, and now we are going to use the MacGyver's compound and a buffer to see the results. Not bad, MacGyver's not bad. Hey bro, way better than before. Oh, you can feel that. Now do the same thing to the other headlight. Oh, I don't hear. Nothing, nothing. That's sick, that's so sick. Up next, some ProSpeed polish from Aguiar's and the same buffer. Ricky finished up with the headlights. They look amazing, and now it's time to start getting our kit fitted. So I'm going to start with our skirt. We're going to go back here, and we're going to pop this guy on. I'm going to get the rear bumper on, and then we're going to hold the over fender up to kind of see where everything matches. This kit covers a lot of this car, so I'm not really worried about being super precise with the cut line. And the inner fender of this is actually really nice. This is going to be a super easy car to wide-body. So I'm going to get everything up. We'll mask this off, tape where our over fender is so we know where our limits are, and then start figuring out our cut. So now we can hold the fender up and kind of see what the kit looks like and where it sits. So as you can tell, it covers literally everything of the factory fender arch. So we can literally cut this up as high up as I want to. So what we're going to do now is put tape and some masking over here and start figuring out where our cut line is going to be. That's really cool. It's going to be sick, huh? Yeah, it's going to be so cool. I like that it carries it on the rear bumper. From here, it looks insane. Yeah. Now this is a freaking rowdy kit. Yeah, it's cool. Here it is. This is going to be the highest we want to go before we start separating into the actual fender liner, but that's kind of like a straight at the top. So you don't really want to go any higher than that. Ricky drew it out. Now we're going to cut it. Let's cut an Aston Martin. So it's perfectly together the whole way. That is so sick. And that makes it so easy because we can just clean this edge up, run some seam seal in here, and we're done. Super easy. Passenger side is next. Let's do it. Now that it's cut, we're going to come in here with a sanding disc, clean this thing up, make it nice and smooth. Then we'll seam seal it and be done. So the rear end is completely done. We're going to let the seam seal cure and dry. So now we're going to move on to the front end. So we're sending this car to Torrey Pines Collision Center where they're going to do all the body work and paint it. So I'm actually not going to mount the over fender because I don't want to make holes in the fiberglass, risk cracking it. I'm going to let them handle it the way they want to. So for now, we're going to get the rest of the body kit on, starting with the front fenders. That's pretty much perfect. No, it looks great. Yeah, it does. Oh, it's going to look so good. That went on so much easier than the factory fender came off. That's crazy. So what we did on the last one is they actually use these little adjusting shims right here. You just thread these guys up and down. Now there were some shims, so I had Ricky whip up some more and we're just going to get this thing dialed in. We got the other side really good. So let's get it done. Pretty good. Looks pretty good. Front bumper is on and we get our beautiful Aston Martin signature grille back. Now we do have a front diffuser that's going on underneath this. I'm not going to put it on right now because all that stuff is going to have to come back out and there's only one little strip like right here that has to be body color. So we're going to send that separate, but we are going to have a big carbon lip around the front of this thing, which looks awesome. And it's going to be an undertow that goes all the way back. So it looks freaking rad. So now that this is back together, we're going to move to the side skirts. Rear end of the Aston Martin is back together. It looks really good. Now Ricky's cleaning the dust shields for the brakes. I'm going to actually repaint the rotors. So we had these resurfaced. They weren't bad. They were just a little bit rusty. So now I'm going to clean the top coating off, shoot these black, and let's get them back on the car. All right. Our brake rotors look brand new and Ricky got our wheel wells cleaned up, looking fresh. So now we're going to get the brakes back together and re-lube. This is it. The body kit is complete as much as it can be. The rest of it will be installed by Torrey Pines Collision Center. So let's get it on the trailer and take it back. All right. That's it. We'll be back in a few days, a few days, a few weeks. Weeks. Slow guy. We'll be back in a few weeks and we'll see what it looks like. The Aston Martin is finished. We're here at Torrey Pines Collision Center to pick the car up. Let's go check it out. I cannot wait to see this thing, bro. Oh my God. Yes. I love it. I don't even know what to say, honestly. It looks so freaking good. The color is so deep. It stands out so much. Dude, the flake in it. Oh my God. Damn. It looks so sick. This thing on the streets is going to be insane, especially on some KFs lowered. I think we nailed it, dude. Look at it. It looks insane. We're going to get this thing loaded up, head back to the shop and surprise the boys. All right. We're pulling up. See what the boys think. Oh, sorry. We're rolling right now. Dude, unfortunately. Oh, what? What happened now? Another prank? There's nothing in there. Yeah, right. You didn't move it? No, I swear to God. I hope this is not a prank. You guys had no faith when I bought this project and now look at it. That's sick, bro. That's freaking cool, man. Yo, look at that thing. Damn. That's freaking nice. Wow. So what, this is papaya orange? It's McLaren orange, bro. McLaren orange. I don't remember exactly the color. That's crazy. This might be one of the coolest colors we've done in a very long time. Torrey Pines Collision, you guys killed it. Wow. That's crazy. You guys remember what this thing looked like before? Remember the hail? This thing had moss all over it. You couldn't even see it. The moss was so crazy. Now it looks insane. It looks so good. The color pops so well. It fits with the body kit. It fits with the look of the car. Now we just need to make it fit with the stance of the car. Aston Martin is back from paint. The car looks amazing. And now it's time to get this thing dialed in with the stance. We're going to be putting on our new set of wheels and tires. And of course, we brought the heat. Work Wheels VSKFs. These are three-piece custom wheels. They're insane. We got a 19 by 10 with a 20 offset for the front. 19 by 11 with a 21 offset on the rear. We got Falcon RT 660s. We got the meats on here. The rears are 305. The fronts are 275. I'm so excited. You hardly ever see a really sick proper JDM wheel on something like an Aston Martin. People don't really do that. So we're going to get this thing on the ground, slammed on these wheels, get the fitment dialed on the Nitron coilovers. Let's get to it. Watch. All right, let's get it on the ground and see what it looks like. The car looks sick, though, on the wheels. This thing, when we get the stance dialed in, is going to be perfect. We definitely, definitely need to go over. That is not it. But we're going to slam it. Let's do it. Ride height is dialed on the Aston. But before we take this thing out and drive it, we got one more piece to install. That is the front Aston badge. You ready? The white and green. Oh, that's far. Oh, sick. I like the logo with the wings. All right, now it's time to get this thing outside. You ready, Ricky? Yeah. I'm excited for this one. Yeah, man. If you know, you know. You don't look like Paul Walker, my boy. Yes, I do. Ready? You ready? Money. Look at the back. The back is dialed, dude. Oh, that's literally perfect. Offset, fitment, setup. Dude, hot take. Right there. The orange was the color for this. Oh my god. All right, I changed my mind. It's so sick. It looks sick. It's so sick, bro. Wait, we need to check lock to lock. Go look at it. No, I did it rough. I mean, you were good. Go forward. Go, go, go. All the way. Turn. It gets close there. It gets close, but it's clear. All right, pull it outside. Oh my god. It's so good. The orange, the height, the wheels. Dude, I think we nailed it on this car. Like, genuinely. Proper. Proper kit. Proper lip. Carbon. The wheels. I don't know why you guys are tripping about the wheels. The wheels are insane. I think it makes the car. Like, genuinely. It looks okay with the wheels. What do you mean? Look at it. From back here. Look at that. That's insane. That's so sick. What do you mean? It does look so good. That's the perfect wheel for this car, dude. Eric, you are not ready. I'm excited to see this thing. This is it, dude. See you guys later. Diffuser with the badges on, too. So this wasn't my first pick for the color. I actually had another color in mind. I'm not going to spoil it. But I think this is the right color for this car. Dang. The wheels are, they're kind of growing on me. I actually, I do really like them. And they fit perfect. But now that he's on there, it does look good. They do look good on the car. So we do have some things we do need to finish, though. We need to change the caliper color. We do have a carbon wing for it. And we're kind of on the fence, I think, about. I haven't seen it. Yeah. So what I was thinking, because an opportunity presented itself. If this video hits 20,000 likes, I say we do a part two. Transform the interior. Maybe add some power mods. Maybe a different exhaust. And maybe we'll bring this thing up to Monterey Car Week this year. I think that would be pretty sick. This is like the ultimate street car. That is going to be it for today's episode. The Aston turned out amazing. The color, the body kit, the stance, the fitment, the wheels, the tires. I love this thing. I want to keep going with the project. You guys know we have a ton of stuff to do on the car still. We didn't get to any of the maintenance items. We didn't get to touch the interior. We just ran out of time for today. But you guys are going to have to get us to 20,000 likes to see a phase two of this car. There's a lot more we can still do to this car. But I think the foundation is there. The car looks amazing. This thing was absolutely clapped when we got it in. And the fact that it looks this good is absolutely mental. I cannot wait to drive this thing. And I hope we get to take it up to Monterey Car Week. That is going to be it for today's episode. Thank you guys always so much for watching. Don't forget to subscribe, like this video, comment down below. And if we get to 20k, we're going to tune this thing back up. I'll see you guys later.