So I picked up my car after a week of service at Miller Motors AM in Long Island. So far the service manager Pete has been responsive to all my requests:

The fixed:
1. Loud wind sounds at 60+ MPH, which was coming from the passenger side mirror.
2. Fixed rattling in the steering wheel (caused by air bag housing), cabin rattle, and loud rattle in the rear windshield/dash.
3. Replaced passenger side door latch

I'm pretty satisfied with the work since they found a fix for everything in a week. One thing that was annoying is that the tech somehow disabled the auto fold in the mirrors when you lock the door. Apparently its not a setting that I can adjust and so I have to drive it back to Long Island just for them to enable a feature that was already working from the start.

 

This is one thing Aston fixed with the newer cars. On the new cars, auto fold can be selected and deselected by the owner as a menu setting.

 

Glad to see Pete taking care of you. Did they fix radio tuning and that other stuff? Car was delivered w/o fold and I had them enable it after reading about it in the OM. Can you get them to fold by pressing any buttons from inside?

 

- they didnt fix the drivers side mirror, because they said that it didn't see it shake beyond normal.
- I never mentioned the radio thing, since I never got to test it myself

Yes for now, I can manually fold the mirrors by pressing L and R mirror buttons. I will probably go back this month to re-enable the feature. The auto fold is convenient and it gives me a visual signal that the car is locked.

 

I'm pissed off on your behalf. That's the same BS they told me but all you have to do is look at the driver's side vs. passenger side at say 65+, and you see it. It's like a blurry image on that side. Don't take no for an answer and make sure it's on AM's tab as it was reported more than once!

 

I have got this a few times, on V8V's and DB9's, even Land Rovers and Jag's..check the mirrors with your hand from side-to-side, is there enough diffence in free-play..if there the same and only 1 shakes, 9 times out of 10 it's the tires that are either feathered or off balance on that side of the car which results in a body shake, usually when it's the balance of the tires, if the steering doesn't shake it's the rear tires hense it will not be felt in the steering, and your seat deletes the vibrations to you..if the steering shakes it's most porb the front tires..either way in this case balance all 4 by a place that uses the Hunter GSP9700..machine doesn't only solve the off balance but balances dynamic and static to reduce the drivers concern, all Aston dealerships are supposed to use this machine..
For the feathering, this can be felt by you, rub hand on the inside thread of the tire..does it feel feathered/edgy..if it does, alignment is off..do a complete alignment and drive vehicle to worn feathering flat..

 

My driver's mirror also is blurry at some speeds. Dealership said they could find nothing wrong; both mirrors seemed to have the same play according to them.

I'll check the difference in free play myself. If the same, I'll have a look at wheel balance since I do get a slight steering wheel vibe/shake at certain speeds. Maybe that is the problem.

 

My driver's side mirror on my old V8V used to vibrate at speed. Never thought to check the tires.

 

IMO it's very unlikely you could have a unilateral shake that's enough to create a blurry image but not feel it in the wheel or entire chassis. My butt-ometer is VERY sensitive to such things, and while not all cars track & feel like a train on rails, I'm 99% certain in Patrick's case (my old car) the blurryness is due to either the mirror moving within the housing or the housing itself. It won't take much movement to create a blurry image, so I don't know if you can verify with your "free-play" test. Since I observed this many times on a dead-flat highway with a crystal-clear image from the rear & passenger mirrors, and no other vibration of any significance, IMO it's the glass or housing. I seriously doubt AM service took your car to the highway, since I know it is a FAR distance from where they are located...

 

Anything is possible, could very well be the mirror glass, the mirror assembly, the mounting bracket to the door, ...the creature that lives behind the mirror glass..etc ..hehe j/k...Just stating what I know and what I've seen in my job field, I'm not pin-pointing the faulty part in this concern..btw your butt-o-meter sits on 6 inchs of foam..hehe

 

So I took it back to service today to fix the auto fold and they flashed the ECU for the ipod control (media entertainment).

They took off the glass and remounted it back to the housing. We went for a drive together with the tech and its relatively the same amount of vibration as before. I learned that the vibrations are quite common on the AMs and they looked like they were willing to replace it if I pressed on the issue.

I decided for now to rather ask them to do a thorough inspection on the overall condition of the car, which they were happy to do. We put the car on a lift and they found a leak in one of the rear dampers. I am so glad they found that, since it would have been really expensive out of pocket. They're going to replace both sides and I believe the struts are replaced as a whole assembly.

While it was on the lift, I got to visually inspect the suspension of the car. These cars have HUGE control arms, which was a common and expensive problem on my mercedes. AM's seem to have quite solid suspension which is very important in the northeast crappy roads.

The car will be going back to service next week. I'm going to drive around a little more and see how the glass vibrations are since it was remounted.

If any of you are in the NYC metro area including NJ, I highly recommend the service there. The service manager is quite helpful and very honest/straight forward about everything.

 

I've been going up to Greenwich. I haven't tried Long Island for service because its such a pain to get to, although I almost bought the car from them (bought it from Catena here in NJ, which is no more).

 

Patrick, glad to see they are taking care of the big things. I guess some mirror vibration pales in comparison to suspension issues. IMO for a car that is under 4K miles it has had it's fair share of "issues". I hope for your sake they are minimal going forward...

 

With the sunny weather this weekend, I was able to do a drive near the bear mountain area and went on some windy roads to see what this baby can really do. It was so great to really push the car on these roads, especially tearing up all those tight turns and listening to the tires scream! Even though its a GT, this car grabs so well and I'm sure it should be credited to the sports pack.

I carefully observed the mirror issue this weekend and as you said its definitely vibrating enough to be not normal. I just got off the phone with service manager and he said he would order the replacement of the driver mirror.

I also discovered another thing regarding the passenger air bag light which they'll look at once I drop off the car for service.

Most of these repairs have been minor (rattles, sounds, wind), so I'm not too concerned with future service. I believe all the items above were probably present at delivery of the car and so fixing them should hopefully permanently prevent them from happening again. Definitely high cost items such as suspension are concerns, but I believe based on what the techs are saying is that the car was not driven enough which caused the leaks in the dampers. This makes sense because shocks should be regularly used
and most important on many road conditions to get full contraction in the shocks.

While I still have warranty for the rest of the month, I'm trying to drive as much as possible to find any other problems but of course to also enjoy driving and listening to the beautiful sounds of this beast!

Jim - I really appreciate your concerns, but no worries here. I absolutely love this car that all this minor service work is all worth it. I feel like I'm prepping the car for many good years ahead. Besides even driving the car to the service center in long island is a joy!

 

No worries on my end as we both know you got as good a car as was out there. Just hoping it treats you well. As you know, I've had a lot of rides and have a general "gut" instinct about them. My gut on Aston is it may drive one crazy with lots of little things and possibly a big thing. Hope I'm wrong on both accounts, but you are doing the right things and no matter what, have the best-looking car on the planet.