That's true, anything is possible. They are not charging me for the second diagnostic. All things considered, they've been fair to me in several aspects from the first fix, allowing me to get my own parts and charging such a reasonable fee.

Thanks for the recommendations! Always good to have extra contacts besides the dealer, for this.

I will probably ask for a discount on labor. Almost all parts can be sourced from Scuderia and/or AstonMartinBits, saving literally half off their cost.

Mine is a coupe and an automatic. I looked into the job on the Workshop Manual and it's beyond my comfort level. I'm wondering if he plans to drop the whole tank or do the access through the cabin.

Great thought, but we did replace every top and bottom o-ring during the repair, so I wouldn't have these problems! Thanks for helping to throw out some more possibilities though.

 

Hi Calcifer33...
I am sorry to hear of your problems. Personally, I would contact Jon at Steel Wings in Warminster Pa. They are the best in our area for these cars and rebuild Aston Martins.
You can fight all day over bad repairs but until the car is fixed it is useless to you. Then you can fight with the dealer.
Good Luck...there are many on this site that use Steel Wings besides me.
Regards...

 

Agree with talking to Jon Clerk at Steel Wings - in fact just talked to him an hour ago regarding my DB9 Volante. Right now it is there getting annual service and new coils/plugs due to a bad misfire on #12. I wish I had the skills to change the coils and plugs myself, but the wife hides tools from me.

 

UPDATE: Still working with Aston and they've offered some labor discount, mostly out of sympathy I assume. The tech stands by his diagnosis that two of my coils were failing and the spark plugs were fouled due to the rich fuel mixture, so assuming all is accurate there, there was never a misdiagnosis and these contributed to misfires.

Tech has gotten inside the tank via the access port and found a broken fuel vapor tube. He says everything else in there looks to be in great condition. Even though the tube itself isn't super expensive, the tech has told me that this undoubtedly flooded the carbon/charcoal canister which was never supposed to see liquid fuel, and thus why the labor gets so expensive, because that canister has to be replaced. This is beyond my understanding of these vehicles, so does anyone know differently? It appears that canister is the whole reason this fuel tank needs to be dropped for the repair.

I plan to replace the other hoses while we're in there, and probably the fuel filters as well even though they have minimal use on them. I just don't want to pay a bunch for labor down the road if these parts fail, too.

 

Also, it looks like the fuel filters changed in Model Year 2008. Is it advisable to replace using these filters or the ones designed for my vehicle? Scuderia says the 08 parts fit my vehicle. Parts 6G33-9155-AB RHS and 8G43-9155-AA LHS.

 

Charcoal cannisters are NG after seeing liquid fuel as far as I know. Maybe they can be dried out, but that would probably take a long time so that doesn't do you any good as far as getting the codes to stop. You really need to think about replacing the fuel pumps now that the tech is in there. Yours are pretty old. You'd hate to have to go in there again in a year or so...lots of labor dollars repeated for nothing. There are alternative to the AM pump that are a whole lot cheaper.

 

Which ones do forum owners recommend? Can they be replaced from inside the tank while the tank is installed on the vehicle?

 

You’ll have to search the forum for the pumps, or check the AMOC forums also. Can’t help on pump replacement with tank in or out. All I know is that the pumps are susceptible to failure and require lots of labor to replace.

 

Are you still running the aftermarket O2 sensors?

Btw, cost of labor for charcoal canister is high because the entire rear sub frame needs to be removed to drop the fuel tank. Only the faulty hoses can be accessed inside tank through access hole, the charcoal canister is on outside top front area of tank (transmission + rear subframe out)

 

This sounds like hell, I worried about going thru this with my 05' DB9, however I bought it from the dealer who owned it from new and had his techs service it monthly so I got lucky, however I will say something about the diagnosis that seemed really off to me, these motors pull oil into the pcv/air/oil separator system and when he said the lines were dry I knew something was amiss as these lines are never dry.

I think the PCV system should be replaced to start.
What other codes is the ECU throwing ?
Also it's pretty clear and I'm only an ASE-Certfied Tech, you didn't need new coil's as the problem is still present, did he even check the ohm resistance of the coils ?

 

The PCV on V12’s don’t fail often, it’s just a poor ford design(rattle type). Nonetheless, if the one-way valves on cam cover vents(duck valves) are not replaced it’ll also consume oil. So unless your changing with aftermarket Ford parts, AM dealer parts will be around $250 for the pcv hose assembly and another $250x2 one-way valve hoses. For a PCV+duck valve replacement, it’s a solid $750USD +labor. That’s also not replacing a part because it’s proven faulty, it would simply be replaced because of your-there-let’s-do-it-approach. Lots of ways to diagnose and prove a PCV is faulty versus shedding $750 just because..

The coils on these are subject to excessive heat with near zero ventilation inside an enclosed aluminum case. The tech could measure primary winding resistance, but the ecu can also do a check on this. The problem in most coils that don’t flag dtcs and with the secondary windings. The only way I see the tech diagnosing could effectively is by scope on channels with crank speed, injector firing, coil firing. Tech would need to run test at idle and then under load on road to diagnose coils that aren’t proven not proven to flag dtc’s. Knowing these coils are subject to common issues and most likely works on flat rate, no tech would do plugs without coils and chance a comeback unless client wanted to pay diag time just to scope coils that had been in vehicle for years.

 

I am. He found the actual turn evap fuel tube so I'm hoping this is the last of the car's issues and planned to keep them on since he doesn't feel they are causing any issues. He also recommended I change the downstream sensors as well since they're a little dirty, but I'll wait a bit for that.

He said he tested the coil packs partially on the vehicle by grounding the coil outside the cylinder and found the coils were losing voltage before reaching their intended path at the end of the spark plug. He stated they also traced the voltage patterns of the coils using an oscilloscope which picks up details of its performance that are not visible. Being able to measure misfire counts myself with my scanner, my misfire numbers beforehand were comparable to other cars on here before a coil pack change, where the numbers weren't perfect but they weren't causing any P3XX DTCs. The full-on limp mode I experienced several times was likely due to the unmetered fuel entering my intake.

As for other codes, I had CAN codes show up, throttle shutdown codes, emissions stuck rich codes, etc. Here's the list of codes I got at different times, just for measure, but I really think many of these were coming about due to the engine shutdowns:

P2196 - O2 Sensor Signal Biased/Stuck Rich/Bank 1 Sensor 1
P2198 – O2 Sensor Signal Biased/Stuck Rich/Bank 2 Sensor 1
P2105 - Throttle actuator control system - forced engine shutdown
P0606 - Control module processor
P1797 - CAN transmission control module to engine control malfunction
P1656 - CAN link pcm/pcm circuit network
P2106 - Throttle actuator control system - forced limited power
P0705 - DTC-- Transmission Range Sensor Circuit Malfunction
P1000 - DTC-- System check not completed since last memory clear

And on the way for repairs AFTER the coil pack change I saw P0300, P0301, and P0302. Likely due to the fuel entering the intake and causing a high count of misfires.

When asking the tech about the pcv valves again, he said he tested them using a smoke machine as well and found them to show no faults. He was pretty adamanat that he did not feel there was any need to replace them, even while he was already in there. I read in another one of your posts that the PCV valves can be replaced without removing the intakes. Did I understand that correctly? If so, then I don't think there's much for me to worry about right now until they show to be failing (which I wouldn't even know what to look for, honestly).

 

Fyi, a lot of aftermarket O2 sensors will say they are generic. Meaning an upstream sensor is the same as the downstream sensor. I’ve diagnosed many of vehicles that owners dumped hours of labour with indie shops. All to find engine had been fitted with aftermarket O2 sensors. The upstream and downstream sensors have different resistance, especially in the heater circuits. For the lambda control circuit, different resistance will false flag slow response AND lean/rich stuck codes.

I’m not saying not use aftermarket O2 sensors that are ford replacements. I’m just informing, be warned which are being used and if they match the oem spec versus what the parts counter guy reads on the product info.

Yes, the V12 pcv’s can be replaced with intake still on (but it’s a PITA). You’ll need to retain the tube going under bank 2 intake from old pcv assembly(just swap over the rubber hose ends from new pipe to old pipe). Or you buy FOMOCO pcv’s, cut out the rattle type pcv’s and replace hoses angles that were cut to replace

 

Do you mean like these?
And I understand what you mean about the O2 sensors. Thankfully my replacements are OEM "spec" and not the generic ones, but I believe there's likely nothing better than OEM for this. I guess where I saved money on O2 sensors I'm paying for on everything else.

 

Yes, pcv is on top left of pic, rest are just fittings. You'll need rubber hoses to fit botttom of valve. The OEM is glued into hose, if your lucky hose has become unglued and you can retain the hose. Otherwise you'll cutting out the pcv's..

Again..this route is only if changing with aftermarket pcv's like from your link.