It is on Pages A-14 & A-15 in the back of the 2014 DB9 Owners Guide I pulled up online at AstonMartin.com. Here's the pdf

EG43-19A321-HA.pdf (astonmartin.com)

 

Wow. I wonder if there’s any real data backing that up? There’s nothing bespoke or special about the airbags and tensioners in an Aston Martin, which surely are sourced from an third-party supplier. and I’ve never heard of any other mfg making such a recommendation/requirement even though at least some of them likely use the same supplier. Strikes me as a nice make-work project for the dealer network, but I’m a cynic.

 

Well, if it is a make-work project, AM must have forgot to tell the dealers because my salesman said they need additional time to research the cost because it hasn't come up before. Maybe no one's read all the way through all 260 pages of the owner's manual before, lol.

 

Considering one air bag has failed at the 12 year mark on my car, maybe there's something to this?

 

That's pre 2000 thinking, when airbags first became the standard in 90's that 10 years was the rule. Nobody every followed it because of cost. Airbags are supposed to be lifetime (yeah funny) of the vehicle by current standard and dating back to pre 2000my cars. Takata on the other hand is a different story.

 

It may be pre-2000 thinking, but as I said, Aston Martin has it identified to be replaced at the 10-year mark in their Owner's Manual for the DB9 as recently as 2014.

 

When discussing airbags, the shop manual for my DB-9 says “No routine maintenance is required and there are no serviceable parts.” when discussing seat belts and tensioners, replacement is only required when an accident was hard enough to trigger the airbags, as the strain might have damaged the belt fabric webbing.

 

I personally know absolutely nothing about this subject, but here is the verbatim language from the 2014 DB9 Owner's Manual:

Page A-14:

Replacement of Airbag Units
Every 10 years from the date of vehicle registration, all airbag units must be replaced. To make sure this is completed correctly and safely, this work should be carried out by your Aston Martin Dealership.

Page A-15:
Replacement of Seat Belt Pre-tensioners
Every 10 years from the date of vehicle registration, all seat belt pre tensioners must be replaced. To make sure this is completed correctly and safely, this work should be carried out by your Aston Martin Dealership.

*******************************************

If the consensus of opinion here is that I really don't need to worry about this, then I won't. However, I think that I can still use it as a negotiation tactic.

 

I'm now pretty confident that the car has been pretty well taken care of, at least for the past 5 years. The car was bought, serviced, sold again as a CPO, and then traded in to the same dealer, and I received all of service records this morning going back to 2019. (The car was originally sold in 2015, but the first "regular" recommended maintenance service wasn't performed until 4 years later when the car still only had 4,600 miles on the clock.) It's been regularly serviced multiple times since then, although brake pads (7mm&6mm), spark plugs & coil pack are original. I've asked for an estimate for what it will cost to have those items done when needed.

As far as non-mechanical items, the headliner was taken out and stretched when the dealership was getting the car ready to sell last fall. The front door struts and the windshield were also replaced. In addition, the tech found some damage to the front bumper and grill, so that was repaired at that time. The only other item of note was that in 2022, the previous owner reported that the driver's side dash trim was lifting, so the dealership had the trim removed, reupholstered, and reinstalled.

 

Are any of the notes you have shared noted on a CAR Fax report? It would be important to be aware of.

 

I believe that only the replacement of the windshield is noted on the Carfax report. As for the dash, it merely states that "interior trim" was checked in 2022, not that it was repaired.

BTW, I finally received the quote to have the airbags replaced: $18,481 in parts and $3,000 labor! That's crazy! My sales guy said the reason it took so long to get the quote is that it's the first time this has come up. He said that he's never heard of anyone routinely replacing the airbags - - - regardless of what the AM Owner's Manual states.

 

“although brake pads (7mm&6mm), spark plugs & coil pack are original. I've asked for an estimate for what it will cost to have those items done when needed.”

Just FYI, the brakes are standard sized Brembo’s that you can get direct from Brembo via its eBay store relatively cheap. Don’t know if the interval ever changed, but on my car the coil pack and plug replacement interval is 30,0/00 miles, so that’s already “needed”. Actual failure tend to manifest as a lumpy idle caused by coil misfire. A 60 degree V-12 is an inherently balanced configuration, so the idle should be turbine smooth. My pre-purchase research suggested that actual failures tend to start around 40k and if you make it to 60k you’re very lucky.

 

Yes, you mentioned that earlier in the thread, and I appreciate it. But the owner's manual for the 2014 DB9 states that it doesn't need to be done until 70k miles. And in researching the matter further, I even found one source that stated that coil packs typically last for the duration of the car's life. When You Should Replace Your Aston Martin's Coil Packs From Best Garage in Atlanta (europeanservicecenter.com)

Is it possible that this was more of a problem for earlier DB9s more so than later models?

Even if that's not the case, I'm not sure how I can ask the dealer to have it done now when the car apparently hasn't exhibited any misfiring issues and the official manual states that nothing needs to be done for at least another 30k+ miles.

 

The coil pack service is specific to the Ford-derived V-12 and likely isn’t an issue for any current Aston motor, which explains the general observation at that dealer’s website. The intake manifold runners are tight and close to the valve covers and coils, and expose them to a lot of heat, which causes premature wear and failure. I don’t know why Aston changed the recommended interval. It’s certainly possible to just wait for an actual failure and then do the service. Aston might just have flipped from the early tail of the life-cycle bell curve to the late tail, reasoning that if there’s a failure before that, an occasional misfire isn’t all that big of a deal. I’m just guessing. My (2-stroke) racing engines all had ignition-based rev limiters and it was pretty common to reach the limiter in top gear and hold it there, misfiring merrily down the straight at 15,000 rpm. Of course, those engines required rebuilding after 6-30 hours of run time. Usually because a piston was fried 😯

 

V12 misfire can be an engine killer when the catalyst comes apart and is ingested into the cylinders.