The Author's Dilemma: A Desperate Bid to Replace the Starter Motor

As we embark on this project, I must admit that the source of heat emanating from the old starter motor is unmistakable. It's clear that this unit has seen better days, and the issue at hand is quite evident - it's extremely tight, making it a challenge to even access the bolts. Upon closer inspection, I've identified three bolts that hold the starter in place: one at the bottom, another up near the camera lens, and a third one located all the way up high, which proves to be quite difficult to reach.

To begin, I've removed the lower bolt, taking great care not to damage any surrounding components. However, this has left me with only two bolts to contend with, making the situation even more precarious. The starter motor itself features a bolt inside that's proving to be particularly stubborn. With a wrench in hand and my body weight applied, I'm attempting to loosen this bolt, but it's clear that we're running out of time.

As the minutes tick by, it becomes increasingly apparent that our initial plan is no longer feasible. The exhaust manifold cannot be removed due to the limited space available, making it an insurmountable task at this juncture. In light of this development, I've decided to call a halt to the project for now and restore everything to its original state.

However, before abandoning ship entirely, I'll attempt to assess whether the starter motor is even functional. Perhaps there's been an error on my part, or maybe it's simply not as problematic as initially thought. Only time will tell, but for now, I'll leave you in suspense, wondering what might have transpired if we had managed to successfully replace the starter motor.

As I sit here, pondering our predicament, I'm reminded of a particularly vexing issue with an Audi 2.7 model that I used to work on. The culprit was three bolts that couldn't be seen, only felt - a harrowing experience for any would-be mechanic. While this current conundrum is certainly not as dire, it's still frustrating nonetheless.

I must admit that, had I been better prepared with the necessary tools and expertise, we might have navigated these challenges with greater ease. Alas, sometimes even with the best intentions, things don't work out as planned. For now, it seems that our starter motor replacement bid has come to a halt, but rest assured that this is not the end of our tale - there's still much more to come.

In a bizarre twist, I've been considering getting headers later on as an excuse to tackle this very same exhaust manifold. While it may seem like an unrelated task, having these headers installed might just provide us with the necessary clearance to remove the exhaust manifold and replace the starter motor altogether. Though not immediately apparent, this plan is already taking shape in my mind.

Before wrapping up for the day, I'll take a moment to assess whether our starter motor replacement attempt was indeed fruitful or if we simply played out another losing hand. The verdict will remain undisclosed until next time, when we'll return to this project with renewed energy and perhaps an entirely new approach.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enhow's it going guys my name is de vars and today i fix my broken Aston Martin v8 Vantage so it finally happened guys something actually does not work as intended on my Aston Martin v8 Vantage this car has been quite reliable for me for quite some time but yeah it started developing issues and I mean it's been very very reliable as far as mechanicals and and other sort of routine maintenance but this kind of caught me by surprise so if I Drive this car really really hard like I'm apt to do on the weekends when there's nobody around this develops a bit of a fault when you try to start it after the engines heat it up it doesn't want to start so it doesn't start when it's hot like when it's really hot kind of when the engine is heat soaked and you need to kind of wait 15 minutes or so until it cools off and then you can start it so the problem is the actual starter and the starter in this engine has all the mechanical components that it's like deep within the engine bay it's on the on the underside of the engine which makes sense that it would go out because well this car has been to the Bonneville Salt Flats and who knows you know what kind of corrosion got in there and you know it seems like the starter motor is actually seizing when it gets really hot so what we're going to do today is going to change that out and I honestly have no idea how to do this however before we start I want to give a little bit of attention to this this is the actual starter now you'll notice that there is no Aston Martin badging anywhere that's because Aston Martin is a certainly this car it's a part tube in car so that means that they used a lot of parts from different manufacturers and different manufacturers tend to use parts from different manufacturers so there's a lot of parts availability if you know how to cross shop so with an aston martin a rule of thumb is never ever look for the aston martin part number you should always look for the this there's a different part number on the actual unit or from the from the supplier so this is a starter made by denzel Denso is the original manufacturer of these starters and they supply them to Aston Martin they supply them to Jaguar and Land Rover I believe if you look at the starter on the car now the original one it says Land Rover on it now if you want it to go to the Aston Martin dealer and order one it would be like $330 this was like 250 and brand new so this is what it looks like and I will have links to this in case one of you has an app the more that needs a starter and doesn't want to pay basically 100 or more for the same part so this starter is going to replace our broken starter but before we even get the car in the air what we need to do is disconnect the batteries now the battery in this car is not in the trunk and it's not in the engine bay it's actually behind the passenger seat so I'm going to show you how to get that out well we're not going to get the battery out we're just going to disconnect it because there is a live wire live 12-volt wire it's high voltage so it's not high voltage but it's high amperage and it's going directly to the starter so you want to make sure that the battery isn't giving any power to any components in the car so the battery is actually back here I moved the seat up and the batteries back here all I have to do is pull this this panel slips up just put that over to the side and there's this nice little foam covering right here the battery resides down here it's actually really sort of center-weighted and it's pretty nice actually it's a small battery so what you do is you take a 13 take a 13 millimeter and you just take off the negative terminal and then I think you just slide this off hopefully shouldn't be too big of a problem there we go alright so that's where it's going to lie until we're done with a starter replacement alright now that we got the car up in the air I have done some preliminary work just for the exhaust system so I've taken out the catalytic converters and the B pipe or the x pipe I'm not sure we call it in this car I've also taken out the heat shroud that goes right under this this actually isn't the transmission this is the what's called a torque tube so the transmission is in the back of the clutch all that assembly is right here and there's a drive shaft that just goes all the way down which is pretty cool when the transmission is back there but that's not what's important right now because we are looking at the starter and right behind this exhaust manifold you can see how close it gets the source of heat this is the start of the old starter and it has seen better days the issue is that it's very very tight so if you take a look up here I've actually removed some of the some of the bolts there are three bolts one if I can get to get the camera on there so there's one down here right there with my fingers one up there and then another one all the way up there and those are a little bit hard to get to but I got those out only the bottom one is connected to the starter the starter has a bolt inside like I have to put my finger inside and it's like in here and I can't see it I can only sort of feel it and there's a very very good chance that I can't get any tools in there so if any of you ever worked on like an Audi with a 2.70 and had to replace the starter this is pretty much the same thing I mean this is not going to be fun but what I'm going to try to do is I'm going to get a just a regular open-ended wrench on there and I'm going to put all my body weight and see if I can maybe you know try and get this thing loose because currently the only thing holding that starter on is that one bolt and even when I get that bolt off I don't really know how I'm going to get this starter out because like an inch behind the starter is a motor mount and there's not really a lot of places you know this can just can slide out from I'm definitely going to have to wedge it out of here but for now I'm going to try to get that one bolt off and I have no idea how long we're going to take so enjoy some nice music the okay so might be a little bit of a change of plans because this thing I mean it's you can see it's loose and it it wants to come out but they're physically isn't enough space on any side so I think what what I have to do is take off this exhaust manifold and to be honest that it's not going to happen right now because it's just it's too much work and I honestly don't think I have the tools or you need like a lot of you just a few swivels I think on a big extension and I don't have any fool with me and if the weekend and the stores are just about to close so yeah this is a bummer this is really really not good what I'm going to do now is I'm just going to call this a call of the day and put everything back together again and hopefully it works because it literally I'm not just giving up for the sake of giving up or I don't have enough time it's just this there's no space I can't there's not a lot of light to see here but there is no space to take out this exhaust manifold and I was thinking about if I remove this engine mount and move this up the only problem is that this torque tube is connected directly to a transmission and it's not like you have a drive shaft with like a split yoke or something and it can have some articulation if I move this engine up independently of the subframe I'm really running the risk of cracking this aluminum torque tube and I don't want to do that because that is a whole new nightmare that I don't want to take part in so what I'm going to do is I'm just going to put this starter back so I try to actually take it apart like that take out the starter motor but I can't get in there to get the second bolt I already got one bolt out and I think I can sort of you know take it out in pieces but this is a nightmare this is really but this is actually worse than the Audi 2.70 that I used to have and that had three bolts that I couldn't even see I just I just felt so this had a bolt that I took out and I thought that was going to be the problem and that ended up being a little bit of annoyance but this is the real problem I can't get this out I'm just going to put everything back lick my wounds and live to fight another day unfortunately guys sometimes that happens when you're working on cars sometimes things just don't work out I'm not prepared to take off that passenger side exhaust manifold and it will give me an excuse to get headers later on but I'm not at that point yet before I sign off I am going to see if the starter even works you know maybe maybe I screwed something up who knows let's see if it works these like it still working but I'm going to give you a little bit of a hint as to what the next video is going to be stay tuned because that'show's it going guys my name is de vars and today i fix my broken Aston Martin v8 Vantage so it finally happened guys something actually does not work as intended on my Aston Martin v8 Vantage this car has been quite reliable for me for quite some time but yeah it started developing issues and I mean it's been very very reliable as far as mechanicals and and other sort of routine maintenance but this kind of caught me by surprise so if I Drive this car really really hard like I'm apt to do on the weekends when there's nobody around this develops a bit of a fault when you try to start it after the engines heat it up it doesn't want to start so it doesn't start when it's hot like when it's really hot kind of when the engine is heat soaked and you need to kind of wait 15 minutes or so until it cools off and then you can start it so the problem is the actual starter and the starter in this engine has all the mechanical components that it's like deep within the engine bay it's on the on the underside of the engine which makes sense that it would go out because well this car has been to the Bonneville Salt Flats and who knows you know what kind of corrosion got in there and you know it seems like the starter motor is actually seizing when it gets really hot so what we're going to do today is going to change that out and I honestly have no idea how to do this however before we start I want to give a little bit of attention to this this is the actual starter now you'll notice that there is no Aston Martin badging anywhere that's because Aston Martin is a certainly this car it's a part tube in car so that means that they used a lot of parts from different manufacturers and different manufacturers tend to use parts from different manufacturers so there's a lot of parts availability if you know how to cross shop so with an aston martin a rule of thumb is never ever look for the aston martin part number you should always look for the this there's a different part number on the actual unit or from the from the supplier so this is a starter made by denzel Denso is the original manufacturer of these starters and they supply them to Aston Martin they supply them to Jaguar and Land Rover I believe if you look at the starter on the car now the original one it says Land Rover on it now if you want it to go to the Aston Martin dealer and order one it would be like $330 this was like 250 and brand new so this is what it looks like and I will have links to this in case one of you has an app the more that needs a starter and doesn't want to pay basically 100 or more for the same part so this starter is going to replace our broken starter but before we even get the car in the air what we need to do is disconnect the batteries now the battery in this car is not in the trunk and it's not in the engine bay it's actually behind the passenger seat so I'm going to show you how to get that out well we're not going to get the battery out we're just going to disconnect it because there is a live wire live 12-volt wire it's high voltage so it's not high voltage but it's high amperage and it's going directly to the starter so you want to make sure that the battery isn't giving any power to any components in the car so the battery is actually back here I moved the seat up and the batteries back here all I have to do is pull this this panel slips up just put that over to the side and there's this nice little foam covering right here the battery resides down here it's actually really sort of center-weighted and it's pretty nice actually it's a small battery so what you do is you take a 13 take a 13 millimeter and you just take off the negative terminal and then I think you just slide this off hopefully shouldn't be too big of a problem there we go alright so that's where it's going to lie until we're done with a starter replacement alright now that we got the car up in the air I have done some preliminary work just for the exhaust system so I've taken out the catalytic converters and the B pipe or the x pipe I'm not sure we call it in this car I've also taken out the heat shroud that goes right under this this actually isn't the transmission this is the what's called a torque tube so the transmission is in the back of the clutch all that assembly is right here and there's a drive shaft that just goes all the way down which is pretty cool when the transmission is back there but that's not what's important right now because we are looking at the starter and right behind this exhaust manifold you can see how close it gets the source of heat this is the start of the old starter and it has seen better days the issue is that it's very very tight so if you take a look up here I've actually removed some of the some of the bolts there are three bolts one if I can get to get the camera on there so there's one down here right there with my fingers one up there and then another one all the way up there and those are a little bit hard to get to but I got those out only the bottom one is connected to the starter the starter has a bolt inside like I have to put my finger inside and it's like in here and I can't see it I can only sort of feel it and there's a very very good chance that I can't get any tools in there so if any of you ever worked on like an Audi with a 2.70 and had to replace the starter this is pretty much the same thing I mean this is not going to be fun but what I'm going to try to do is I'm going to get a just a regular open-ended wrench on there and I'm going to put all my body weight and see if I can maybe you know try and get this thing loose because currently the only thing holding that starter on is that one bolt and even when I get that bolt off I don't really know how I'm going to get this starter out because like an inch behind the starter is a motor mount and there's not really a lot of places you know this can just can slide out from I'm definitely going to have to wedge it out of here but for now I'm going to try to get that one bolt off and I have no idea how long we're going to take so enjoy some nice music the okay so might be a little bit of a change of plans because this thing I mean it's you can see it's loose and it it wants to come out but they're physically isn't enough space on any side so I think what what I have to do is take off this exhaust manifold and to be honest that it's not going to happen right now because it's just it's too much work and I honestly don't think I have the tools or you need like a lot of you just a few swivels I think on a big extension and I don't have any fool with me and if the weekend and the stores are just about to close so yeah this is a bummer this is really really not good what I'm going to do now is I'm just going to call this a call of the day and put everything back together again and hopefully it works because it literally I'm not just giving up for the sake of giving up or I don't have enough time it's just this there's no space I can't there's not a lot of light to see here but there is no space to take out this exhaust manifold and I was thinking about if I remove this engine mount and move this up the only problem is that this torque tube is connected directly to a transmission and it's not like you have a drive shaft with like a split yoke or something and it can have some articulation if I move this engine up independently of the subframe I'm really running the risk of cracking this aluminum torque tube and I don't want to do that because that is a whole new nightmare that I don't want to take part in so what I'm going to do is I'm just going to put this starter back so I try to actually take it apart like that take out the starter motor but I can't get in there to get the second bolt I already got one bolt out and I think I can sort of you know take it out in pieces but this is a nightmare this is really but this is actually worse than the Audi 2.70 that I used to have and that had three bolts that I couldn't even see I just I just felt so this had a bolt that I took out and I thought that was going to be the problem and that ended up being a little bit of annoyance but this is the real problem I can't get this out I'm just going to put everything back lick my wounds and live to fight another day unfortunately guys sometimes that happens when you're working on cars sometimes things just don't work out I'm not prepared to take off that passenger side exhaust manifold and it will give me an excuse to get headers later on but I'm not at that point yet before I sign off I am going to see if the starter even works you know maybe maybe I screwed something up who knows let's see if it works these like it still working but I'm going to give you a little bit of a hint as to what the next video is going to be stay tuned because that's\n"