Aston Martin Engine Development: 1984-2000. Arthur Wilson L.

too much, after all I was going to be working for Aston Martin.

      I have one regret about that time and that is that in the excitement I didn’t have the grace to properly thank the LBC guys that I had been working with and in particular the manager Chris Johnson for all of their help and patience during my apprenticeship. Self-centred youth, I suppose.

      Starting at Aston Martin Lagonda

      Starting at Aston Martin Lagonda (AML) engine build, Ray Perkins had the first bench, George Wardle had the second and I had the next one. For the first week I was put to work with George to get to know what was expected. He introduced me to the subtleties of building an aluminium engine as opposed to the iron lumps that I was used to. Starting on the same day but at about 11 o’clock was my long-term friend Les Brooker.

      Behind me there were a number of old hands who were building the engines for the DB2/4 Mk III, which was the current production car of the time. They were Fred Woodland, Harry Absolem, Seth Costall and Fred Watters. Eric Pointer made up the subassemblies and prepared the engines for installation into the chassis after the engine test. Sid King balanced crankshafts, etc. Fred Woodland was later to become famous as Mr Duckhams in the engine oil adverts of the time. They were a friendly lot and full of fun. I recall that there was a slightly mischievous attempt at winding up rivalry between Harry Absolem, who had a TR2, and the new boy, me with my Austin Healey. But it was all in good fun.

      One of the highlights of my first year at AML was when all of the drivers for the 1959 Le Mans team visited the engine shop prior to the race.

      All engines were run in and power tested by Bob (whose surname I cannot recall) and Ernie Mod. Every fifth engine was then stripped for inspection after power testing. At that time the cylinder heads were built on a separate line by Bob Clare, Peter Riley and Dick Joyce. There was someone else but I am afraid that I can’t remember his name; he left shortly after I started. The other half of the building was used to assemble the Mk III chassis prior to pushing it across Tickford Street to the coach-building side of the factory for body and trim, etc. In those days, the separation of the company into two parts by Tickford Street was a little more than geographic. The Olympia side of the road was Associated Engineering Union territory. The other side was traditionally the Coach Builders Union side, in line with its Tickford coach building roots.

      Figure 2.1 Old 1959 photo of me (on the right) with Martin Irish and Marina Jones in the car park before the service department was built. Note the building in the background, which became known as the Sunnyside office. It was then home to the factory manager and had a nice orchard to the left. My Austin Healy is in the background.

      (I eventually crashed the Healey on the way to work one morning. I ran into a bus carrying young ladies to the Rodex clothing factory in Bletchley, which is how I met my wife to be, she was on the bus.)

      My first introduction to the ups and downs of the exotic motor business was at Christmas 1960. Suddenly there were cutbacks that resulted in people being made redundant. Sadly this included my brother Stuart, who had started that year on inspection in the engine shop. But I just survived – I would have been next to go if there had been one more redundancy. My friend Les Brooker, who started the same day as me but at 11 o’clock, was made redundant, that’s how close it was. (First in last out was the rule on these unhappy occasions. And last out, first back on the return trip, unless one had blotted one’s copy book.) That was the first of many ups and downs during my time at AML, the closing down at the end of 1974 being the most traumatic for everyone.

      About midway through my first year at AML it was discovered that there was a problem with the connecting rod bolts, which meant that all engines had to be stripped and rebuilt with new bolts. Seth Costal and I were given this task. Soon after we had completed the rebuilds, I developed dermatitis on my hands, possibly due to prolonged exposure to engine oil during this process. This was strange, as I had not had any problems while working on the diesel engines in my previous employment. The outcome of this was that I was put onto building subassemblies for a while, but this also made me available to resolve engine-related problems that occurred during engine tests and road tests. Somewhere during my misspent youth I had developed something of a talent for setting up an engine and its carburettors. This was probably due to involving myself in fiddling with most types of multicarburettor layouts on the various sports or sporting saloons that my friends and in particular my car-mad family had owned. This eventually resulted in a permanent transfer to the road test and rectification department, looking after general engine problem-solving and engine tuning. And then eventually a position in the experimental department of the time and finally to end up in charge of the engine department at Newport Pagnell. So dermatitis is not such a bad thing after all.

      Pip Aires and Dick Bolton were the road testers in the road test and rectification department when I worked there, looking after engine tune and rectification. Bill Jackson had been on road test but had moved over to become a service engineer. Just for interest, there is more than a 95 per cent chance that any reader with a six-cylinder car from DB5 onwards will have had his or her engine tuned by me before it left the factory, nearer to 100 per cent if it was a Vantage. The same would apply to the Bosch-equipped V8 engines and early V8 carburettor cars.

      Setting up the throttle linkage to get the correct progression on the Bosch V8 can be a bit tricky and as I had developed a procedure for doing this, I will very briefly outline the procedure for the benefit of any owners reading this book. Other readers can just skip this part.

      Assuming that all else is as per the instruction book for these cars, you will need a threaded 2BA rod with a ball connector to enable connection to the main throttle lever on the cross shaft and a sliding hook over the rod to be hooked over the bonnet landing rubber at the bottom of the scuttle. A knurled 2BA nut is then required to screw onto the rod to enable fine adjustment of the throttle opening to the various settings.

      The cross shaft has a lever at each end to operate the throttle opening. These levers have a clamp bolt to enable the lever to be set at zero with throttles closed. The throttle levers are connected to the main throttle assembly by double ended, L&R threaded rods with lock nuts.

      Initially I would concentrate on three positions, zero, 4.6 and 50.5 degrees on the metering unit. Zero, 2.5 and 40 degrees throttle respectively. If these positions are correct then all other check positions should fall into place.

      Ensure that all pointers read zero and that throttles are closed on the stops with no free play and also that the metering unit is on its closed stop. Adjust the throttle setting tool via the knurled nut to open the throttle to 4.6 degrees metering unit and 2.5 degrees throttle. If this is not correct, recheck the zero setting and also that all three pointers start to move at the same time. Continue to open the throttle to give 50.5 degrees on the metering unit. The throttle indicator pointer should show that both throttles are 40 degrees open. If this is not so, release the lock nuts and adjust the double-ended (left- and right-hand thread) throttle rods, each side to double the error (i.e., if the reading is 42 degrees then double this to read 44 degrees, or if 38 degrees adjust to 36 degrees, and retighten the lock nuts). Adjust the tool to return the metering unit to zero on its closed stop and release the clamp bolt on the outer throttle levers and reset the throttles to zero on the stops, with no free play.

      Repeat the above until all three readings are correct, after which a full range check should confirm that all is in order.

Metering unit degrees	Throttles degrees (A & B bank)
Zero	Zero
4.6	2.5
8.8	5.0
12.7	7.5
16.3	10.0
23.1	15.0
29.3	20.0
40.5	30.0
50.5	40.0
59.4	50.0
67.4	60.0
74.4	70.0
81.0	80.7

Figure