4 years ago, I bought a dream car...
...Well, not my absolute DREAM car. That would have been a FD Mazda RX7... ...Or a Lotus Esprit Turbo S4... ...or maybe an early '90s BMW 850i manual... ...or even a late '60s Triumph GT6?
...Or if I was getting REALLY dreamy, maybe a late '80s Aston Martin V8 Vantage, or an early '90s Aston Martin Virage. And as long as we are talking about big dollar cars, what about any number of Ferraris, from the crazy expensive ($2 MM?) mid-'80s GTO, to a comparatively bargain priced 348i?
OK, so there are many contenders for my dream car, most of them from the late '80s or early '90s, when I was in my prime "dreaming" years.
But nonetheless, the car I bought qualified as A dream car, even if it wasn't THE dream car. An exquisitely beautiful shape, pulled like taffy to lengthen and lower it, and then pulled some more for good measure.
A V12 engine, making more horsepower than ANY of the above mentioned dream cars.
Hand-built, by a manufacturer with instant "exotic" car credentials.
And best of all, arguably the MOST required criteria for any of my "dream" cars, a super-rare 6 speed manual transmission.
A 2005 Aston Martin DB9 coupe. Painted in a delicate shade of light green (I can't remember the formal name of the color right now), reminiscent of the Aston Martin Racing Green from their 1950s and 1960s LeMans race cars.
And a price tag for a 14 year old used example that, while not low, was much lower than many other comparable cars - including most of the above dream cars.
I was delighted with my purchase, but worried about the size of the repair bills that Aston Martin V12 exotic ownership would bring to me. I tried to force down the thought of $10,000 and $20,000 repair bills for minor issues, and told myself that I, with my very-basic mechanic skills, would attempt the repairs myself.
And so far, I've been successful! The car has been mostly reliable, and although I've had to fix a number of minor items, I have yet to pay anyone to work on the car. I've also been fortunate with the price of parts, since many of the mundane items in the car were taken from other less prestigious manufacturers (Ford, Volvo, Toyota, etc.), and so I've been able to source mostly inexpensive parts.
But all of that good fortune seemed to evaporate last week when the car just wouldn't start.
A basic tenet of cool-car-ownership is that a cool car is only cool when it actually runs and drives. A broken-down car is useless, let alone exceedingly frustrating. Even a crazy cool car like a 1957 Mercedes 300sl gullwing (or a V12 Aston with a manual gearbox) will lose its appeal quickly if it can't be driven. So a non-running car is an issue. And the thought of having it towed to an expensive foreign/exotic car mechanic is not a pleasant prospect.
I had taken it out to do some shopping, and I noticed as I left the first store that the starter button (twist the key, push in the clutch, press the start button, yeah, it's a bit weird but its an Aston!) was suddenly finicky. The car didn't immediately start, instead I had to push the button several times before the starter engaged and the car roared to life. Leaving the second store the same thing happened. But since the car ultimately started both times, I immediately forgot about it. Until the next day, when I went to start the car in the garage, and NOTHING happened. Like, nothing. Not even a feeble attempt to turn over the engine. And this time, it didn't "ultimately start". The car was fully dead, but at least safe in my garage.
I immediately came up with some potential scenarios, including the following 3 which I was able to quickly rule out:
1. Something was wrong with my key (was there some sort of electronic sensor in my key that might have died?). Easy test - I grabbed my other set of keys and tried starting it again, but again, nothing. Not an issue with the key.
2. The battery was dead. OK - this is of course the obvious issue - but the reason I listed it 2nd rather than 1st was that all my electronics in the car were working. Radio, lights, dashboard lights, etc. If there was enough power to power all that stuff, then the starter should have at least made an attempt to crank the engine. I've owned the Aston long enough to have dealt with a dead (or somewhat dead) battery before, and I knew the sound that it would make when it had some power, just not enough to fully start the car. But this time, when I turned the key to the on position, the dashboard all lit up, but then when I pressed the start button, there was nothing. To fully rule out this issue, I charged up the battery overnight, but nothing changed. It wasn't a dead battery issue.
3. BDS (Battery Disconnect Switch). This again is a semi-obvious culprit - (I say "Semi' since it is only obvious if you KNOW about the BDS, which I only accidently learned about several years ago). Here's the deal with BDS. There is a mysterious button in the trunk (boot) of the car marked as "BDS", which you can push in order to disconnect most electrical items in the car and keep the battery from dis-charging during an extended absence. This sounds intelligent, but it ISN'T. Because for some incredibly stupid reason, the BDS switch in the trunk can only be used to ENGAGE the BDS, not to DISENGAGE the BDS. In order to disengage the BDS, you have to worm your way into the back of the cabin and lift up the passenger rear seat cushion (which is NOT obvious that it is made to lift up - and requires quite a determined tug to do so) and find the re-engagement switch for the BDS. To make matters even more illogical, the BDS switch turns off the ability to open the glove box, which is likely where your owner's manual is that TELLS you about the BDS. So if you accidently engage the BDS, your car will be fully dead, and you won't be able to access the manual to learn about it. Yes, I've been in that predicament, about 2 years ago. Thank goodness for the internet! ...But, fast forward to this particular issue, and although I considered whether I MIGHT have inadvertantly engaged the BDS, I also noticed that the glove box WAS able to be opened, and that the stereo WAS working, and thus, I ruled out BDS as the culprit.
With the most obvious issues ruled out, I turned to the internet, and came up with my next 3 likely culprits:
4. More major mechanical issue - like a bad starter, or perhaps a flywheel with a broken gear (it happened once to my Mom about 30 years ago on her Plymouth Voyager). This category of issues would be expensive and hard for me to fix, so I figured I'd keep working on the less-involved issues first.
5. Bad starter button: This one seemed like the most obvious candidate, since when I was out shopping, it had seemed like the button was futzy, and I'd needed to press it several times and in different ways in order to start the car. Plus, based on my internet research, it was a known problem, and places like Scuderiacarparts.com (a good resource for Aston parts) sells replacement buttons. I was almost to the point of ordering a new button, but first I wanted to check one last thing.
6. Bad clutch switch: As I was researching the issue on the internet, someone mentioned that they had had a similar issue, and the Aston dealer had traced it to a broken wire in the clutch switch (remember that like most modern manual transmission cars, the clutch has to be pushed in for the car to start). In reading about this issue, I found out that the starter button is supposed to glow red when the key was in the on position and the clutch was engaged (I'm embarrassed to admit that I hadn't fully noticed this before). I couldn't remember whether the starter button had been first lit white and then red when the car had had the temperamental starting issues at the mall. But I had to admit that when I was repeatedly pressing the starter button and it had finally started, I was also repeatedly pressing in the clutch, and thus the connection issue I was attributing to the starter button could also be with the clutch switch. So I went to the garage again, turned the key, saw the starter button glow white, and then engaged the clutch, and the starter button DID NOT TURN RED. Hmm. So while I couldn't remember whether MY starter button typically turned red, it was reasonable to assume that it should be turning red, and the fact that it wasn't turning red might mean that it wasn't recognizing that the clutch was engaged.
I hate working under the dashboard of a car. You are lying on your back on the floor, with your bum trying to snake over the seat or out the door, and your forearms are invariably too long to bend at the right place to get both your arms above your face (why can't we have a 2nd elbow to make these maneuvers easier?), and it is always claustrophobic, and there is never enough light, and the stuff under the dashboard is always sharp such that your hands and wrists get all scraped, etc.
But I crawled under there, and there was an obvious, and low down (easily accessible) component mounted by the clutch pedal with a plunger that engaged when the clutch was pressed. It looked like the clutch switch. But most importantly, there were 2 wires leading to the switch, and ONE OF THEM WAS BROKEN AND HANGING DISCONNECTED!!! Bingo! This was exciting - this seemed like the obvious culprit.
However, the immediate problem was that the broken wire was broken right at the switch component, so I wasn't sure how I'd reconnect the wire. I grasped the switch and started to play with it, and immediately realized that it turned, and by rotating it about 1/6th of a turn, the switch pulled out of it's mounting bracket, and now hung down slightly in front of the clutch pedal, which made it slightly easier to view (though still hard to reach which would make splicing the wires very difficult).
I pulled at the wires (which went into a plastic cable sleeve) to try to get a bit more play in them, and noticed that the wiring sleeve was attached by a clip to another mounting point (the photo on the right has a black arrow pointing to it), and the clip easily slid off and disconnected, now allowing the wires and switch to hang a further 6 inches lower. I also noticed that the switch itself (in green) was connected to the car wires by a black plug. But it wasn't worth trying to disconnect the plug since the broken wire was broken on the car side of the plug. But I still couldn't figure out how to reattach the loose wire since the broken-off wire was broken off RIGHT at the switch, with no exposed wire to strip. I am always nervous about cutting wires, but I figured that at this point, the chance that this was my issue was very likely, so it was worth cutting them. I saw that there was a fair amount of extra play in the wires, so if I lost 2 inches in total length they would still connect. I pulled the wires out of the sleeve by about 6 inches, and snipped them both off, allowing me to bring the switch inside to a table (but ONLY after marking which of the wires went to the broken wire and which went to the non-broken wire! This would be important later on!).
Once inside I noticed a few more things:
1. The plastic coating of the non-broken wire was actually broken as well, though not enough that the actual wires themselves had yet broken. You can see it in the photos.
2. The green switch and the black plug disconnected quite easily. There is a silver metal clip that pushes in and then the 2 easily separate.
3. Both the green switch and the black plug were marked as "Ford", with numbers on them that I guessed corresponded to part numbers. I entered the green switch's number of "94BB-9C872-AC" into google, and immediately found lots of ones for sale, typically marked as being for brake pedal sensor switches for Ford Mondeos and Ford Focuses. Unfortunately, none came with the plug.
4. The black plug had "97AG 144489 GBA" and "ES88A" and "PBT-GF30" on it, but very unfortunately, none of these 3 identifying numbers gave me any good hits on Google. I looked and looked, trying various combinations of the numbers, inserting dashes for spaces, etc., but without any luck. I called Scuderiacarparts.com, (who were selling the switch - but under a different part number), and they had no information about the plug that the switch required.
I was really hoping to REPLACE the plug, vs. trying to hack into it and make a mess of the plug. But without any means to find a new plug, I was left with no choice. I got out my dremel tool with a cutting wheel attached, and VERY CAREFULLY cut away about 1/2 an inch of the plastic housing of the plug on the side where the wire was broken. That left me with about 1/3 an inch of the wire exposed, which I stripped, and then attached to the loose wire that I had trimmed off earlier. I didn't have much confidence that the wires would hold, so I used my soldering iron and soldered them together, and then wrapped the connection with electrical tape. Note - I work in finance - I'm not an electrical engineer. I KNOW that this was an ugly soldering fix (and please do NOT show this post to my electrical engineer father!). I also took the opportunity to wrap electrical tape around the exposed/frayed wires of the good connection.
With my frankenstein-ian switch now hopefully repaired, I went back to the car, stripped off 1/2 an inch of plastic coating from each of the 4 cut ends of the wire (the 2 wires still connected to the car and the 2 wires connected to the switch), and lightly twisted them together. Now was the moment of truth... I put the key into the ignition and turned it to the on position, and used my thumb to depress the switch plunger... ...AND THE STARTER BUTTON GLOWED RED!!!
I hurredly now fully wire-nutted the connections, wrapped them in electrical tape, and re-installed switch (super easy) and re-clipped the switch's wire back onto its mounting clip, and again attempted to start the car. This time, when the starter button glowed red, I pushed it, AND THE CAR ROARED TO LIFE!
So, that's how I repaired and was able to start my 2005 Aston Martin DB9, at a total cost of $0. Yes, I'm feeling pretty proud of myself, and riding pretty high right now. And yes, I'm guessing that this is a common issue. The switch is mounted such that the wires for the connector are right against the firewall, where they will easily fray. And I'm guessing that the guy who said that the Aston dealer found a broken wire issue IN his switch, probably the broken wire was really right BESIDE the switch, just beyond the switch connector, just like on my car.
And I hope this repair synopsis might benefit someone, someday. Yes, not many people repair their own Aston Martins, and not many are inclined to feel terribly bad for Aston Martin owners who have expensive car repair issues, but... ...not all of us AM owners are trust fund babies, and some of us do fix our cars ourselves! And good luck to any other Aston Martin owners out there who are having a similar issue!
Tootsie-toys were cheapy - without interiors - without glass - without suspensions... ...cheap drugstore 5-packs of cars that uncles and aunts would give you to fill out your collection - with their undiscerning eyes failing to grasp how much of a throw-away toy they just got you...
