Checking Out Bamford Rose

With the mayhem on the Midlands motorways on Tuesday I took some time out on my way home to visit Bamford Rose and see if they live up to the hype. It was slightly surreal driving past Gaydon and seeing a gaggle of Aston’s on trade plates on road tests. There are some fantastic roads out that way!

I sat down with Adrian & Mike for a long chat, interesting place and interesting people! It is quickly apparent these guys are not your typical aftermarket company. Both of them have many years experience and expertise at Gaydon developing the cars. Their technical knowledge on Astons from the Vanquish on is unsurpassed out side the factory. Their plan is to split their effort evenly between motorsport support, after market packages & ongoing support for after those market customers. Quite sensibly they have made the conscious decision not to offer schedule servicing facilities against the dealers. Instead they want to add as much value with their knowledge and experience.
The good thing for us is they know where their talents lie and are keen to use them. Predominantly it is supplying and supporting engines for GT4 race cars, many of which are beating the AM/Prodrive factory cars! They realise this is sporadic work and often on very tight deadlines. So to start with, using their GT4 & factory experience, they have come up with a modular aftermarket package for the V8 Vantage.

They were kind enough to let me throw there 4.3 demo car around the country lanes, (BTW nervous passengers need not apply to sit next to the other Mike as he shows what it can do ) The car is an 07 4.3 coupe that has had the full package applied. So engine reworked to 4.7 GT4 spec (more on this in a mo!) BR/Quicksilver manifolds, 200 cell cats & Super Sport back box, lightened flywheel, double plate clutch and gear linkage mods. (I’m sure I’ve missed something!)
The engine is not just bored out, in essence it is the same as the GT4 race engines, so fully balanced, reworked head, ported and carefully prepared. The bit that amazes me is these do regular back to back endurance races without any intervention. BR “suggests” they come back for a check every 10k race miles. Pretty durable for a race engine then! You can see this with the car idling there is no movement, the engine revs out and returns to idle far quicker than my factory 4.7 does. It sounds less lumpy and doesn’t rock on its mounts.

Metric Bolt Torque Specs

Like bolts from the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE), metric bolts have specific torque values according to the grade of metal (measured by the amount of carbon in it) and diameter of the bolt. These bolts commonly come in "low grade," "8.8," "10.9", and "12.9."

Markings are usually on the bolt head itself or underneath the head on the shaft or underside of the bolt head. If no markings are present, assuming it is a low grade bolt.

We discussed metric grade and torque values in our Metric Bolt Chart , reproduced below.

Although this chart is not definitive and should be over-ridden by any shop manuals or application-specific information, it gives a base outline of the torque values recommended for bolts in grades and diameter.

Bolts are commonly tested in one or more ways. Tensile strength is determined by the maximum load (pulling) that the material can withstand before breaking or fracturing.

Yield Strength is the maximum load a material can stand before exhibiting a specific, permanent deformation.

Proof Load is the axial tensile load that a product must be able to withstand without evidence of any permanent set.

Most quality manufacturers test with all three measurements on random lots of their production line. Some specifications for critical designs will require a Proof Load on all bolts being used.

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