Classic Vanquish Transmission Upgrades

The Bamford Rose lightweight flywheel and twin-plate clutch upgrade is a transformative upgrade in the V12 driving experience. Compared the OEM single plate clutch/flywheel our upgrade significantly improves the engine responsiveness and facilitates smoother yet much faster gear changes.

This upgrade stems from our desire to tackle some of the compromises made during the original vehicle development programme at the factory. To save money the Vanquish reused a flywheel of Jaguars’ design. This flywheel was designed for luxury saloons and had those characteristics inherent in its design – slow, smooth ramp-up of power and drive-down on deceleration which are luxury saloon traits. Ideally, a sports car flywheel provides an energetic and ramp and deceleration.

The impeccably engineered Bamford Rose flywheel is lightweight but the correct weight for a sports car. This has the benefit of reducing rotational inertia allowing the engine to spool-up/rev-up faster. Our upgraded twin-plate clutch is a smaller diameter than the OEM single-plate clutch and also enables much quicker disengagement from the engine resulting in smoother shifts. Another added advantage of the smoother changes a twin-plate clutch provides is better longevity for the part. So not only do you get a much-improved transmission you won’t need to change the clutch as often too.

This upgrade is available for £3,000 (excluding VAT).

Update to the most effective version of the OEM transmission including Bamford Rose modifications for reliability.

As any Vanquish owner will know the paddle-shift transmission can be unreliable and cause breakdowns. Even working; the transmission is frequency clunky, misses gears and is a detriment to the experience of the car.

Some think the answer is to convert the car to manual but for many reasons, the driving experience of the converted Vanquish manual is very poor. The conversion leaves the gear lever incorrectly positioned, the gear gates don’t have sufficient positive engagement and the weight of the Vanquish doesn’t like being upset on high-speed curves where the automated transmission would speed match.

Our approach is to go through the entire gearshift and transmission system to evolve it and calibrate it. This evolution ensures pull away and car park manoeuvring is acceptable, gear shifts are smooth, fast and the system is dramatically more reliable.

The upgrade starts with a thorough check of the hydraulic transmission pump – a known weak-point – to ensure it is functioning properly. From there the original gear position sensor a mechanical/electric potentiometer is evolved into a magnetic sensor. This new sensor reports shifts more swiftly and reliably, in turn, making gear changing faster. Next, the actuator pack is also completely rebuilt to an uncompromising standard. Then finally, we upgrade the old design OEM clutch to a newer higher specification one that has less rotational inertia and spools up faster to enable a smoother gear change. The exact cost of this modification depends upon the condition and specification of your Vanquish – £POA please contact us for details.