Yes, we brought the car into the dealership, and they warned us in advance that they would have to remove the tranny in order to get at the clutch and that if it was found to be normal wear and tear, we would be responsible for the cost.

They have just called us this morning and said that they took pics, forwarded them to Aston, and the reply was that they won't cover the clutch under warranty.

I'm having the pics forwarded to me, and also sending a copy to my mechanic who does regular maintenance on the Aston, and is a certified Ferrari, Porsche, etc.... mechanic...

i remember now haha

Mmmmm, pics of the burnt clutch doesn't do too much I guess, the most important thing is to find out what caused the burnt, driver or faulty part.

again, good luck

i agree with the above advice, i would contact AMNA's corporate line and try to plead your case there. for the skeptics on the price, the flywheel may be a dual mass flywheel which is not recommended to be resurfaced therefor needing replacement along with the clutch itself and pressure plate. add in some high priced labor hours and i could easily see 8k for a clutch replacement. let us know how to it goes contacting corporate. i think that's probably your only option at this point unless you want to pony up the bucks to tow it to the other dealership (which i'm sure would be stupid expensive)

Ya, sounds like a factory defect if it failed before 5,000 miles. Is there another dealership nearby (I doubt it) that you can go to? Doesn't surprise me that a clutch in a $200,000 car would cost alot.

BTW, your gf pic in the girlfriends and wives thread made me:eek2:

Ok thanks for all the advice so far guys.

I have CAA so I will probably see if I can have the car towed to my mechanic, even tho it's an hour away :shakes head:

Before I do that I will try and plead my case to corporate and really pressure them to the fact we are loyal Aston customers but if this issue is not resolved properly it will be the last Aston we ever buy.

I mean really, would you buy another 200k car if the clutch blew at 8000km due to no fault of your own and the repair was 8000$?

awesome! my buddy founded a magazine website that he just sold for around a mil. He's 24. Lol

and i wasted 8 years of my life in university :shakes head: i should've just gone on to "find" something and sell it for mega bucks and not have to work a single day ever again.

I'm assuming she has some high level contacts in the biz, so they might want to see to it that her car get serviced under warranty to save themselves the bad publicity.

It's not easy to prove what burns out a clutch early, standard procedure is to say its user error and not covered. Many people with my old car had problems with their clutch early on and the first visit to the dealer would always have the same result, wear and tear not covered. And the next step was to contact the corporate offices and escalate the issue and have them sit on it for awhile. End result was generally over 20K miles not covered under covered but the process takes about a month or so to get your car back.

If you escalate and make a scene with AMNA you could probably get warranty service.

It's not like we're talking about a clutch issue on a NISSAN or Ford here... AM wants to protect their reputation and chances are their clientele are repeat customers and have enough connections with other high-wealth indivdiuals to do damage to the brand if they are not treaded well.

Burning a clutch out in 5,000 miles is preposterous and they know that. Especially since this is her second Aston. It's not like she's a newb.

My old car was a Hyundai, no manufacturer wants word around that don't honor their warranties.

Wow. you are handling it pretty cool. I would tell the dealer to bend over so you can ram the DB9 up their *** by pushing it with the fully functional 911.

8,000km is low. Abused or not.

The point I was making is that volume sellers usually don't care as much as some of the more botique brands. It's easier for some rich customer to damage AM's reputation than it is for one guy to screw over Hyundai. Granted the good guys will do whatever they can to make sure their customers are treated right all the time, but money definitely talks. :D

Hey hey hey. Hold it son. can't speak about fords (that's your specialty) but my nissan clutch feels as good as new even after 44000 km including over a dozen track events and lots of spirited city driving. And even better, I got to save $160000 compared to that db9. You can buy a heck of a lot of clutches for 160k :p