Project Jaspis Green jewel juggernaut
 

Welcome to this forum thread where I hope to detail my journey with the Jaspis Green D2 series S8 that I recently bought here in Australia.

I hope that someone derives some enjoyment from this thread apart from me. :love:

I do not aspire to change the car in any way. I am happy with the specifications that it has, even the newish stereo/sound system that has been installed in it.

I do hope, though, that I can learn from all of the knowledgeable posters here, and that I can be guided in how to keep this wonderful vehicle in a decent condition. My plans are to keep it for the rest of my life but that is probably a big ask.

I will start by uploading some random pictures that I took of the car today.. These are the first ones that I have taken since taking ownership.

http://forum.a8parts.co.uk/attachmen...1&d=1576139087
Can anyone tell me what is missing (if anything) from the tool kit?

Nothing missing from the toolkit. The L-shaped space at the front is for the factory tow hook.

You have a curious mix of wood trim there. I have those same ash-pretending-to-be-maple door inserts in one of mine, but your dash centre looks like walnut. They never did get the door inserts right for maple, but for some reason walnut ones look fine. They are actually printed on to metal, rather than the rest of the wood which is actual wood laminate.

I much prefer the pre-facelift cream interior with the black dash and door tops. It gives it some nice definition. The facelift went cream / grey everywhere and its too much for me.

It looks very clean which hopefully is a good sign that it's been well maintained.

A request - if you're going to post pics inline in the thread could you make them a bit smaller please? I'm using 1080p screens and still having to scroll around for that first pic! I usually resize to 1024 wide, sometimes 1280, then they can be easily seen on most devices without having to scroll to the side :) The forum can auto-resize attached images in the carousel, but not when they're inline in the text.
Edit - looks like you resized it while I was typing this :D Thank you!

And something I discovered recently while attempting to restore mine .... Did you know that the painted ones (the ones with the rubberised texture, commonly found in FE interiors, often finished in 'platin hell' or 'swing') actually have a wood finish beneath the paint?

It's like the painted version was an afterthought, something they thought would make the interior look more modern perhaps, so they took existing wood trim from stock and just painted over them.

That is what I was thinking when I first saw it too but I have come to like it - the ash especially.

When I was trying to repair the LED telltales in my Audi 100 mirror adjustment switch I found out all about the metal backed fake wood in my Audi 100. Is it real wood? It seemed to be some metal backed resin stuff that I cracked when trying to get at the adjustment switch. I was very annoyed at having cracked the trim. I also cracked the trim where the window switches were in the drivers door of that car when trying to remove them to repair the LEDs if I remember correctly.


Yes, the interior does look well looked after or at least appears to be relatively unscathed. It just needs a good clean in places. The drivers seat in particular deserves some attention. I am not sure what to use to try and prolong the life of the leather. All of my other Audi's seats have succumbed to the rigors of time and have rips in them. All, that is, except for my Audi 100 which has the hardest leather seats that I have ever sat in! They are rock hard and show no signs of cracking or tearing.


I googled my heart out trying to find a solution to the huge inline pics and came to the conclusion that I would have to manage my own resizing and orienting prior to uploading. Thanks for the confirmation! Thanks also for the image size tips. I went with 800 X ? and it seemed to work out okay.

Hey Mark,

May I ask what FE interiors are and also what is "platin hell" and "swing"?

Thanks!

Platinum is a lovely silverish grey, just certain people don't like it.....
Swing is Swing Grey, to my mind a medium brownish grey but I don't like that.....

Bizarre isn't it? I have a mixture of both - my grey S8's original black ones are black all the way down, but my red FE parts are vavona underneath!

C4r - an 'FE' is a Final Edition. They were special run-out models of the D2 and are perhaps the most sought after versions as they have extended leather interiors in some very bold colours for the early noughties - red, purple, aqua blue (puke), and silver-grey.

Platinum is a light grey - the FEs all had platinum dashboards and plastic parts. The factory designation for this was 'Platinhell' which translates to 'bright platinum'. Its a marmite (vegemite? :D) colour. Personally I thought Hell was an appropriate nickname for it until I encountered swing...

Swing is a dull grey, a bit like storm clouds just before they rain on you. Having just bought one with a swing interior, it is actually worse than platinhell. It's got no character at all and just drains your will to live :eek: Mine will be going on the bonfire and get replaced with black. Black goes with everything.

I'm not even going to talk about aqua blue.

This is my custom red and black btw:

http://forum.a8parts.co.uk/attachmen...1&d=1576146532

http://forum.a8parts.co.uk/attachmen...1&d=1576146532

This was made from a red & platinum FE interior with all the platinum parts replaced with black. I'd love to do this treatment to a purple one too. You can see why I like your black and cream ;)

Thanks for the explanation! And such an understated sense of humor you have there. Droll, to say the least! I can't help noticing that the posters on this forum are very articulate compared to the people that I am accustomed to interacting with.



WOW! :veryhappy: That is bold! Lovely car though. As is your Merlin Purple. My partner who is too scared to drive could just about be convinced to make an exception if she had that one as a steed, I dare say! Thank you for taking the time to share pictures of your lovely vehicle with us all. I bet you feel alive when you tear up the road in that!


Thank you for that.



Good information there!

So, I said that I would post some repair/maintenance evidence here. So here goes!

I would appreciate some comments....
These receipts represent the effort that the previous owner expended in keeping this vehicle in shape. I have added up the receipts and they came to circa $51,000 AUD over the years! Too rich for me to ever have contemplated. I am far too poor to have ever entertained such lavish attention being spent on a car. I am glad that the previous owner (2nd owner I believe) was able to do so. He insisted on original parts too.

I could not believe it when I peered into the wheel arches and saw that all of the new suspension hardware had the 4 ring logo emblazoned on it!
Attachment 22552

Attachment 22553

Here is the service schedule.
Attachment 22554

It certainly looks like it has been well maintained +++
Like any big luxury vehicle, these beasts can cost a lot to maintain. I dread to think how much I've spent on my S8 in my ten years of ownership but I would estimate I've spent an average of at least £5K each year. But, unlike most vehicles of a similar vintage, at least there's no rusty bodywork to contend with (not that you probably see much of that in the land down-under!). The high maintenance cost is no doubt one of the main reasons these cars are so rare now. I'd like to think that some day soon these cars will be changing hands at a price that better reflects their rarity and maintenance costs. Not that I'm ever likely to sell mine, but it would be nice to know it was worth at least most of the money I've spent on it.

Strange ain't it? It does seem that these cars attract a particular demographic. We certainly have far more than our fair share of intellectuals on here. It seems that most here are (or have been) business owners and we have a curiously disproportionate number of people here who are in IT (myself included). It seems almost half of the members here work (or have worked) in some sort of IT-related industry.