Some of you may remember I bought Johnny Quattro's A8 Long back in December last year, to save it from imminent demise. It's been lurking on the driveway since then while I had long covid (ironic), with me intending to fix it up and flip it.
Cue a conversation with a friend who happened to comment that "I really want a V8 again, but E39s are so expensive". Well... I can help with that
I've been working on it for a couple of weeks now, still pretty limited on throughput but I'm getting stuff done.
In some circumstances the L looks so well proportioned you don't notice the extra 127mm.
The grey interior is dead. The extended leather door cards have suffered the same fate as the murple's and rotted away in our somewhat moist climate, so the swing lower trim is all getting swapped for black. The platinum alcantara headlining is staying of course, and the dash is already black which saves me some work.
First order of business is swap the door cards and realign all the door skins and window frames as they are typically all over the place.
One is never too old to learn new things. This trick with the door card I learned from Marcel and it left me wondering why I'd been struggling with them for so many years
The rear left window frame had been replaced so needed some extra alignment as they always do when swapped between cars.
The door lining / bitumen sheet thing appears to have undergone gravitational collapse. Good luck finding a used LWB door lining
So I made one from two standard linings
Nice black door card
Driver's door next, including replacing the mirror as the folding mechanism had got out of sync.
and rear right
Don't need these any more
Interior removed
Never seen a mouse nest in the centre console before. No idea how the little buggers sneaked in there
Its an ongoing battle to keep them out when things are parked on my very rural driveway.
Don't need that any more either
Stripped bare
This car has been on my driveway with a dehumidifier running pretty much constantly for 5 months. Its still wet under the carpets.
I got the replacement carpet professionally cleaned by my friend Owain at MAD About Detailing
Much nicer
LWBs have a switch in the rear passenger door to move the front passenger seat back and forth. However, as this car has been retrofitted with the sport Recaros this switch was non-functional as they don't have the extra wiring. This will not do
The round black connector is for the rear door switch
The switch wiring is most cunning and is wired in series between the longitudinal adjustment switch on the seat and the motor. Its simple to break in to that circuit in the connector between the seat harness and the motor
so I made an intercept harness which connects the rear door, but is entirely plug and play
This is the testing stage. I forgot to take a pic with the connectors attached.
Now the rear door switch functions as it should with a recaro in the front
