My 01 S8

[MikkiJayne]

If you can't get it out, push the remains of the pin further in. It drops out of the hole and doesn't do any harm, and then you can use an ordinary plastic rivet.

The air duct is to feed hvac to the B pillar vent for the rear passengers.

[Audifan]

Thanks for the info MJ, you're the best



I was able to push the broken end out. This is what the retainer looks like (right picture).

[Audifan]

There is some issues with the leather of the rear seat cushion and I'm guessing that it can't be fixed?


This middle section of the cushion is the worst part.





I can't push the cushion down any more then what you see here. I'm guessing that I need to bend these metal tabs backwards?





The back seat area is pretty much finished. Just need to finish up a few things.

[MikkiJayne]

A detailer specialising in leather restoration could improve the wrinkle and creases with steam, but you have to know what you're doing and be extremely careful otherwise it can be ruined.

The Tabs go behind the carpet through the slots cut in to it just above the screws. Bend the cabs back a little and that should help.

[Audifan]

To get easier access to these bolts for the back rest of the rear seats
there is a leather flap that is mounted to the underside of the bracket


and that leather flap is held in place with these plastic pins that you just squeeze together.

As you can see one side is hollowed out to make it easier to squeeze.












Now back to this problem that I have with this door card.


I was getting ready to clean up the area of the tear to repair it and I found there is significant damage to this door card.


This picture below is the black door card that I removed from my car.


Here is a different section of the door card with more damage.

I don't know if I can get all of this damaged area cleaned enough to do the repair with the plastic epoxy.


I might be better off trying to find a replacement door card that has no damage at all. But the hardest part of trying to find one is there is only 100 S8 with oxblood interior that were imported and sold in America.

[Audifan]

While I was at work today, it just popped in my head to try and plastic weld my door card instead of using plastic epoxy for the repair. Now that I'm out of work, I searched on YouTube for "how to" videos for welding plastic. Here is the first video I watched (20:27 length time). Here is the second video (11:03 length time). Here is the last video (24:30 length time).

This weekend I'm going to buy a soldering iron and some inexpensive plastic to damage so I can practice welding the damage. Once I get a good feel on doing the repair, I will do my door card repair. This looks really easy to do from the three videos that I watched.

[Conan_the_Librarian]

One of these makes plastic welding easier.

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/364130746...mis&media=COPY

[Audifan]

I finally got around to the plastic welding on my door card.



This is the first area that I welded the crack and started to add plastic filler.


Finished the repair.


More welding.


This was the hardest area to the repair because there is lip (overhang) so I just melted the lip to do the repair.

I have these 4D0867299D (door card clips) on order and just waiting for them to be delivered. Once I get them, I'll install the front door cards.

[Audifan]

I had to borrow a good battery as the one in the car needs to be replaced. After getting the borrowed battery hooked up I was able to move both front seats all the forward to switch out the armrests.


I took a couple pictures of the boot grommets (replacements are on the way) which has seen better days.


What are these rubber pieces next to the body boot grommets?





I used this write up as a guide to help remove the armrests. It's missing some important steps which I will cover here.


In this picture it shows what it looks like once you remove the side covers. As you can see there is three holes for the "pop in" fasteners of the side covers.
There are four tiny (two on each side) T10 screws that needs to be removed in order to remove the inner armrest bin.


After the four screws are removed, you need to carefully pull out the inner armrest bin seen here.


Next you need to lift up the armrest into the vertical position in order to back out (you don't need to remove) the set screw (5 mm allen) so you can slide out the armrest.


I found out there are two different types of car phones for these cars. The picture above is the black armrest I removed which is from a 2001 car. The picture to the right is where the car phone wire feeds though the square hole. Sorry for the poor quality pictures.


This car phone holder looks like in the oxblood armrest (came out of a 2003 car). As you can see in the right picture there isn't a square hole to feed the car phone wire though.


There is this access hole at the bottom of the armrest which I'm guessing is where the phone wire goes through?





The next thing that I did was remove all the bolts for the front seats.

What is the easiest way to separate these wire connectors without damaging them?

[Audifan]

I finally got the front seats out. The hardest part is getting the wiring harness removed from the seat itself.



In this right picture you can see the special cable tie that needs to be squeezed together so your able to pull cable tie out of the hole.


The brown connector seen below is part of the main harness connectors. The other two connectors need to be removed to make it easier to get to the rest of the connectors of the main harness. I was able to get these connectors disconnected by wiggling it out since there is very little room.




Front seats are out and need to get the carpet vacuumed up.





I also finally got the new door card clips and the round part that installs in to the door frame hole is a tiny bit small. So I'm not sure how to get them to stay into the door frame without easily being pulled out? The reason why I found this out is because I had to take the door card back off because I forgot to install the pull cable for the inner door release handle.


Bad news, I misplaced the little metal clip for the pull cable as seen in this picture below.