Death of one A8 and the Rebirth of another

[texas2201]

well my old 1994 A8 4.2Q was getting a bit long in the tooth - 280,000 miles, doors misaligned/dropping, seats tired, gearbox clunky but it was the steering problem which was getting worse and worse. This is where for no reason it looses all PAS - usually in a car park, sometimes going round corners

The cost of the new rack/column was not the issue (alone) but the labour in doing the job and to a car that was not worth much anyway. However, I still needed a tow car for my track car and the A8 did that in Spades.

Andrew in Linlithgow in Scotland had a green one for spares or repair and had done a lot of good work on it and from the description it sounded a good base. see the thread here.

http://forum.a8parts.co.uk/showthread.php?t=8212

So I bought it blind and on good faith and organised for it to be transported to a Mate's garage in West Yorkshire.

The plan was to fix the driveshaft/gearbox problem and swap all the bits fro the black one to the green one thus creating one good tow car for not a lot of money - or as I thought maybe break even :-) given the price of Aluminum scrap.

[texas2201]

Well the car arrived at Gaz & Stan's and the transport guy refused to cross the bridge into the estate where the workshop was - so they had to tow it across - bit of a faff but they managed it.

Discovered the bumper that was loosely fitted was badly damaged - not sure if this was in transit or whatever, but we had a good bumper on the black one so no worries. Also windscreen was cracked and had a big stone chip on the passenger side - buying blind you don't see theses things. He ho we had a good one on the black one.

So next up was to drop the black one of at the workshop for the "transfer" to begin. Got some quotes which said that Aluminum was £600 a ton and if there was 1.5 tons on it in the A8 that could be £900! sounds promising :-)

Also four brand new 18" alloys with good tyres all round with 6mm of tread, recaro seats, solar panel, lights etc it seemed to make sense and my plan seemed to have some substance.

So the black one was stripped down to remove the none aluminum parts.















sadly the screen broke getting it out

Here is the bad part - one you have done all of this over many hours of labour it is only 480kgs which translates into £240 plus £100 for the steel parts.

My plan was falling apart

[texas2201]

So I sold a load of bits and pieces from the black one and I am now down about £1,200! but I still have a number of bits that might sell which might improve the situation.

So onto the green one - they sort out the drive shaft issue (black one swap) - good. We put the brake disks and pads from the black one on and I keep the new ones which came with the green ones as spares. Fitted the tow bar and electrics from the black one along with the harder/stronger towing springs.

Put it in for MOT and it fails on front suspension arms which was surprising as Andrew said he replaced those, so that gets sorted relatively cheaply.

However, it has a blown head gasket! New set of gaskets £700 NO! Replacement engine from A8spares £360 better. But with removal and refitting this will be expensive................So no car and £1200 down.

Think about it for a day or so and Gaz says he used a product called Steelseal on a Rover K series and it cured it, but you would not be taking the head off in the future as it will be welded on. this was not a problem for me.

So we tried it and Gaz followed the instructions - plugs out in sequence and cycle them...............it worked :-) so £40 and a bit of labour and it seems to have cured it. Phew.

So the final snag list was headlights need to be replaced out of the black one, fit the HID's, fix the rear lights, brake pad warning sensor, cruise control, new driver seat belt, windscreen and regas the air con.

So now all on the snag list is sorted apart from cruise and the seat belt (it works but just wont rewind cleanly) Put a message into A8spares for a seat belt and a brake switch.

Getting to like it now and off to Germany (Nurburgring) on Monday towing a trailer with track car.

will post some pics of the green one up later once it has had a good clean and polish.

would I do it again..............let me think about it..........NO not worth the aggravation.

[texas2201]

All ready for its trip to the Ring

[Norretal]

People like you make me envious, I really wish I could take on a project like that.

Well done, hope your journey is trouble free and enjoyable

[Architex_mA8tey]

Yes well done on getting that far! Good work, and you've saved at least one of the cars!