What's in the workshop this weekend? . . . General VOD

[MikkiJayne]

Well, I bought another one This one literally saved from death with not a moment to spare! A friend has a unit on a scrap yard, so when a D2 rolled in, he called me straight away. FL1 3.7 Quattro, sport seats, blown gearbox. "I'll be there in 2 hours"

£600 later, I had this:







A one-owner 3.7 quattro, with sport seats (not a Sport model mind). It was bought new at Exeter Audi as a company car, and then at the end of its company service was bought from the company by it's driver and kept by him until about six months ago when the gearbox failed at 117K. It appears to have had the same private plate from new until it was disposed of.

I could tell as soon as I opened the door it had suffered some serious water ingress - it smells like a locker room and there is mould all over the place. Still, a decent haul of parts for the money. At least, that was the plan

I got VCDS on it to read the gearbox codes and see just how exploded it was, and curiously there were no 'incorrect ratio' codes normally associated with a blown 5HP19, just loads and loads of sensor and solenoid failures. The ECU was the same - it had three pages of codes , and the ESP unit also had half a dozen. I immediately went under the bonnet and opened up the electronics box to find it dripping wet inside Could it really be this easy...?

All the ECU codes cleared fine, as did a couple of TCU codes once I'd cleaned up all the body harness connectors. I had a spare FL ESP unit so I just swapped and recoded that, and that was also fine. I didn't have a spare TCU of the right code though, so pulled that out and opened it up...









Oh dear! Still, I had some time so I got out the isopropyl alcohol and a toothbrush and got scrubbing.

After an hour of it sitting on a hot radiator I put it back in.



Result! It drives absolutely fine, and no more drivetrain fault codes. It really was that easy





To celebrate, I gave him a bath and named him General Vod







Only two minor bits of body damage





Of course now he's working and has a name, he can't be a parts car any more can he?