3.7 Engine failure, lost all drive ... cont'd

[Oli18]

Hi chaps,

I've been a little quiet the last few weeks on both TSN and here apart from doing my bit to promote shiney A8 in the 'spotless' section.

I thought i'd give a little update on my 8 from when i last posted on TSN here

For anyone that wasn't quite up to date, here is what's happened in a nutshell...

My car died on me new years eve. I thought it was the gearbox. Later found out it was the cam chain in the drivers side cylinderhead that snapped. Took the car to Mastertechs in SW london and we set about finding a replacement cylinder...

I was quoted about 12 hrs of labour for diagnosis and putting a replacement cylinderhead back on. THe big thing for me was that the labour was in the region of £1,200-£1,300 and i would find the replacement head seperately. I kind of resided (as some of you know from the post on TSN) that i was going to fork out £1,600 which included sourcing a 2nd hand replacement cylinderhead as Audi charges £1,500 for the part alone which would have made the car a write off.

The great thing was that A8parts happen to have a 3.7L 42valve V8 from the same year as mine sat in their shop. THey were really good and allowed me to have the cylinder head off it despite knowing that it would be hard to sell the rest of the engine as a whole.

And so with the knowledge that i'd found a replacement cylinder head, i gave the garage the ok to strip down the remainder of the engine in prep for the new cylinder head to be fitted.

To cut a rather complex story very short, the cylinder head which seemed identical to the one on my car didn't fit It turns that there was a revision in the 3.7L 42v V8 in 2000 which meant that some cylinders had a built in Exhaust gas recurculation input and some didn't). My the garage has spent a number of hrs fitting the damn thing. THe total labour charge so far is £1,100 ish and i've not been able to find the correct cylinder head for it.

I'm at the end of my tethers - It was a push commiting to £1,600 already but now i'm already down atleast £1,100 in labour and some parts like gaskets, bolts, etc and to finish it off, i'd have to buy a new cylinder head with costs estimated at £2,900 to put the car back on the road.

THe thing is i'm now well over a grand into it without being able to claim that back. If i pull out now, i'll have lost that plus the car will be worthless.

THe alternative is that i cut my losses, take the car to a local yard (as its MOT ran out and i've got nowhere to store it should i have wanted to sell some of the parts) and spend a further £5k (minimum probably) on a FL S8??

i'd probably be 6.5k down the road and i'd still only have an S8 with 100k+ miles on the clock with questionable history.

Ideally i'd like to get a 2nd hand cylinder head still. I've been on some great sites (www.1stchoice.co.uk and www.247spares.co.uk) which taps into over 250 breakers around the country but although i got 3 responses, none of them had the right 3.7 42valve engine.

What do i do???

-Oli

PS thanks for all the well wishes from everyone on here and TSN

PPS - here some pics from when i was at the garage earlier...

What the camchain should look like (from another car):



My snapped cam chain:



My engine bay at the moment:



My poor 8: