My Murple

[MikkiJayne]

Hi all,

You probably remember the Merlin Purple S8 that Dezzy found in Bristol a little while ago. Its been sitting in the workshop since I picked it up as the drains are all full of leaves and I wantd it to dry out before I did anything else to it. I had to move it today so beforehand I hoovered up all the leaves and then gave it a bath.





Overall, its pretty straight but the paint is fairly battered. The bonnet has been painted badly and has lots of damage to the lacquer, and the boot is covered in cat scratches. Some other paint, some other scuffs and scrapes.

The front end looks like it has been sand blasted!



The interior is very tatty swing grey, second only in awfulness to blue. Its filthy, trashed and stinky so will be replaced with a stock black interior.



Who at Audi thought this colour match was acceptable?



The passenger door card is completely destroyed - shame, because it's extended leather.



The alcantara headlining is closer to platinum than swing - much lighter than the leather colour. That is staying so will just get cleaned. Not canon for an S8 with black leather, but never mind. It'll still be a nice place to sit once it's finished.



Spec wise, it has:

Solar sunroof
Factory towbar
Leather pack 1
Heated rear seat with lumbar support and broken electric headrests

No heated screen, which is a shame.

Now the elephant in the room - the gearbox. I spoke to the owner before picking it up and it had a full rebuild in 2017 (at 290,000 miles!). He said it went in to limp as soon as drive was selected (classic F125) and then wouldn't move at all (classic clutch pack failure) which is an odd combination of faults. He'd had an F125 fitted and it made no difference, and since the gearbox was out of warranty he'd decided to get rid of it. I assumed from the description it was the usual exploded clutch basket. No big deal.

I could tell something weird was going on when it drove on to the trailer just fine - no limp, moved quite happily. Odd, but I strapped it down and brought it home. It drove off the trailer, and drove round the yard just fine - curiouser and curiouser.

The only code stored in the TCU was F125 implausible, but it's had a new one right? Wrong - his mechanic had fitted a used F125 with the same fault! Currently all the indications are that the F125 is the only problem so when I get a chance to put it on the lift I will strip and rebuild the switch and see how it behaves.

Well done to Andrew for calling that one The reason it wouldn't move at all in limp mode is that the previous owner lived on a hill which it couldn't handle in 5th gear

The plan for this one is to replace General Vod as general runabout and tow car. Vod will be for sale as soon as I've sorted out a few niggles, to pay for murple parts. It'll be a pretty slow 'fix things as they break' project rather than a full overhaul.