WITW - A8 Lang
 

Some of you may remember I bought Johnny Quattro's A8 Long back in December last year, to save it from imminent demise. It's been lurking on the driveway since then while I had long covid (ironic), with me intending to fix it up and flip it.

Cue a conversation with a friend who happened to comment that "I really want a V8 again, but E39s are so expensive". Well... I can help with that :D I've been working on it for a couple of weeks now, still pretty limited on throughput but I'm getting stuff done.

In some circumstances the L looks so well proportioned you don't notice the extra 127mm.

http://forum.a8parts.co.uk/attachmen...1&d=1688153861

The grey interior is dead. The extended leather door cards have suffered the same fate as the murple's and rotted away in our somewhat moist climate, so the swing lower trim is all getting swapped for black. The platinum alcantara headlining is staying of course, and the dash is already black which saves me some work.

First order of business is swap the door cards and realign all the door skins and window frames as they are typically all over the place.

One is never too old to learn new things. This trick with the door card I learned from Marcel and it left me wondering why I'd been struggling with them for so many years :ROFL:

http://forum.a8parts.co.uk/attachmen...1&d=1688153861

The rear left window frame had been replaced so needed some extra alignment as they always do when swapped between cars.

http://forum.a8parts.co.uk/attachmen...1&d=1688153861

The door lining / bitumen sheet thing appears to have undergone gravitational collapse. Good luck finding a used LWB door lining :rolleyes:

http://forum.a8parts.co.uk/attachmen...1&d=1688153861

So I made one from two standard linings :p

http://forum.a8parts.co.uk/attachmen...1&d=1688153861

Nice black door card

http://forum.a8parts.co.uk/attachmen...1&d=1688153861

Driver's door next, including replacing the mirror as the folding mechanism had got out of sync.

http://forum.a8parts.co.uk/attachmen...1&d=1688153861

and rear right

http://forum.a8parts.co.uk/attachmen...1&d=1688153861

Don't need these any more

http://forum.a8parts.co.uk/attachmen...1&d=1688153861

Interior removed

http://forum.a8parts.co.uk/attachmen...1&d=1688153861

http://forum.a8parts.co.uk/attachmen...1&d=1688153861

Never seen a mouse nest in the centre console before. No idea how the little buggers sneaked in there :tuttut: Its an ongoing battle to keep them out when things are parked on my very rural driveway.

http://forum.a8parts.co.uk/attachmen...1&d=1688153861

Don't need that any more either

http://forum.a8parts.co.uk/attachmen...1&d=1688153861

Stripped bare

http://forum.a8parts.co.uk/attachmen...1&d=1688153861

This car has been on my driveway with a dehumidifier running pretty much constantly for 5 months. Its still wet under the carpets.

http://forum.a8parts.co.uk/attachmen...1&d=1688153861

http://forum.a8parts.co.uk/attachmen...1&d=1688153861

I got the replacement carpet professionally cleaned by my friend Owain at MAD About Detailing

http://forum.a8parts.co.uk/attachmen...1&d=1688153861

Much nicer :love:

http://forum.a8parts.co.uk/attachmen...1&d=1688153861

LWBs have a switch in the rear passenger door to move the front passenger seat back and forth. However, as this car has been retrofitted with the sport Recaros this switch was non-functional as they don't have the extra wiring. This will not do ;)

http://forum.a8parts.co.uk/attachmen...1&d=1688153861

The round black connector is for the rear door switch

http://forum.a8parts.co.uk/attachmen...1&d=1688153861

The switch wiring is most cunning and is wired in series between the longitudinal adjustment switch on the seat and the motor. Its simple to break in to that circuit in the connector between the seat harness and the motor

http://forum.a8parts.co.uk/attachmen...1&d=1688153861

so I made an intercept harness which connects the rear door, but is entirely plug and play :) This is the testing stage. I forgot to take a pic with the connectors attached.

http://forum.a8parts.co.uk/attachmen...1&d=1688153861

Now the rear door switch functions as it should with a recaro in the front +++

Most excellent work as usual +++

I didn't realise how much I missed the WITW series until I saw this today.
And a platinum/black combo too. Cool.

Next episode please :)

Give the Doctor a chance, she's not 100% yet.
Good stuff Michaela. Take it easily.

Of course. No rush. I didn't want to seem impatient.
Just giddy with excitement 😁

I feel honoured to see my ex-girlfriend of 11 years being tended to by the good doctor. I had to say goodbye to the A8L thanks to our friend Sadiq Khan. My current S5 (B8) is Euro5-compliant.

The silver QE2 looks much nicer with different door cards. The electric door mirrors moving forwards and then clicking past the correct position and then ending up at '10 to 2' started happening the day I got the car back from the paint shop, back in 2015. I couldn't work out what had happened, so I had a look at them and quickly discovered that I didn't know what I was doing, so I left it well alone.

This car has the badge of honour of having done 3 laps of the Ring back in 2018, and also parked up next to Sabine's Porsche by mistake back at the Longhorn Saloon where I stayed.

You did make me laugh MJ when I read your comment about the special limo button: "This will not do". It was also a genius move making up that replacement LWB door lining.

I will be following this thread with great interest.

100% agree. But no rush, just nice to see this/you back up and running, but at an appropriate pace....

Still as nimble as a SWB?

A silly question about the passenger seat movement control from the rear seat.
Does it have an interaction with the (airbag-related) seat occupancy sensor, or does it just rely on anyone sitting up front shouting "Oi"?
(I think I know the answer to that... :ROFL: )

Yeah I think you know the answer to that :D

An inauspicious day today. I was tracking down why VCDS won't talk to anything and discovered a fishpond in the electronics box. Did the usual and blasted all the water out, contact cleaner, and WD40, then refitted all the connectors. Now it won't start https://www.corradov8.com/pics/banghead.gif

The ECU has corrosion on several pins and although its rare for them to get damp inside, it appears to have a short on the K-line so stops everything else talking. Of course that also means it won't tell me why it won't start... sigh

When the car had the original comfort seats, I can testify that pushing the 'magic' button simply moved the front passenger seat. Hannah (my mate Sue's daughter) used to regularly scare her mum doing that. It also came in handy on one other occasion when transporting someone wearing one of those plastic boots (for a foot injury).

John G

Hi,
The wiring for the the passenger seat movement control is only an adapter which is plugged in under the passenger seat between the engine for the seat adjustment and the switch of the passenger-seat.
Remove it and use it for your "new" passenger-seat.

If you dont remove the Adapter, the "old" passenger-seat will not work, if you connect it to a car wirhout the switch at the rear-seats.

Regards Stefan

Hi Stefan,

Thanks for this +++ I had come to the same conclusion by looking at the wiring diagrams, however the original seats with the adapter are long gone. I have effectively made a new adapter cable to do the same job :)

Original seats are now with ainarssems and I think they were possibly going to be made into gaming chairs/seats if I remember correctly.

The ecu is dead :-(

Found some corrosion in the ecu connectors and hoped it was this, but no

http://forum.a8parts.co.uk/attachmen...1&d=1688851660

Opened the ecu to find water damage:

http://forum.a8parts.co.uk/attachmen...1&d=1688851660

Not much better after cleaning. These still work, so probably aren't the root cause

http://forum.a8parts.co.uk/attachmen...1&d=1688851660

Corrosion on the connector

http://forum.a8parts.co.uk/attachmen...1&d=1688851660

Even after cleaning with IPA it is still completely dead. The LWB has a unique ecu and there are none for sale anywhere, nor are there any standard FL1 4.2 A8 ecus available in the UK, although there are some for unpleasant prices in Europe. Luckily Marcel managed to find an FL1 A8 ecu in Poland so we're working on acquiring that. The next struggle of course will be working out how to code the immobiliser, which apparently needs the pin code from the old one :tuttut:

That sounds like a real bummer - but I love your 'never say die" attitude to any '8 problems. +++

Any further updates on the status of my old LWB?

John G

I miss seeing this about. I still look out for it when I’m dropping the kids to school out of habit.

Hopefully MJ will get “LFO” back up and running in the not too distant future. I really miss the WITW threads but health comes first.