Now that my S8 is running properly (gearbox) I can attend to the little things.
The alternator is fairly noisy at present. I'll be pulling it off asap to have a look and see if I can replace a bearing or whatever is making the racket.
Having looked up the part number, apparently my car has an alternator which was specc'd 'For Special Armoured Vehicle' according to ETOS and ETKA.
I was tempted to look for a spare alternator to just swap over rather than have to pull it to pieces several times but something tells me that I'm not likely to find one of these on ebay!
Is this more common than I'm expecting?
MG