Vous êtes un peu fauché ? Alors si vous avez envie de rouler dans une de ces productions automobile de qualité, il va falloir se …
We had fun the other time with the bumpers of the A8. It was nice. We’re going to do something a little different today. And if I use the Caprice as a bench, it’s already because… It’s a good bench. And I thought it might be interesting to show you
The difference between the Chevrolet V8 and the Audi V8 on one subject in particular: distribution. that’s the distribution of the Chevrolet. And here is the distribution of the Audi. We know in advance that we are going to have a lot of fun!
Once the path is clear, you can put the Audi in the garage, hoping it doesn’t squat too long: that would be a bad sign. On this model, there are two opposing methods: the advocates of minimum disassembly and the others, who prefer to have the best possible access. I belong to the 2nd category.
So I’m going to drop the front face, completely. In the end, apart from a few subtleties, we must admit that it is done rather well. There you go, the way is clear. Which reveals a first surprise. Something happened over there. It’s not quite normal.
I hope there is a way to shift the piece to the left. Here we are in the vibration damper. the answer is yes: there is amplitude so we should get by. We can therefore continue the disassembly with a clear mind. The viscous coupling struggled a bit, as usual…
I’ll be able to remove the pulley and the accessories belt. I also filed the support and its bearing for the viscous coupling which is not useful but good… It’s time to set up the locking tool
Kindly loaned by the member of the Audi Collection forum to whom I sold the interior of the English A8. Thanks to him ! this allows us to loosen the crankshaft pulley screw without forcing the sensitive parts and without struggling. I replace the thermostat directly, before I forget… I started at the “TDC” mark
And I slackened the belt via the hydraulic tensioner which also dampened the operating vibrations. The belt whose age I do not know can retire. Bye the original water pump! It’s easier to know when it dates since it’s marked on it.
I screw the crankshaft pulley on the pinion to be able to extract it easily. I will be able to replace the oil seal placed just behind. I put it back in place. I will be able to check that we are still at the « TDC » and I then inserted the camshaft timing tools,
Via the rear of the cylinder heads. The front pulleys didn’t cooperate right away but eventually did! Once the spinnaker seals have been replaced, I replace the pulleys without blocking them; it will have to be done when I have put the belt back in place.
I replaced the timing belt tensioner without forgetting its bearing. But before putting it all back down, it’s a good idea to clean up all the accumulated sludge. And this is where I impressed myself with my own stupidity. When reassembling these parts. I lost at least 3 hours on it…
Impossible to obtain the recommended tensioner length. After a good 2 hours of testing assembly and belt installation methods, I finally remembered the little kick given to the assembly of the tensioner on the ground. And the fact that I removed the belt BEFORE turning the tensioner.
Yes… I mounted the bearing part of the tensioner upside down… Once in the right direction, things are much better! The length of the tensioner is within the standards, I can finish going up, remove the locking tools and after a few turns by hand, go to the starter.
Then reconnect the coils to check that everything turns well. Apart from the intrusive noise of the admission, it seems to be good! I move on to replacing the cylinder head cover gaskets, which ooze a lot. There is a small gymnastics session to be able to put down and put back the pieces
But overall it’s ok! Since the distribution is complete and checked, after reassembling the front panel, I can finally mount the bumper. I feel some form of relief as I mount the headlight lava system. Everything lines up correctly. During the previous episode, you saw me drill the slots for these nozzles…
And I showed on several occasions that I am not immune to making a mistake. Here is a guy who has absolutely no pressure to make a huge scratch on the brand new paint . I check that the system works well: I will just have to adjust the trajectory of the jet, right side.
Or we can consider that I have the first A8 with auto-wash system. The class. I now move on to the rear bumper. No difficulties. And clearly it radically changes the general appearance of the car to no longer see gaping holes in the bumpers.
We won a shoot with the one who ended up becoming the channel’s mascot. The DB7! We can say that they don’t have much in common but despite everything I find that there is a certain coherence in finding them parked next to each other. A kind of aristocratic class in common perhaps
The old bumper exploded is found on the English A8: it’s a little less wreckage, like that. I will continue to disassemble the part, but we will go heavy compared to the last time. For that I need to move the car a little forward. Too bad… Out of gas!
It is therefore with the sweat of my brow that I make him travel the few centimeters that I miss. The front end is quickly removed, I’m starting to get used to it… No big difficulty for the rest: removing the engine-box assembly is quite easy on that.
It may be all aluminum, but it doesn’t weigh 100 kg either… Someone asked me for the box, so I’m going to separate it from the rest and put the converter aside. With the integrated differential, I think it’s the heaviest automatic gearbox I’ve had the opportunity to wear…
Well, half a day spent on the heaviest dismantling of the English car. And the rest… Well, not sure that helps me much. That’s why. We had already bought a donor but it’s not enough. I don’t want to use all the parts of this one:
For some, changing them from white to blue everywhere is really painful. And I miss two three incompatible things. So we are going to see Lionel today who offered me a lot of parts at an unbeatable price. We still have about 5 hours ahead of us. Lionel is a madman for car parts.
He has plenty of it on his land, which is not necessarily suited to this kind of practice given its particular configuration, which gives the place a very special cachet. Looks like we’re going to have a great day to ride. Finally it’s good to have come in ML
Since the navigator decided that a little country walk was essential. I finally arrive on the spot and I am not disappointed with the herd on the spot. I have a small list of parts and accessories to find among his donors. I saw an XJR when I arrived, what other notable models are there?
Is it an S6? Oh an Rs6! Is it the twin-turbo V8 in this generation? Yes. On the group there is the one who sold me the S-type R who has one. Yes the one with 430,000 km. Yes, it has a bunch of terminals. this one: 309,000.
Are you trying to keep it loosely drivable? Yes, in recent years it’s a bit like that… I have a good 3000th note to put in pieces. I mostly stopped riding it because of rodents that ate the bundle. Did you buy yourself some XJs too?
Yes, I’ve been dragging them for a couple of years. After some archaeological digs, we find everything I needed. He’s resisting again? Lionel is trying to take off a belt clip for me, but he doesn’t really want to cooperate. Phew it’s beating the sun today! I almost bought one from XJR,
But it was champagne colored, right hand drive and I smelled bad. It’s probably good that I left it where it was in the end. This color is nice! Yes: brown, which turns purple in direct sunlight. I imagine in the shade it looks almost black. There, we are almost in a D3:
In recent years it is starting to look like a modern Audi. From 2001 we begin to have a lot of chrome parts: the center of the steering wheel, the counters… This interior is very nice. For once this kind of color should not be common. This is an Audi exclusive. Some have had it.
I have already seen one in a long chassis, green with beige interior. You can hear the auxiliary fan running thanks to the sunroof. Ah yes I had that on my S8. We are not ready to see any of these engines again.
Especially with the D3s, there aren’t many of them who will drive afterwards if they don’t know the trick for the unavailable oil filter… See you next, Lionel. You’re going to Finland, right? Yes, we received the passports today. I fix a few things and go!
Good luck there then and one of those four you never know. See you soon Lionel! Goodbye ! After a last look at the field of suffering ancestors who have now taken on the appearance of tin cans, I hit the road for the long hours of the return journey. It was a long day!
Come on, I still have a little less than an hour. It’s nice to finish the trip in these mountains. It’s quite pretty. We are on the Hauteville plateau. This good old ML320 is still healthy, I can always count on him and that’s great. Alright good night huh! I’ve done better, I’ve done worse.
So let’s see what we brought back from our trip, apart from the mud. On the door pillars, since Audi can remove them from the doors: I took the one at the rear right since this part is damaged on ours. Well, I don’t know if you see that right.
I will have to get my window back since it is completely delaminated on the edges. We also have the 4 door panels. Normally they don’t have any major hits. I will be able to correct them with a light coat of mastic. One has a right front fender, mostly scratched. As a reminder,
I therefore chose to take these doors there to avoid repainting the inside of the door. Can you imagine sanding those sections? It’s awful to do. We also have a trunk lid. That of the blue A8 is well deformed with large bumps. I also took an original Audi wishbone.
We also have a phase 2 armrest which will not break. It is also more usable. A spare steering wheel but… We’re not going to use it since I see that the seam has been twisted. it doesn’t bode well. I do have the rotary switch and the airbag.
I have here a phase 1 car radio that I will be able to mount this time. So ! We have enough to take care of in terms of painting since we obviously won’t be mounting them in this state. Here we are again on the road to join Yann
Who once again lends us his bridge. I rely on him a lot these days. Given what we have done on the car, I will now replace the gearbox and engine fluids with the coolant in particular since I have noticed that the probe which controls the triggering of the auxiliary fan
Is out of order so the fan is constantly running in speed 1. I hope it will go fast, especially for the filling of the speed. it remains painful in all cases with the principle of overflowing at a precise temperature. In the meantime, I’m lucky: the weather is nice, the car is pleasant.
I take advantage of it for one of the first times with this first big trip. I discover it! I don’t know by what magic he manages to guess that I’m coming when I haven’t called him yet. What beautiful timing. Well if Racing Lubes goes bankrupt in a while,
It will probably be my fault since every time I ask them I ask them to send me astronomical quantities of oil. On the program, 100% synthetic ATF for the gearbox, quality coolant and an oil with drawings of cylinders sprayed with an oil that could make me thirsty it looks so appetizing.
Thanks to you guys, you believe in me, I hope it will. For those of you who follow the channel, don’t hesitate to order from them, it will justify the fact that they took the risk of supporting me. Alright, engine oil change.
I don’t like the originality of the assembly of the oil filter at all. It was painful and I was a little ashamed: I struggled for 10 minutes trying to remove it and Yann arrived and said to me « that’s how we do it » I found It’s a little annoying, please don’t do it again.
It’s talent! This catalyst must already be removed. this one there is no need I think. Well we will already try to remove them before emptying. I know that some manage to remove the crankcase without touching the exhaust… I’ll end up buying myself one! Here, Yann showed me again how to do mechanics.
I couldn’t get the crankcase off. Now that you’ve seen how to take it off, I’ll let you put it back on. Yeah ! but I still believe that we did it with two people: it couldn’t pass without pulling on the collector. The result is there:
It is undoubtedly the first time that it is deposited. When emptying, we saw that there was not much in this box. probably not enough to fill the sump that is there. Apart from a rather complicated access to the faulty thermal switch,
The rest went without a hitch and I enjoy a much more pleasant box now that it is filled with the right amount of oil. This A8 is rather firm but in return we must admit that its behavior in the winding is rather surprising in a good way…
Now that we have a priori a reliable car, I will be able to tackle a few details, in particular to tackle to make the cabin more pleasant. I start by replacing the old broken armrests with the phase 2 one repatriated a few days earlier.
We move on to the saga concerning the car radio… Before buying Lionel’s, which corresponds well to the year of the car, I tried that of the English donor… We already had to remove the wedges that were there to integrate the din car radio. I’m replacing a car radio: it’s so simple!
A well-built car: painful disassembly To remove the central ventilation nozzles You have to use demonic tools, designed with what’s lying around… Then I realized that the more recent Audi sets only work in mono on my car … Yes, the tracks at the rear in particular are not wired like on conventional installations,
It goes through the CAN and I tried in vain to recover the signal on the air conditioning control side, it was not found. Luckily I was able to recover a good old Delta post that goes well on the A8s of the first years.
I finally take advantage of a car radio that manages to pass sound other than in mono and I put back in place some parts that were missing… it’s a detail but it counts! The interior now deserves a good clean up. We can see that it is very shiny…
Which indicates that it is dirty and very greasy. You see…the cleaned file is dull now: it’s clean! The driver’s seat would still benefit from a color change in certain places. The rest of the cabin is also entitled to preferential treatment There have been spilled things in the car… it’s a stain: literally.
Clean, but not finished yet. The central console will go there, the passenger seat too. Mmmmm! Coffee ! There you go… it smells new in there and… apart from a few details, not much betrays the age of the car I think. Small cleanup in the trunk as well,
With the replacement of some missing covers; to finish ! We can say that the A8 underwent the test of fire last weekend, since we did 1300 kilometers with it over two days. Mechanically, nothing to complain about except the air conditioning compressor which tends to start often. The circuit must be out of gas.
I realized after arriving that I had lost a piece. Luckily nobody bothered me about it. Sorry for the radars flashing from behind. I stole their jobs. Otherwise it was nice. Note another mechanical problem that I was aware of but which is still painful in use:
There is a hard point in the right-hand direction. It takes quite tight turns to feel it since it happens beyond 20 25° of rotation of the steering wheel. I imagine it’s coming from the rack so if I want to solve that, it will have to be replaced at some point.
It’s obviously a super fun job with perfect accessibility. Otherwise, it may be more comfortable than an S8, but it’s still very firm. I think they pushed the trade-off a bit too much in favor of handling. It’s efficient, you can drive fast but on bad roads… The S-type R is much better, for example.
Fantastic soundproofing otherwise! It’s a pleasant car, but more suited to the billiards of motorway journeys. Fuel consumption is really good. On the outward journey, without encountering any difficulties, I reached 10.1L/100km at a good pace. On the way back, it got complicated with traffic jams. We went up to 10.9L/100km.
Which I think is still excellent, especially given the fact that we had close to 50% ethanol in both cases. She seems to be digesting it well. This is a very positive result. She took the bounds of the blow.
This one I almost feel remorse for making her do so many kilometers she has few. But you have to test the machine… Another positive point, I checked the levels at the end of this journey: no leaks, consumption or other, no seeping… It’s appreciable. that means that apart from 2 3 things to fix,
We will have to take care of the body part now. I don’t know about you, but two episodes after Audi is starting to do a lot. Wouldn’t we move on for a while before getting back to renovating the bodywork? Yes. So, until next time! Ciao