B6 S4 Cab - man maths, not brave

The A4 can definitely was a great looking car, and still is.

I particularly like the wheels on this S4.

An update on bits to do, I’m a pen-pusher at heart and in awe of many of the talented, obsessive folk on PH, however, I’m learning and enjoy some basic work myself
Interior – Biggie is the cracked dash (unique for a UK car?), no specialists will fill in the cracks due to airbag position so after building up rapport with ebay breaker I have dash, glovebox (they all crack sir) & centre console (without holes for old nokia) for £200 it will wait until later this year when I have a clear weekend. Last car I managed to replace window regulator so I think it’s similar, lots bolts, torx & photos and patience.
Car had top of the range (in 2005) sat-nav/phone/cd changer, but v dated. £329 got new Pioneer double din headset fitted which has streaming, phone mic. With original Bose speakers sounds great.
Car had gangster tint (maybe it was cool in the noughties), however, due to the passage of time it was patchy and welded to the glass in places. Tried hairdryer, heat gun to limited success, even a special solvent didn’t clear it fully. Final clearance with nitromors!
Centre Rear Brake light easily fixed with some crude soldering (good forum instructions)
Thank you to PH for the top tip of Dr Leather wipes. Overly shiny steering wheel is de-shined and seats have come up nicely (car has heated rear leather seats, true class!)
Realities of a car being recommissioned and sold for 6k;
- Tyres – were Headway? (who?) one caught a gash on inside sidewall, now replaced both fronts with Kumho which really helps the steering confidence. Still have crap tyres on back as too tight to throw tyres away and my feeling is the back have much less to do on this 4WD car.
- Battery I was told was new, but maybe it was new to the car only. Only held charge for 2-3 days so after a faff, treating self to a Ctek and then 2 trips to Euro CP I have a battery which will now hold for 2 weeks which as a weekend toy is just right.
- Also coolant as mentioned before was largely water based.
Interestingly a parallel with a forum update on AM Vantage of similar age, car suddenly wouldn’t start after parking at shops 30 miles from home. I knew battery had full charge but it was dead as a dodo. Bit of nightmare getting tow home late on Sunday night, roof was down which I could raise manually but 4 windows stuck down so prayed for no rain. Got lucky on rain and fix was the master fuse on +ve battery terminal had corroded and given up, so an age/storage related issue. £50 fix for part and labour.
That’s it really so nothing serious or beyond the expected for a car in this price range, so feeling happy and not that brave presently

I think it looks great, very handsome car and it doesn't look like anything else, which I'm all for.

What's going on with the wheel arch?

Audi cabriolets have always been a handsome car

I've had 2 of these, great cars.

You need a wind deflector, they make a massive difference in these. Where are you located? I've got a proper Audi one in the garage that folds into 4 and has a bag to store it.

Tomsugden - appreciate the offer, I'm intrigued and never felt it needed it with the car being effectively a heat-soak for the engine! I'm in central Scotland so probably not near sadly. Would you post and sell for a few quid? can you PM me, I'm a long time reader but new on forum so help!

I thought that too!

It’s a handsome looking car in my opinion. I miss the days of less is more styling wise.

Brief update on the S4, I finally had a couple of work & kid free days so tackled the big job of replacing the dash. A pen pusher at heart with limited skills which peaked at replacing a window regulator during lockdown on my prior S4. I had put it off for ages as I knew it would be a PITA (new forum short speak I'm learning) and had been looking forlornly for too long at the replacement I got off an ebay scrappy over a year ago (£200 for dash, console & glovebox)

In short a great challenge, a meccano kit of torx, 8/10mm bolts without a user guide and after a day I had the old centre console out (cut outs for 2005 mobile phone so had to go), glovebox (broken lid which they all do) & dash out. This was a bizarrely california style cracking from being under a cover of prior owner for 6 ish years. Scrappy had been very kind and sent a few videos from his phone which helped. He said to remove steering wheel which I managed without but his key advice was on removing the airbag which has 4 bolts but also 3 brackets forming a cradle. A couple of youtube vids also helped a little

Day 2 went swimmingly well, I had tried to be organised and took photos of stereo wires, bolts etc, but in my aim for speed I didn't have much to go on but it was much easier getting back in than out from memory. Had a moment of inspiration when it was almost in so I connected all important things back up and connected battery to check car was working before bolting everything up.

Then guess what? big error code of death "SAFE" on the dash, nothing lighting up, car half turned over then stalled. Checked back over everything and all seemed as I'm taken it out. I undid the frustrating binnacle bolts this seemed ok. Some googling later suggested it could be the key (I only have 1) wasn't programmed to the car. Then I seemed to spend a few hours faffing about in desperation. This did seem plausible with all the removal of stuff but unlikely as it had only been disconnected a tad over 24 hrs. Anyway call to main dealer suggested they could read the car and fix but it would have to be delivered 30 miles away.....My low cost ownership dream was evaporating but after some lunch it seemed like there wasn't much else to do. Spoke to friendly local recovery guy who saved me previously and we were going to organise a tow.

With nothing left to lose put everything back in place bar the stereo. One of the hardest parts was reconnecting many tiny electric plugs for thermistors in each air vent and also the speaker right under the front of the dash beneath window, some bits easier than others. Lots of mini-obstacles to get it all lined up for a 1st time job and very proud of self that it least it looked right and was solid. Another insight is the sheer quality of German engineering of this period, where you may expect 2 or 3 bolts will do they will have 5 or 6, so very solid and no rattles will occur!

Somewhat depressed that evening at the prospect of £400+ easily for tow and a code read and key programme I spent some time on ancient forums (pre 2010 mainly) and some kind chap had suggested that he'd cleaned his binnacle and had my error state and frustratingly had diagnosed it to a slightly out plug on the binnacle. I knew I'd checked this but in the morning looked again and hey presto, where my fat fingers and slightly bent the retaining mechanism it was perhaps 1/10th of a mm out. I re-seated it and the car roared to life!!

Photo doesn't do it justice as it was straight after I'd wiped the dash down, now it's tucked up in garage away from this icy weather I'll need to get another soon. Overall a good learning process and to be honest only a minor PITA, but never again as it took days for my aches to go away, at 6'4" I'm not designed to be crawling in footwells for long periods!

Also big thanks to PH community. I ran one of these for 6 years without a wind deflector but a bargain too good to be missed from user tomsugden has really helped over the scottish summer to enjoy the car!

Great job. I've done a fair amount of work on cars now but I don't think I'd be brave enough to do a full dashboard on a modern car, that's a massive job and so easy to end up missing something on the reassembly, so well done for getting it sorted.