Copart Salvage Audi S3
Discussion
Hi all. I'm a big fan of 'wordy' threads so forgive me for my ramblings but I want to try and set the scene.
I would like to introduce to you, my project Audi S3.
Over the last few years, me and one of my best mates, Cam, have started delving into the wonderful world of salvage cars. Some good, some not so good. This one was definitely the latter. Neither of us had ever intended this to be a massive money making scheme, as we both work full time in IT, but getting inspiration from youtubers like Samcrac and Tavarish we thought we would maybe start looking for some interesting cars to breathe back a little life into.
Me and Cam have co-owned a couple of cars over the last 5/6 years or so, starting with a Jap import Toyota Mr2 G-limited which we bought for £450 with a broken clutch. At this stage I was in my mid 20's and despite always being in to cars, up until this point I had never done anything more than top up my oil, washer fluid or tyre pressures. The Mr2 was intended as a cheap car for us to learn how to do some basic spannering, and maybe take out on a few back road blasts. In a baptism of fire, we replaced the clutch on my old gravel driveway. Not something I wish to repeat in a hurry. We also gave it a good service, replaced the discs, pads and calipers and then just enjoyed it.
Unfortunately being a Jap import car that had never been under sealed, the tin worm took its toll and after several years of fun and enjoyment we let it go and searched for a replacement.
Cam is a big fan of French cars and I am a big fan of Hot hatchbacks. This is a nice coincidence as if there is something that the French do well, its a hot hatch. We decided to double our previous budget and look for cars around £1k to see what that would get us. Clio 172's and Pug 306 GTI-6's were on the list, and then we saw this little nugget:
A nugget it was. The biggest, most nuggety Citroen Saxo VTS, ever. If ever a lesson was to be learned, it is that don't EVER buy a car on a day when its chucking it down with rain, in the dark, miles from home, in a muddy yard of an industrial estate. :lol:
It drove very well on the test drive and had a completely clean sheet MOT, but after exchanging £800 or so for the car, the problems began. The biggest one of which was that on the M25 my mate Mike who valiantly agreed to drive our new purchase home, pulled up next to me shouting '5th gear has gone!'. By the time he had nursed the car 60 miles home, only a very sloppy 1st gear and 4th gear remained. One of the gear linkages had snapped clean off!
It quickly became clear over subsequent weekends of working on the car, that it had been extremely unloved and run on a shoestring budget for certainly the last few years of its life. 4 mismatched budget tyres, the filters and oil were absolutely horrid, bulbs blown everywhere, water in the light clusters, etc. We spent a reasonable amount of money trying to bring it up to a half decent standard over 6 months or so, and enjoy it but it catastrophically failed its next (legitimate!) MOT and we decided to sell it as spares and repairs rather than sink any further funds in to it.
We then decided between us, we wouldn't get another joint project for the minute whilst we focused on our other cars. At the time I also had an Abarth Grande Punto (which I still have) and a Volvo V70 T5 (gone and sadly missed). Cam was keeping very busy with a Lotus Esprit Gt3!
A year or so passed, and after starting to watch the aforementioned youtubers buying salvage cars and then fixing them up, Cam decided he wanted a piece of the action and this is where we signed up to Copart. He ended up snagging a really nice Cat D Nissan 370Z, with light front end damage for around £9k. It was amazing this car had been written off really as the only damage was a smashed headlight, dented wing and dented bonnet and at the time one in good condition was probably worth about £16/17K. It was only when consulting Nissan for parts prices that we realised that at almost £2000 for a headlight, and god knows how much for a new bonnet and wing, thats what likely caused it to be added to the HPI register.
After much thriftiness, such as purchasing a used Xenon headlight from New Zealand and having it shipped for about 20% of the cost of a new one in the UK, his car was fixed, panel beaten and sprayed. Some mild aesthetic changes like plastidipping the wheels and all the chrome trim resulted in this:
It turned out this car had a few extra aftermarket bonuses like a really nice Nismo gearknob and a very throaty backbox. On top of the low mileage (35k), it turned out to be a very positive salvage purchase.
Cam then enjoyed this for a year or so, and then sold it for a nice little profit. At this point he moved from his ground floor flat and bought a nice bungalow with a good amount of parking and future space for a workshop. We agreed to look for another joint project at this point.
Some evenings were spent looking at all sorts of cars on copart and then we came across the S3 that is the whole reason for this thread. The pictures that greeted us from the auction site were the following:
Now aside from the obvious damage, the car was listed as 'starts and drives' which is always a positive indication that the car might be worth slightly more than scrap value. It was a CAT D, so we were hoping it would just be a replacement bootlid and repairs to that rear arch, and there was no structural damage. It also was the 3 door model and a manual which were positives for both of us and we agreed that if we could obtain it for around 50% of the value of a fully working one, that it might be worth a punt. I'd never owned a German car, let alone an Audi so I was quite excited to see what would happen.
Auction day came, we won the car for probably exactly 50% of what a non CAT D, working one was. We did however forget about the Copart auction fee's which did eat into our margins somewhat! Did I also mention that there is a Copart round the corner from my house near Rochford? Well the car wasn't at that one...It was at the Sandycroft one, which is about a 500 mile round trip. Road trip time!
The Copart experience at Sandycroft was absolutely horrible and the complete opposite of the slick and pleasant experience we had when picking up the 370z. We were there at 8am when the doors opened and the car didn't arrive out until around 11am. The staff were incredibly rude, more so after 2 hours of waiting and needing to keep asking them where our car was...we did have a 250 mile trip home after all!
The car eventually made its way out, and we were quite annoyed as the car in person was in much worse condition than the pictures showed. The interior was mouldy, the tyres were literally down to the cords, someone had cut the middle out of the rear diffuser to fit a removable tow-bar, there was further scratches and dents on the side with the impact damage. The car had no service history book/paperwork with it and only a single key. We loaded it on to the transport and set off for home. Some hours later we arrived back at Cams:
The car was then parked up in his garden, and we set about assessing the damage as the car was definitely not going to be the quick fix and sell we had hoped it might have been.
The v5 arrived and as we suspected, 11 previous owners. One for each year of the car's existence. Previous MOT history did show promising passes most years with only a few advisories and fails for low tyres and things like that but after the 'clean sheet Saxo' incident I was wary. Unfortunately these cars have become cheap enough to buy that people who want good performance but don't actually care about the mechanical's or longevity tend to run them into the ground. This was one of those cars.
The initial key things we wanted to do was get the car watertight, so we managed to source a replacement bootlid off a regular A3 but in the correct colour (Dolphin grey). We also found a replacement drivers door locally but in totally the wrong colour. As it was likely that painting the car was going to be necessary this wasn't a massive issue.
Other projects then sort of got in the way, such as Cam building a garage/workshop for our tinkering and getting his Lotus ready for our trip to Le Mans. The Audi sat languishing in the corner of his garden.
As we are complete gluttons for punishment we then decided to purchase another Copart Audi in the form of a salvage unrecorded (so not CAT D/C) Mk1 Audi TT 225 :lol:
This was another really positive co part purchase. The car had full service history in the boot, had just had cambelt and water pump and drove really really nice. In a hilarious turn of fate we got the train from Essex to Copart in Bedfordshire to pick it up, and when we got it home and looked at the V5, the previous owner lived about 4 miles away and was a friend of my aunt! The best thing was this only cost us a grand.
I then took this to Le Mans with my friend Andy, and Cam went in his Lotus. with his brother. Done about 2000 miles over the course of a week driving around France, came back, gave it an oil change and sold it to a nice chap for £500 more than we paid for it. Result.
Initially we were thinking of turning the TT into a track slag but a few things put us off. The BAM engines are great out of the box, but can't really be pushed more than about 260bhp without extensive forging of conrods and stuff like that. It was also too nice of a car to abuse on track, we are sentimental like that
Lastly, between me and Cam we already had about 8 cars and this was just getting in the way of us getting on with other projects.
Cam at this point said, lets get the S3 in the garage and see whats what.
What was what, was the following:
- Engine was running like a bag of spanners. No service history so didn't know when belts, waterpump or anything were last done.
- Front suspension shocks were shot, one spring snapped
- Brakes were shot, all of them
- Tyres were shot, all of them
- Extensive panel damage down drivers side and crumpled bootlid
- mould, lots of mould
After much soul searching and faced with the prospect that this car was never going to be fixed and make any profit whatsoever, I decided I wouldn't mind keeping it as a long term project, as I know with some mods these can be quite a weapon. In lieu of actual money, I offered to swap Cam his stake in half the car, for my lovely Saab V6 9-3. He graciously accepted and I became the proud owner of probably the UK's ropiest Audi 8p S3. I then agreed that I would have the car sorted and out of his garage by Christmas!
A few little facts around the 8p Audi S3 - Its got a 2.0 litre turbocharged, 4 cylinder petrol engine producing in the region of 265bhp. Mated to a 6 speed manual transmission through a haldex based all wheel drive system, its good for 0-60 in around 5 and bit seconds and top speed is 155mph. My one wasn't going anywhere near that quick any time soon.
I got my shopping lists together and opened my wallet and then the fun began. The first thing on the cards was to make sure the engine wasn't going to explode at any immediate moment and was ready for any future mods than I did to it. I ordered up a full service kit, as well as an INA timing belt and tensioner kit, water pump and coolant. I also decided to go for Audi spec Castrol Edge 5W40 oil instead of the normal 5w30. The Audi 2.0 TFSI engine is known for high oil consumption with 1 litre per 1000 miles being within 'acceptable' spec, and moving to a heavier grade oil seems to combat this. The UK is fairly temperate and doesn't get too hot or cold here so I don't think going slightly heavier will cause any issues. Companies such as Revo also recommend going to 5w40 if engine modifications are present which will certainly be the case with this car.
The car was serviced, timing belt and tensioners replaced, coolant flushed through with new G13 spec coolant. Replaced the aux belt whilst there and a perished vacuum hose. The timing belt which came off the car didn't look too bad and had no cracking but it definitely was a good few years old. In any case, I can sleep easy knowing there is a good quality belt on the car which should see me out the 5 year interval until 2024
Whilst in the engine bay, I also decided to replace the engine Cam follower, which is a known weak spot on these engines, and with no history I wasn't sure if it had ever been done.
Ordered a genuine 2.0 TFSI cam follower kit, including new bolts and fitted:
This was the state of the old one which came out:
Not bad, but not great either. Definitely worthwhile replacing it.
I also ordered up a revised & improved PCV system for the car and duly fitted that:
I also around the same time fitted brand new NGK R Iridium spark plugs, put some super unleaded in the tank and fitted some Audi red 'R8' coil packs. I could have just gone with normal ones but I want to modify the car, so lets do it!
Annnnnnnd, I also had a brand new RAMAIR induction kit sitting on the shelf, ready for the modifications to begin. As me and Cam had done so much tedious mechanical work, surely a little fun mod wouldn't hurt
The next thing to address was the state of the car. It was absolutely minging, with mould growing everywhere. The car had obviously been smoked in previously and there was rizzla paper, and tabacco smooshed into the carpets.
This was the state of one of the mats after vacuuming all the loose stuff off!
Ended up buying one of these and a wet vac:
And put it to work (well Cam did anyway!)
Whilst Cam was doing the carpets, I went and soaked all the interior plastics in neat APC to try and kill and remove that mould.
Liberal applications of Bissell carpet cleaning solution and copious scrubbing with a hard bristle brush resulted in some of this:
But more importantly after a few hours resulted in some of this:
With the car now running sweetly, and not smelling like a 70's pub I focused my attention to the brakes and suspension as this was pretty much the state of the car:
My intention is to use the car on the road so I didn't want anything too over the top. I did think about just OE replacement shocks and springs as I know that cheap coilovers don't tend to ride too well, but for around the same sort of money as OE you do get into decent coil over territory. I settled on a set of AP coilovers and also ordered brand new top mounts, bearings, drop links and genuine VW bolts to go with.
Fitting these was an absolute nightmare. Every single bolt which could be seized, was seized. Of the 6 top mount bolts, 4 of them refused to come out as the captive nuts had snapped from the mount body so were just spinning in place. These all needed drilling out. Good job I ordered replacement everything really. Also replaced the strut pinch bolts and hub nuts too with all genuine VW items. Coming from Fiat's, Audi bolts are very expensive :lol:
On the plus side, the repeated hammerings from our various impact guns shook a lot of the crud on the underside loose!
Eventually all of the old struts came off the car:
In gearing up for the brake overhaul I also ordered up a bunch of bits from Eurocarparts. A full set of Brembo pads front and rear, and Pagid brake discs front and rear. Unfortunately the stupid courier instead of delivering to my wife's work unit as requested, just dropped the box off outside of a completely different work unit round the corner. Took ages to track it down and this is how we found it:
Not sure if somebody had gone through it but I wasn't best pleased. Luckily despite the packaging being a bit worse for wear, the contents were all fine and still wrapped in plastic. I got the discs and pads fitted and then annoyingly as I removed the old brake pad sensor wire, it completely stripped the connection. A common VW brake sensor fault as the plastic gets brittle with heat, managed to find a company on ebay who sell fresh sensor plugs with 30cm of cable to splice in. Job jobbed.
I also decided that fresh hoses would be a good shout and managed to score a second hand but never opened set of Goodridge braided brake hoses and a braided clutch line for £60 on ebay.
Unfortunately the front hoses despite being for the correct car, just did not fit.
It turned out that Audi changed the types of front brake caliper fitted to the S3 midway through the production cycle, and my particular car ended up with the 345mm brakes, and I required a dual threaded hose, rather than one with a banjo on one end.
Top marks to Goodridge, as I phoned them up, sent them pictures of the hoses and they just said they would make me up a completely fresh set of front hoses free of charge. Annoyingly the tech specs they had from Audi said it was definitely a banjo fitment. I luckily found a post on a VW forum which said the 345mm calipers are exactly the same ones as fitted to the Golf R32 and the tech specs that Goodridge had for those did show them as having a normal thread on both ends. Goodridge as good as their word sent me out R32 hoses and these mounted on absolutely perfectly
I then tried to fit the rear hoses and disaster stuck, the hard line which went from the OSR caliper into the brake hose completely twisted and snapped. Again an issue consummate with age. Luckily again found a company on ebay who make up pre-formed copper replacements so I fitted these to both rear calipers
I also ordered up from the same company, copper replacement hard lines for the front calipers too, so I know its all new, all around. Finally, I flushed the entire system through using a Sealey pressure bleeder and nice fresh Dot 4 fluid. All caliper carrier bolts were replaced with genuine VW items as they are torque to yield bolts so should only ever be used once.
At this point the car was looking something like this:
While the car was up on the ramp, I took the opportunity to do some maintenance to the drivetrain. As I had no service history I had no idea what state the gearbox oil or haldex was going to be in after 120k miles.
I duly ordered up Motul gear 300 fluid for the gearbox, and diffs.
And the correct oil and filter for the rear haldex
The fluid changes here were very easy in comparison to a lot of the other jobs we did on the car. No seized filler or drain plugs, and we smashed it out in a few hours one evening. We also addressed some areas of light surface rust underneath the car and in the wheel arches with Hammerite Karust, and then a spray on underseal with Waxoyl. I also did a few other little jobs like replacing blown number plate bulbs with LED units and blown sidelight bulbs with Philips bluevision halogens. I also sourced some new number plates too as I like the ones with the GB logo and the old ones were starting to delaminate a bit.
The car at this point started to get put back together and I started to think about the wheels to actually get it rolling again. The original S3 alloys that the car came with were in a really bad state, I didn't particularly like the style, and as I mentioned, all the tyres were completely shot. It was going to cost £300 for new tyres and probably £250 to refurb the alloys themselves, so I man-maths my way into a very good condition set of facelifted alloys with new Falken tyres.
A replacement black wing was sourced and bolted on the car. Despite looking a bit like the inbetweeners car, it was now road ready at this point and more importantly ready to go for an MOT.
I booked the car in for its MOT and sat with baited breath whilst it was being scrutinised. The result...
PASS! No advisories I could hardly believe it either!
I pretty much then drove it home and booked it into my local bodyshop to have the dents fixed and the car painted as soon as possible. They booked me in for 2 weeks time...
It was a long 2 weeks to wait so the car sat outside my house with the good side facing outwards. I also gave it a very basic clean to clear off the layer of dust and crud it had accumulated over the previous 10 months:
I also took this opportunity to do a couple of little other jobs like fitting black filler caps to the coolant and washer fluid, and an R8 oil cap.
The Audi symphony radio was working fine but obviously now 12 years old, and as I was wanting to use this car a reasonable amount, I decided to fit an Android 9 Octocore touch screen head unit. This one is made by a company called Xtrons and is specifically designed for the 8p A3/S3 model.
Its completely plug and play and really looks the part. Even the lights on it match the OE Audi red colour. It works really well and comes with stuff like Spotify and Waze integration. Supposedly it also works with the Audi multifunction steering wheel but as I don't have one of those yet I can't confirm.
The last job whilst waiting for the bodyshop was to address the fact that I only had 1 key for the car, which didn't work remotely either. A company called FastKeys based over in Wickford came up trumps and coded me a genuine Audi key the next day for only £150. They also replaced the battery in the old fob free of charge and resurrected that also!
Then I dropped the car off at my local bodyshop. Whilst the car was in their custodianship, I also arranged for the alloys to be completely refurbished and colour changed, and the brake calipers to also be painted.
After 2 weeks I got the call to say the car was ready:
The bodyshop has done a really good job, and they went above and beyond, fixing some areas of rust at the bottom of the replacement door which I hadn't noticed, and getting all the panel lines all tip top.
This brings us basically up until today where I fitted a pair of MY2012 black edition rear lights which I think freshens up the appearance at the back:
I also quickly polished the exhaust tips:
Eventually the exhaust will be replaced with a Milltek item so it doesn't need to be a top job.
Next plans immediately for the car are to:
- Fit the TDI tuning box which I picked up in their black friday sale. Job for tomorrow. Car should be good for around 310-320bhp with this fitted.
- Fit replacement windscreen washer jets. Apparently the heated ones from a Passat are a direct fit with the addition of some spacers and instead of being jets are like the fan spray type for better coverage. I've got these on the shelf so might try and fit them over christmas.
- Fit replacement rear diffuser. As I mentioned someone has fitted a removable towbar to this car in the past and cut the middle out of the rear diffuser. I will remove all the towbar electrics and mounting hardware and fit the replacement diffuser which I picked up last week. I might also plastidip the light grey part of the diffuser gloss black.
- Tint the back windows. I've enquired with a local mobile company to come out and do this over the christmas period.
- Enjoy it
Longer term plans will effectively be a complete Stage 2+ package so HPFP, Intercooler, Milltek exhaust with hi flow cat.
Will keep this updated but I hope you've enjoyed my ramblings!
Thanks,
Ant
I would like to introduce to you, my project Audi S3.
Over the last few years, me and one of my best mates, Cam, have started delving into the wonderful world of salvage cars. Some good, some not so good. This one was definitely the latter. Neither of us had ever intended this to be a massive money making scheme, as we both work full time in IT, but getting inspiration from youtubers like Samcrac and Tavarish we thought we would maybe start looking for some interesting cars to breathe back a little life into.
Me and Cam have co-owned a couple of cars over the last 5/6 years or so, starting with a Jap import Toyota Mr2 G-limited which we bought for £450 with a broken clutch. At this stage I was in my mid 20's and despite always being in to cars, up until this point I had never done anything more than top up my oil, washer fluid or tyre pressures. The Mr2 was intended as a cheap car for us to learn how to do some basic spannering, and maybe take out on a few back road blasts. In a baptism of fire, we replaced the clutch on my old gravel driveway. Not something I wish to repeat in a hurry. We also gave it a good service, replaced the discs, pads and calipers and then just enjoyed it.
Unfortunately being a Jap import car that had never been under sealed, the tin worm took its toll and after several years of fun and enjoyment we let it go and searched for a replacement.
Cam is a big fan of French cars and I am a big fan of Hot hatchbacks. This is a nice coincidence as if there is something that the French do well, its a hot hatch. We decided to double our previous budget and look for cars around £1k to see what that would get us. Clio 172's and Pug 306 GTI-6's were on the list, and then we saw this little nugget:
A nugget it was. The biggest, most nuggety Citroen Saxo VTS, ever. If ever a lesson was to be learned, it is that don't EVER buy a car on a day when its chucking it down with rain, in the dark, miles from home, in a muddy yard of an industrial estate. :lol:
It drove very well on the test drive and had a completely clean sheet MOT, but after exchanging £800 or so for the car, the problems began. The biggest one of which was that on the M25 my mate Mike who valiantly agreed to drive our new purchase home, pulled up next to me shouting '5th gear has gone!'. By the time he had nursed the car 60 miles home, only a very sloppy 1st gear and 4th gear remained. One of the gear linkages had snapped clean off!
It quickly became clear over subsequent weekends of working on the car, that it had been extremely unloved and run on a shoestring budget for certainly the last few years of its life. 4 mismatched budget tyres, the filters and oil were absolutely horrid, bulbs blown everywhere, water in the light clusters, etc. We spent a reasonable amount of money trying to bring it up to a half decent standard over 6 months or so, and enjoy it but it catastrophically failed its next (legitimate!) MOT and we decided to sell it as spares and repairs rather than sink any further funds in to it.
We then decided between us, we wouldn't get another joint project for the minute whilst we focused on our other cars. At the time I also had an Abarth Grande Punto (which I still have) and a Volvo V70 T5 (gone and sadly missed). Cam was keeping very busy with a Lotus Esprit Gt3!
A year or so passed, and after starting to watch the aforementioned youtubers buying salvage cars and then fixing them up, Cam decided he wanted a piece of the action and this is where we signed up to Copart. He ended up snagging a really nice Cat D Nissan 370Z, with light front end damage for around £9k. It was amazing this car had been written off really as the only damage was a smashed headlight, dented wing and dented bonnet and at the time one in good condition was probably worth about £16/17K. It was only when consulting Nissan for parts prices that we realised that at almost £2000 for a headlight, and god knows how much for a new bonnet and wing, thats what likely caused it to be added to the HPI register.
After much thriftiness, such as purchasing a used Xenon headlight from New Zealand and having it shipped for about 20% of the cost of a new one in the UK, his car was fixed, panel beaten and sprayed. Some mild aesthetic changes like plastidipping the wheels and all the chrome trim resulted in this:
It turned out this car had a few extra aftermarket bonuses like a really nice Nismo gearknob and a very throaty backbox. On top of the low mileage (35k), it turned out to be a very positive salvage purchase.
Cam then enjoyed this for a year or so, and then sold it for a nice little profit. At this point he moved from his ground floor flat and bought a nice bungalow with a good amount of parking and future space for a workshop. We agreed to look for another joint project at this point.
Some evenings were spent looking at all sorts of cars on copart and then we came across the S3 that is the whole reason for this thread. The pictures that greeted us from the auction site were the following:
Now aside from the obvious damage, the car was listed as 'starts and drives' which is always a positive indication that the car might be worth slightly more than scrap value. It was a CAT D, so we were hoping it would just be a replacement bootlid and repairs to that rear arch, and there was no structural damage. It also was the 3 door model and a manual which were positives for both of us and we agreed that if we could obtain it for around 50% of the value of a fully working one, that it might be worth a punt. I'd never owned a German car, let alone an Audi so I was quite excited to see what would happen.
Auction day came, we won the car for probably exactly 50% of what a non CAT D, working one was. We did however forget about the Copart auction fee's which did eat into our margins somewhat! Did I also mention that there is a Copart round the corner from my house near Rochford? Well the car wasn't at that one...It was at the Sandycroft one, which is about a 500 mile round trip. Road trip time!
The Copart experience at Sandycroft was absolutely horrible and the complete opposite of the slick and pleasant experience we had when picking up the 370z. We were there at 8am when the doors opened and the car didn't arrive out until around 11am. The staff were incredibly rude, more so after 2 hours of waiting and needing to keep asking them where our car was...we did have a 250 mile trip home after all!
The car eventually made its way out, and we were quite annoyed as the car in person was in much worse condition than the pictures showed. The interior was mouldy, the tyres were literally down to the cords, someone had cut the middle out of the rear diffuser to fit a removable tow-bar, there was further scratches and dents on the side with the impact damage. The car had no service history book/paperwork with it and only a single key. We loaded it on to the transport and set off for home. Some hours later we arrived back at Cams:
The car was then parked up in his garden, and we set about assessing the damage as the car was definitely not going to be the quick fix and sell we had hoped it might have been.
The v5 arrived and as we suspected, 11 previous owners. One for each year of the car's existence. Previous MOT history did show promising passes most years with only a few advisories and fails for low tyres and things like that but after the 'clean sheet Saxo' incident I was wary. Unfortunately these cars have become cheap enough to buy that people who want good performance but don't actually care about the mechanical's or longevity tend to run them into the ground. This was one of those cars.
The initial key things we wanted to do was get the car watertight, so we managed to source a replacement bootlid off a regular A3 but in the correct colour (Dolphin grey). We also found a replacement drivers door locally but in totally the wrong colour. As it was likely that painting the car was going to be necessary this wasn't a massive issue.
Other projects then sort of got in the way, such as Cam building a garage/workshop for our tinkering and getting his Lotus ready for our trip to Le Mans. The Audi sat languishing in the corner of his garden.
As we are complete gluttons for punishment we then decided to purchase another Copart Audi in the form of a salvage unrecorded (so not CAT D/C) Mk1 Audi TT 225 :lol:
This was another really positive co part purchase. The car had full service history in the boot, had just had cambelt and water pump and drove really really nice. In a hilarious turn of fate we got the train from Essex to Copart in Bedfordshire to pick it up, and when we got it home and looked at the V5, the previous owner lived about 4 miles away and was a friend of my aunt! The best thing was this only cost us a grand.
I then took this to Le Mans with my friend Andy, and Cam went in his Lotus. with his brother. Done about 2000 miles over the course of a week driving around France, came back, gave it an oil change and sold it to a nice chap for £500 more than we paid for it. Result.
Initially we were thinking of turning the TT into a track slag but a few things put us off. The BAM engines are great out of the box, but can't really be pushed more than about 260bhp without extensive forging of conrods and stuff like that. It was also too nice of a car to abuse on track, we are sentimental like that
Lastly, between me and Cam we already had about 8 cars and this was just getting in the way of us getting on with other projects.Cam at this point said, lets get the S3 in the garage and see whats what.
What was what, was the following:
- Engine was running like a bag of spanners. No service history so didn't know when belts, waterpump or anything were last done.
- Front suspension shocks were shot, one spring snapped
- Brakes were shot, all of them
- Tyres were shot, all of them
- Extensive panel damage down drivers side and crumpled bootlid
- mould, lots of mould
After much soul searching and faced with the prospect that this car was never going to be fixed and make any profit whatsoever, I decided I wouldn't mind keeping it as a long term project, as I know with some mods these can be quite a weapon. In lieu of actual money, I offered to swap Cam his stake in half the car, for my lovely Saab V6 9-3. He graciously accepted and I became the proud owner of probably the UK's ropiest Audi 8p S3. I then agreed that I would have the car sorted and out of his garage by Christmas!
A few little facts around the 8p Audi S3 - Its got a 2.0 litre turbocharged, 4 cylinder petrol engine producing in the region of 265bhp. Mated to a 6 speed manual transmission through a haldex based all wheel drive system, its good for 0-60 in around 5 and bit seconds and top speed is 155mph. My one wasn't going anywhere near that quick any time soon.
I got my shopping lists together and opened my wallet and then the fun began. The first thing on the cards was to make sure the engine wasn't going to explode at any immediate moment and was ready for any future mods than I did to it. I ordered up a full service kit, as well as an INA timing belt and tensioner kit, water pump and coolant. I also decided to go for Audi spec Castrol Edge 5W40 oil instead of the normal 5w30. The Audi 2.0 TFSI engine is known for high oil consumption with 1 litre per 1000 miles being within 'acceptable' spec, and moving to a heavier grade oil seems to combat this. The UK is fairly temperate and doesn't get too hot or cold here so I don't think going slightly heavier will cause any issues. Companies such as Revo also recommend going to 5w40 if engine modifications are present which will certainly be the case with this car.
The car was serviced, timing belt and tensioners replaced, coolant flushed through with new G13 spec coolant. Replaced the aux belt whilst there and a perished vacuum hose. The timing belt which came off the car didn't look too bad and had no cracking but it definitely was a good few years old. In any case, I can sleep easy knowing there is a good quality belt on the car which should see me out the 5 year interval until 2024
Whilst in the engine bay, I also decided to replace the engine Cam follower, which is a known weak spot on these engines, and with no history I wasn't sure if it had ever been done.
Ordered a genuine 2.0 TFSI cam follower kit, including new bolts and fitted:
This was the state of the old one which came out:
Not bad, but not great either. Definitely worthwhile replacing it.
I also ordered up a revised & improved PCV system for the car and duly fitted that:
I also around the same time fitted brand new NGK R Iridium spark plugs, put some super unleaded in the tank and fitted some Audi red 'R8' coil packs. I could have just gone with normal ones but I want to modify the car, so lets do it!
Annnnnnnd, I also had a brand new RAMAIR induction kit sitting on the shelf, ready for the modifications to begin. As me and Cam had done so much tedious mechanical work, surely a little fun mod wouldn't hurt
The next thing to address was the state of the car. It was absolutely minging, with mould growing everywhere. The car had obviously been smoked in previously and there was rizzla paper, and tabacco smooshed into the carpets.
This was the state of one of the mats after vacuuming all the loose stuff off!
Ended up buying one of these and a wet vac:
And put it to work (well Cam did anyway!)
Whilst Cam was doing the carpets, I went and soaked all the interior plastics in neat APC to try and kill and remove that mould.
Liberal applications of Bissell carpet cleaning solution and copious scrubbing with a hard bristle brush resulted in some of this:
But more importantly after a few hours resulted in some of this:
With the car now running sweetly, and not smelling like a 70's pub I focused my attention to the brakes and suspension as this was pretty much the state of the car:
My intention is to use the car on the road so I didn't want anything too over the top. I did think about just OE replacement shocks and springs as I know that cheap coilovers don't tend to ride too well, but for around the same sort of money as OE you do get into decent coil over territory. I settled on a set of AP coilovers and also ordered brand new top mounts, bearings, drop links and genuine VW bolts to go with.
Fitting these was an absolute nightmare. Every single bolt which could be seized, was seized. Of the 6 top mount bolts, 4 of them refused to come out as the captive nuts had snapped from the mount body so were just spinning in place. These all needed drilling out. Good job I ordered replacement everything really. Also replaced the strut pinch bolts and hub nuts too with all genuine VW items. Coming from Fiat's, Audi bolts are very expensive :lol:
On the plus side, the repeated hammerings from our various impact guns shook a lot of the crud on the underside loose!
Eventually all of the old struts came off the car:
In gearing up for the brake overhaul I also ordered up a bunch of bits from Eurocarparts. A full set of Brembo pads front and rear, and Pagid brake discs front and rear. Unfortunately the stupid courier instead of delivering to my wife's work unit as requested, just dropped the box off outside of a completely different work unit round the corner. Took ages to track it down and this is how we found it:
Not sure if somebody had gone through it but I wasn't best pleased. Luckily despite the packaging being a bit worse for wear, the contents were all fine and still wrapped in plastic. I got the discs and pads fitted and then annoyingly as I removed the old brake pad sensor wire, it completely stripped the connection. A common VW brake sensor fault as the plastic gets brittle with heat, managed to find a company on ebay who sell fresh sensor plugs with 30cm of cable to splice in. Job jobbed.
I also decided that fresh hoses would be a good shout and managed to score a second hand but never opened set of Goodridge braided brake hoses and a braided clutch line for £60 on ebay.
Unfortunately the front hoses despite being for the correct car, just did not fit.
It turned out that Audi changed the types of front brake caliper fitted to the S3 midway through the production cycle, and my particular car ended up with the 345mm brakes, and I required a dual threaded hose, rather than one with a banjo on one end.
Top marks to Goodridge, as I phoned them up, sent them pictures of the hoses and they just said they would make me up a completely fresh set of front hoses free of charge. Annoyingly the tech specs they had from Audi said it was definitely a banjo fitment. I luckily found a post on a VW forum which said the 345mm calipers are exactly the same ones as fitted to the Golf R32 and the tech specs that Goodridge had for those did show them as having a normal thread on both ends. Goodridge as good as their word sent me out R32 hoses and these mounted on absolutely perfectly
I then tried to fit the rear hoses and disaster stuck, the hard line which went from the OSR caliper into the brake hose completely twisted and snapped. Again an issue consummate with age. Luckily again found a company on ebay who make up pre-formed copper replacements so I fitted these to both rear calipers
I also ordered up from the same company, copper replacement hard lines for the front calipers too, so I know its all new, all around. Finally, I flushed the entire system through using a Sealey pressure bleeder and nice fresh Dot 4 fluid. All caliper carrier bolts were replaced with genuine VW items as they are torque to yield bolts so should only ever be used once.
At this point the car was looking something like this:
While the car was up on the ramp, I took the opportunity to do some maintenance to the drivetrain. As I had no service history I had no idea what state the gearbox oil or haldex was going to be in after 120k miles.
I duly ordered up Motul gear 300 fluid for the gearbox, and diffs.
And the correct oil and filter for the rear haldex
The fluid changes here were very easy in comparison to a lot of the other jobs we did on the car. No seized filler or drain plugs, and we smashed it out in a few hours one evening. We also addressed some areas of light surface rust underneath the car and in the wheel arches with Hammerite Karust, and then a spray on underseal with Waxoyl. I also did a few other little jobs like replacing blown number plate bulbs with LED units and blown sidelight bulbs with Philips bluevision halogens. I also sourced some new number plates too as I like the ones with the GB logo and the old ones were starting to delaminate a bit.
The car at this point started to get put back together and I started to think about the wheels to actually get it rolling again. The original S3 alloys that the car came with were in a really bad state, I didn't particularly like the style, and as I mentioned, all the tyres were completely shot. It was going to cost £300 for new tyres and probably £250 to refurb the alloys themselves, so I man-maths my way into a very good condition set of facelifted alloys with new Falken tyres.
A replacement black wing was sourced and bolted on the car. Despite looking a bit like the inbetweeners car, it was now road ready at this point and more importantly ready to go for an MOT.
I booked the car in for its MOT and sat with baited breath whilst it was being scrutinised. The result...
PASS! No advisories
I could hardly believe it either!I pretty much then drove it home and booked it into my local bodyshop to have the dents fixed and the car painted as soon as possible. They booked me in for 2 weeks time...
It was a long 2 weeks to wait so the car sat outside my house with the good side facing outwards. I also gave it a very basic clean to clear off the layer of dust and crud it had accumulated over the previous 10 months:
I also took this opportunity to do a couple of little other jobs like fitting black filler caps to the coolant and washer fluid, and an R8 oil cap.
The Audi symphony radio was working fine but obviously now 12 years old, and as I was wanting to use this car a reasonable amount, I decided to fit an Android 9 Octocore touch screen head unit. This one is made by a company called Xtrons and is specifically designed for the 8p A3/S3 model.
Its completely plug and play and really looks the part. Even the lights on it match the OE Audi red colour. It works really well and comes with stuff like Spotify and Waze integration. Supposedly it also works with the Audi multifunction steering wheel but as I don't have one of those yet I can't confirm.
The last job whilst waiting for the bodyshop was to address the fact that I only had 1 key for the car, which didn't work remotely either. A company called FastKeys based over in Wickford came up trumps and coded me a genuine Audi key the next day for only £150. They also replaced the battery in the old fob free of charge and resurrected that also!
Then I dropped the car off at my local bodyshop. Whilst the car was in their custodianship, I also arranged for the alloys to be completely refurbished and colour changed, and the brake calipers to also be painted.
After 2 weeks I got the call to say the car was ready:
The bodyshop has done a really good job, and they went above and beyond, fixing some areas of rust at the bottom of the replacement door which I hadn't noticed, and getting all the panel lines all tip top.
This brings us basically up until today where I fitted a pair of MY2012 black edition rear lights which I think freshens up the appearance at the back:
I also quickly polished the exhaust tips:
Eventually the exhaust will be replaced with a Milltek item so it doesn't need to be a top job.
Next plans immediately for the car are to:
- Fit the TDI tuning box which I picked up in their black friday sale. Job for tomorrow. Car should be good for around 310-320bhp with this fitted.
- Fit replacement windscreen washer jets. Apparently the heated ones from a Passat are a direct fit with the addition of some spacers and instead of being jets are like the fan spray type for better coverage. I've got these on the shelf so might try and fit them over christmas.
- Fit replacement rear diffuser. As I mentioned someone has fitted a removable towbar to this car in the past and cut the middle out of the rear diffuser. I will remove all the towbar electrics and mounting hardware and fit the replacement diffuser which I picked up last week. I might also plastidip the light grey part of the diffuser gloss black.
- Tint the back windows. I've enquired with a local mobile company to come out and do this over the christmas period.
- Enjoy it
Longer term plans will effectively be a complete Stage 2+ package so HPFP, Intercooler, Milltek exhaust with hi flow cat.
Will keep this updated but I hope you've enjoyed my ramblings!
Thanks,
Ant
They are a hoot to drive on (a wet-ish) track.
Understeer, but get past that and they'll 4 wheel slide / drift like you wouldn't believe.
Not back-end out, just nice throttle controllable forward momentum with way more feel (on the limit) than they were credited with.
Great read. I miss mine.
tvrfan007 said:
Cracking read chap, I do like a nice S3. This is my sort of thread.
Glutton for punishment though by the sounds of it!
Thankyou and I would wholeheartedly agree with you haha!Glutton for punishment though by the sounds of it!
tumble dryer said:
They are a hoot to drive on (a wet-ish) track.
Understeer, but get past that and they'll 4 wheel slide / drift like you wouldn't believe.
Not back-end out, just nice throttle controllable forward momentum with way more feel (on the limit) than they were credited with.
Great read. I miss mine.
Yeah I've not driven it in anger on a track yet but I've taken it out for a B-road shakedown and its surprisingly good. I think the coilovers possibly have helped some what as it was really controllable and just grips.Understeer, but get past that and they'll 4 wheel slide / drift like you wouldn't believe.
Not back-end out, just nice throttle controllable forward momentum with way more feel (on the limit) than they were credited with.
Great read. I miss mine.
Mr Tidy said:
That's a brilliant thread OP. 
I admire your perseverance, and hopefully you'll have loads of fun upgrading and enjoying your S3 - after all that you deserve to!
Thankyou. I am looking forward to enjoying it and having it as a long term project. There is an absolutely massive aftermarket scene for the 8p Audi so I'm enjoying planning on getting it exactly how I want it.I admire your perseverance, and hopefully you'll have loads of fun upgrading and enjoying your S3 - after all that you deserve to!
Cambs_Stuart said:
Good work in getting it sorted and looking so good.
It must have been tempting to break it for parts, so 10/10 for effort.
Yeah it was a very much 'go big or go home' decision, but I'm glad I chose to stick with it as I'm enjoying having it on the fleet. Thanks It must have been tempting to break it for parts, so 10/10 for effort.
Roboticarm said:
Great thread and a great end result
I've got a mate who buys and sells a few cars a year via copart and he's said similar in terms of the hit and miss experience with the staff and cars.
Thanks! Yeah, I get that impression from people who use them frequently too. Luckily I've had more good experiences than bad but considering we drove to the other end of the country for this car, the whole experience was just a bit sour. I would definitely use them again although I might be inclined to not bid on anything at Sandycroft! I've got a mate who buys and sells a few cars a year via copart and he's said similar in terms of the hit and miss experience with the staff and cars.
Rewe said:
What a brilliant thread. It puts many professional journalists to shame!
Very kind, I just like a bit of a story Tyre Smoke said:
Not a fan of these, but that looks great.
Got to ask, is it a keeper? You seem to have sunk a fair chunk of money into it.
Yeah will definitely be keeping it for the foreseeable now. I'm probably sitting around £7000-£7500 including the purchase price of the car. This is quite a bit more than what you could realistically go off and buy one with similar miles and history for, but the car is basically how I want it at this stage, and pretty much everything consumable has now been replaced. Cheers Got to ask, is it a keeper? You seem to have sunk a fair chunk of money into it.
Wilmslowboy said:
Great read - thanks
That is some DIY spannering.
Thanks, both me and Cam have come quite a long way I think. We've invested heavily in tools over the years so will give most jobs a stab now!That is some DIY spannering.
Mikebentley said:
Good work there for someone who started with no skills! As others have said a really nicely written post which despite my lack of interest in the subject I thoroughly enjoyed. Well written and well done with the rebirth of a very tired car.
Many thanks! I wasn't sure if people would be too bored reading my waffle but seems to have gone down well!Xenoous said:
What a top read. Thank you for sharing. Seems like you take real pride in your motors.
Many thanks. Yeah I really do. I'm borderline obsessive I think! A couple of other jobs that I did that I forgot to mention about.
When we first got the car home, we popped the bonnet and couldn't for the life of us get the bonnet to shut again! It kept springing up from the safety catch. Apparently the mechanisms get gunked up with age and stick open. Rather than try to rescue the latch, I obtained a brand new Audi part and fitted that curing the issue.
Some months later we had the opposite issue and we couldn't get the bonnet open. The cable went 'ping' as it was pulled one day, resulting in a very loose handle in the cabin and a bonnet which was decidedly shut. A couple of my mates came over and between one of us pulling the catch and the others banging on the bonnet and trying to pull it up. It eventually to our relief came free and turned out that one of the mounting tabs right on the end of the cable where it attaches to the bonnet latch mechanism had sheered clean off. I promptly fitted a brand new genuine Audi bonnet cable!
Small thing but when doing the brake job, all bleed nipples were replaced too. Annoyingly the S3 bleed screws I ordered didn't fit the fronts (much like the hoses!) so I ordered R32 ones instead and those fitted fine. Must remember to order R32 brake bits for this car!
Cheers, Ant.
When we first got the car home, we popped the bonnet and couldn't for the life of us get the bonnet to shut again! It kept springing up from the safety catch. Apparently the mechanisms get gunked up with age and stick open. Rather than try to rescue the latch, I obtained a brand new Audi part and fitted that curing the issue.
Some months later we had the opposite issue and we couldn't get the bonnet open. The cable went 'ping' as it was pulled one day, resulting in a very loose handle in the cabin and a bonnet which was decidedly shut. A couple of my mates came over and between one of us pulling the catch and the others banging on the bonnet and trying to pull it up. It eventually to our relief came free and turned out that one of the mounting tabs right on the end of the cable where it attaches to the bonnet latch mechanism had sheered clean off. I promptly fitted a brand new genuine Audi bonnet cable!
Small thing but when doing the brake job, all bleed nipples were replaced too. Annoyingly the S3 bleed screws I ordered didn't fit the fronts (much like the hoses!) so I ordered R32 ones instead and those fitted fine. Must remember to order R32 brake bits for this car!
Cheers, Ant.
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