True testament to a proper owner....well done.
Lots of time and effort spent, and well worth it too I would say....yet again well done!
Thank you: it's beginning to feel a bit of an uphill struggle TBH. In retrospect I rather wish I'd kept Lasi and gone for a better engine and a suspension rebuild. I certainly wish I had indeed done what all my instinct told me to do when I saw the car: turn around and come home with an empty trailer. If judging it on £££'s, there is absolutely no doubt the car should have been broken.
But I've been here time and again and you always get through this phase, one way or another. For all the above, it does look pretty well in the workshop. I'm trying very hard to come in under £1000 all in, all sorted despite the flow of brick-bats that have been thrown at the project.
If I can do that, I should have a nicely spec'ed car in a good strong colour in a good, bright usable condition. I'm trying not to think of the hours which have got completely out of control
. I'll regard it as a life lesson: if your gut says walk away, walk away. Just because you 'can' fix something doesn't mean you 'should' fix something. The saver here is that these cars are just so lovely to work on: money no object engineering. I love finding out how to diagnose and DIY my way through issues and there's no doubt there is a deep sense of satisfaction to rescue a car and turn it around.
Just to say, I'm listing all the costs to illustrate that if you're being 100% honest with yourself how even the most attractive looking proposition can quickly run away from you. No labour costs here either and it's perfectly realistic to say I've got 40-60 hours in this. TBF, if you used a specialist they would work a LOT faster, but then again they couldn't try a cheap fix either.
That's not to say another car won't have a variety of unexpected expenses either: almost all will have something. I will at least know this car pretty well going forward.
Anyway ... costs to date that I can remember:
Car £250
Wheels: £100
Fuel: £110
Valeting materials: £10
Rear springs: £33
Key cutting (no chips, manual locking only): £25
Rear bump stops (pair): £14
Various paints / abrasives from stock: £10.
MOT: £37
Air freshener: £3
Parts taken from Lasi (price reduction to dealer as result of): £100
Timing belt (bare), Dayco: £35
Oil Filter: £4
Oil let's say roughly £25.
Air filter: £10
Deproman wiper arm rebuild: £35
Deproman check-strap rebuild x1: £25
Deproman electronic services: £35
Postage with returns for above: £22
Old set eBay mudflaps: £5
Rear window repair: £0
Webasto exhaust repair: £0
Club regalia £28
(Less theoretical value of spare 15"'s (£75)
Running total at this point: £841
Still to go:
Wiper blade.
OSS repair (will abandon and disable if gets out of hand, which I really don't want to do: this will almost certainly result in selling the car). *Adam and Paul have kindly offered advice if / when needed: thanks chaps .*
Boot trim replacement. (in hand thanks to Clackers)
Centre dash vent replacement. Wanted
Right hand dash replacement. (Clackers?)
Climate control repair and gas (can re-gas here).
Immobilisor repair(?) and re-program. Need advice to re-start immobiliser and program two donor keys. Help wanted due to lock-down.
Source key internals. (Clackers?)
Fancy but not essential: luxuries if you like, and over and above my theoretical £1K.
Ideally some suspension refresh.
Ideally some wheel refurb (which I'll DIY).
Ideally bonnet repaint (which will be nearly free as I supply regular restoration re-paint projects to a local body-shop), plus tiny patch corrosion to top of RH rear door.
I'd like a set of 17"'s (Sport or RS Rep, probably the latter actually) to offset that dark blue, but these could stay with me for future A2's should this one go at some point.
A low grade DIS: fancy seeing instantaneous MPG.
Cruise (I retro-fitted this to my Passat which wasn't too bad at all).
Speaker upgrade for the Symphony
Bluetooth: I have an old Parrot (CK3000 possibly?) here that I'm hoping will talk to the Symphony.
Still pondering a full 3 / 10 / unlimited VCDS of some flavour as can't imagine I'll ever be without a VAG product. Message me if you're selling.
Quite fancy some factory roof bars.
