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I bought a flagship Audi with 200k+ miles that is old enough to vote - AKA laugh at my poor decision making skills

39K views 296 replies 78 participants last post by  Iroczgirl 
#1 ·
I've always thought that D2s looked absolutely amazing, but could never bring myself to consider one because of the perceived risk of buying an older car that was so expensive new and the cost of ownership. Then a local friend of mine bought one last year with a bad motor. And another with a bad transmission. Suddenly, having access to a potential parts car because a real possibility...

So I started passively looking at D2s again. Looked at one locally that was enormously overpriced and not in amazing shape. I didn't buy it, but driving it made me want one even more.

Then Osin34 (Buddy) mentioned in a thread on here that he was selling his. Only problem... he lives 1,000 miles from me.

So I hemmed and hawed about it and would go re-read the whole ad every few weeks thinking about it and the logistics of getting it home. Looked at another D2 in the meantime, but ultimately passed on it as well. Finally just bit the bullet and sent Buddy a message, asked a bunch of questions, and made a deal. My son is 9, and I figured it would be a good father/son experience for the two of us to fly up and drive the car back. So that's what we did. Took a longer way home to go through Vermont, Massachusetts, CT, NYC, Philly, and DC on our way home. Total trip was just over 1,100 miles.

So we got on a plane.


We flew up to Albany, NY and Buddy picked us up there since there wasn't an airport of any decent size closer to his house in West Rutland, VT. I had checked the weather before we left SC and it was supposed to be cold and raining. Imagine my surprise when we landed and the pilot said it was 32 and snowing. We aren't used to that in SC.


Got back to Buddy's house and took a look at the car, looked at all the documentation, and signed the papers. Stopped to get some dinner on our way to the hotel that I had booked for the night. Looked through a lot of the documentation for the car before going to bed. It was bought as a CPO car by the 2nd owner.


Next morning we woke up to this.


This place was right down the street from our hotel and looked interesting, so we stopped here for breakfast before starting out on our journey. It was FANTASTIC.
http://vtsugarandspice.com/


Passed this cool, little bridge on our way out to I-91 and stopped for a picture.


Made it to Massachusetts, then Connecticut. (I stopped taking pictures of the signs after this because some of them were not particularly convenient to stop next to)



Drove through the Lincoln Tunnel in NYC on our way to Philly, where we made a real quick stop (after everything touristy was closed, unfortunately). Then stopped for dinner in Baltimore before making it to our hotel for the evening just north of DC. Got up the next morning and did the tourist thing in DC. My son had never been before, and he thought it was cool.


I neglected to take a picture of the first fuel stop in North Haven CT, but we stopped in Gainesville VA for our second fuel stop, and our third (and final) fuel stop was in Gaffney SC. Averaged 21.5 mpg on the trip. Not too bad.




That was almost 2 months ago now... I'll try to keep this thread updated as time goes on. :thumbup:
 
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#283 ·
Got the subframe swap all finished up and went to get an alignment. Then made an appointment with my friend for him to clean up the car again.


Then... sold it. It's just been sitting in my driveway way more than I've been driving it lately. I've only put 1500 miles on it in the last year. I mentioned that a local friend has two of these that he bought, one with a bad motor and one with a bad transmission that he intended to combine into one nice car. He got them both apart and life got in the way and he just hasn't had time to get them back together. I mentioned selling it to him and he decided that he'd buy it. So I'll still see it regularly and it'll be in good hands. Last picture I took of it.
 
#190 ·
Realized I never followed up with the finished pictures. He said anything more would have been a lot more work for marginal gains. Spent a total of 22 or 23 hours on my car. I'm thrilled with how it came out.


 
#249 ·
Got the car all back together and on the ground.


Decided to go ahead and replace the front tie rod ends. Didn't realize they had isolators built into them. From what I hear, that's common on Audis, but it's not something I'm used to since I've always had VWs rather than Audis.


Then took it for an alignment this morning. The guy said everything was so far out of whack that he basically had to do the alignment twice. Once to get it into the ballpark and then again to get it into spec.
 
#140 ·
Wife and I went for a quick getaway last weekend. Seemed like a great opportunity to take this car. It's still just waiting in line for it's turn for a bunch of work.


 
#224 ·
So I opted to not dive into the sunroof just yet and instead, decided to attack the rear subframe.
First, I treated any surface rust on the replacement subframe with POR-15.


Then moved on to pulling the car apart. After removing a lower control arm, you can get a much better view of the hole. The other side didn't have a hole yet, but the metal was very thin right there.


Broke off a camber adjustment bolt on the passenger side.


But did ultimately get it all apart.



Started on the reassembly. There's a heat shield on top of the subframe that prevents heat from the diff from making it's way into the cabin of the car that is bolted in place in the four corners. Both of the heat shields (current subframe and replacement subframe) have no bolt holes anymore because they corroded away. Since I couldn't get a replacement anytime soon (3 week lead time to order it), my options were to either leave it out, which I didn't think was ideal, or get creative for how to keep it in place. This isn't my finest work, but I opted to simply use duct tape to secure the heat shield in place. Seemed like the least bad option of the two.



While it's all apart, I figured now was a good time to replace some bushings. The rear diff support bushings are NLA, so I simply filled all the voids with black RTV. Seemed like a better idea than just leaving it?


At this point, the replacement subframe is loosely bolted in place, but that's about as far as I've gotten. I do have replacement bushings for the lower control arms that need to get put in. I ordered them back in June and they finally got here last week, so that was good timing. More to come as I slowly get it back together...
 
#198 ·
Thanks!

I have so many new parts sitting around waiting to go on the car, but just haven't had time or motivation to do it. I have a set of A8 spindles and D3 brakes to put on the front. I got in the pre-order for D2 specific 034 adjustable upper control arms. I already have a set of SPC arms sitting on a shelf, but I would rather have the 034 arms as they are designed to go on the D2. Also still have a set of european, bi-xenon headlights that I need to finish cleaning up and swap in. And not to mention, 80% of the parts for a manual swap.

I did swap out the rear pads a few weeks ago. Replaced all the slider pins and slider pin boots at the same time. Same slider pins as a mk4 VW, so I had a few in a bolts bucket, luckily. Also noticed a rust hole in the rear subframe above one of the rear control arm mounts. Guess it's good that I bought both subframes out of an S8 that we got into our local junkyard last year. Need to replace all the bushings in the rear end anyway, so that'll be a good time to do it.
 
#204 ·
I have a set of A8 spindles and D3 brakes to put on the front.
Finally started on this a couple days ago. Got out the brakes and cleaned them up, then started taking apart the driver front. Both pinch bolts (control arms and tie rod) were stuck, but I managed to get both out and get the spindle off.


Also noticed this nice hole in the front subframe. Going to pretend it's not there for now.


A friend came back a month or so back, too. Code is for a cam position sensor. Luckily, they're the same as any 1.8t, so they aren't hard to source.
 
#222 ·
Don't you put that evil on me, Ricky Bobby

Still have a few bigger things on the to-do list for this car. One of them was taking apart the rear deck to fix an annoying rattle. Free time + boredom is usually a bad combination and can lead to things like "let me just start taking it apart even though I don't have a plan".

So I started taking out bolts and screws.


So all of these pieces are supposed to be glued together... and aren't. Need to clean up the old glue and get some new glue and then do the gluing thing.
Also, this seems like a GREAT time to replace the bulbs in the third brake lights since it looks like a disaster to try to do any other time, so I'll stop and pick up some of those bulbs, too.


Also, I have no idea why I keep finding duck tape everywhere in this car. It was even under the rear deck, so I'm guessing somebody has had this out in the past.
Guess I can update this since the thread got bumped.

I did a whole bunch of glue, clamp, wait, glue, clamp, wait, etc. and got it all glued back together and then got it back into the car.




Of course, I took zero pictures of it back in the car, haha.

Next on my to-do list on the car is figure out why the sunroof doesn't work correctly. It sits wrong in the home position and will go up, but not back. I'm not looking forward to that.
 
#232 ·
Got some more work done over the last week/weekend. When I took it apart, I told myself I wasn't going to bother cleaning the differential and would just put it back in. Somehow that turned into "I'm going to spend 4 hours cleaning this" 🤣
It's pretty evident that Audi assembled everything onto the rear subframe and then bolted it into the car. I've been doing it the other way and I've been surprised just how many bolts I can't get to. Inner, upper control arm bolts, front differential mount bolts, etc. I'm mostly done bolting stuff to the rear subframe that are ready to go in now. Need to take the lower control arms somewhere to have the larger bushing pressed out and a new one pressed in.


Got one rear spindle all apart, cleaned up, and ready to press in new bushings where the control arm connects. Also replacing wheel bearings because the old ones had quite a bit of play in them.

 
#254 ·
Finally decided to dig into the sunroof to see why it wouldn't work and didn't sit correctly. After taking off the side covers, I see this first thing. Broken parts and somebody tracing around the adjustment bolts. Somebody definitely had this apart at some point in the past.


So I pulled out all the adjustment screws and took the glass out to try to get a better look at everything and see what could be done.


Figured out what all was broken and went inside to look up replacements. Everything is NLA. So I just bolted it all back together, adjusted the glass to sit correctly when closed, and left the sunroof switch unhooked. Not much else I can do now. I would buy all my cars without a sunroof if I had the option. I don't ever use them. I might see if I can get parts off of a car that somebody's parting out, but otherwise, it'll probably just stay like this.
 
#260 ·
Reminds me of my E39. Didn't touch the sunroof for years. Open it one day. Go to close it, and hear crack CRACK as it slid into place. It was level, didn't leak, and I never touched it again.

I hate sunroofs.
 
#262 ·
Reminds me of my E39. Didn't touch the sunroof for years. Open it one day. Go to close it, and hear crack CRACK as it slid into place. It was level, didn't leak, and I never touched it again.

I hate sunroofs.
Last time I opened the sunroof on my E46 it sucked the cover back into the headliner, which I had to fish out. Then when I went to close it I heard some very unwelcome noises. But it seated correctly and it doesn't leak.

So with that being said, I'll likely never touch those buttons again. :ROFLMAO::ROFLMAO:
 
#263 ·
I'm glad that I'm not the only one that hates sunroofs. I would buy every car without a sunroof, if I could.

With the exception of my bus, haha. Assuming I can ever get around to it, I will eventually cut a sunroof and skylights into that.
 
#275 ·
Got most of the way through replacing the front subframe this weekend. Old one out.


Just minor surface rust.


One jack holding up the transmission, one jack holding up the engine, and then a support bar on top to provide stability.



Replacement is bolted in place at this point, but I still need to finish tightening bolts before I can throw the wheels back on and call it done.
 
#102 ·
Time for another update.

For whatever reason, D2's don't have a standard low side A/C pressure fitting, which I think I mentioned before because I rented two manifold sets from AutoZone to charge the A/C last time. I picked up one of the adapters needed for the low side fitting so that I could actually properly charge the system. It has a small leak somewhere that I'll have to deal with at some point, but for now, I went ahead and pulled it down, vacuumed out the system and re-charged it.


Then started out on a road trip. Goal was to spend a day in Daytona Beach for a VW show at the speedway, then spend a day in St Augustine for another VW show at the School for Deaf and Blind.

Stopped in Savannah, GA on my way down to eat dinner and drive around the city for a little bit. Savannah is such a cool town.



Then got down to Daytona Beach.




Took A1A from Daytona to St Augustine, and then spent some time in St Augustine. Taking A1A almost doubled the time spent going from Daytona to St Augustine, but it was worth it IMO. It was a cool drive.
I didn't notice that the tint at the top of the windshield gave the picture a unique look to the sky until after a couple people commented on how interesting the sky looked. :laugh:



Rolled over 228k miles while I was in St Augustine.


After leaving St Augustine, I continued on A1A up to Jacksonville and took the St. John's River Ferry since I'd never been on a ferry before.


Then just took the interstate back home. All in all, it was around 1,200 miles over the course of a long weekend. It was a lot of fun. The D2 is a tank on road trips. It's so comfortable to drive. You'll get 4 hours into the trip and not even think about it at all.
 
#154 ·
My earliest memory of a D2 was in the middle of the night on a freeway in nowhere, Florida, late 90s early 00s sometime. I was driving a modified compact and hustling pretty good, when I saw this violet/blue hue come up in the passing lane. The lighting was kind of captivating, and this low, black, brick passed me like I was standing still. I looked down at the speedo and I was going 85. Been a fan of them ever since. Love the build so far.
 
#175 ·
Small update. Threw on some 19" Peelers. Friend of mine said it makes the car look like an E38. Tires are slightly oversized, but I love it.




Also dropped the car off last night with a friend who owns a detailing business for a full on paint correction and ceramic coating. Hoping it turns out well!
 
#177 ·
Also dropped the car off last night with a friend who owns a detailing business for a full on paint correction and ceramic coating. Hoping it turns out well!
Got a few teaser shots from him. Here's one of them.
 
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