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Like many others, I've trawled the classifieds late at night/whilst in the office/sat on the loo, playing the game of "what would I buy if I had X spare cash sat in the bank", drooling over machinery that once cost the first buyer 4 to 5 times my annual salary, with leather, wood, V8 power and a sound system better than the one in my house.
It was this time last year, high on the delirium of gastric flu and whilst watching Ronin, that I idly scrolled through the Audi section of Pistonheads and came across S8 WLT, advertised for £3995 a mere 5 miles from my house.
Once the hallucinations and vomiting had stopped, the urge for an S8 was momentarily waylaid...until the subject came up of snowboarding holidays, four wheel drive and 4 lads in a luxury barge.
Less than 48 hours later and I was the proud owner of this 1998 Ming Blue Audi S8 with cream leather/alcantara interior and all the toys of a late 1990s luxobarge.
Amazingly, for the £3500 that I eventually paid, everything worked (even the sat nav).
The dreaded gearbox/transfer box work had been undertaken by the previous owner less than 15k miles before at a cost of around £4,000 which was deeply reassuring, but I knew that a cambelt would be due under my stewardship.
A year later and I have spent over £4000 on major maintenance items for the S8, my annual mileage is set to double due to a change of circumstance and I can no longer afford to fuel this CEO level hooligan mobile.
In the last year I have carried out work to rectify most if not all of the issues owners experience with the 4.2 engined S8:
A full cambelt service, including the waterpump, and all of the tensioners - this was done using genuine Audi parts.
A full oil cooler rebuild - a know weakness, where the left side of the block was getting a generous rustproofing from the slowly seeping oil - this was stripped, cleaned and rebuilt with genuine Audi parts.
In tank fuel pump replacement - tank assembly stripped, cleaned and new genuine Seimens pump fitted - take a look at the youtube videos of this...you can thank me later.
All coil packs replaced with genuine Beru items (OEM), spark plug connectors replaced with genuine Audi items and the spark amplifiers replaced with genuine Febi Bilstein (OEM).
Faulty injector replaced - genuine Bosch/Audi.
Catalytic convertors (new aftermarket) and lambda probes (genuine Bosch/Audi) replaced.
SatNav updated with latest version of UK maps (2007)
In addition, I treated it to a set of Continental Sport Contact 5s in November last year, lots of tread left and they grip like a gorilla.
I have a full set of receipts to backup all work done, including the stamped up service history and additional documentation from previous owners.
Fuel consumption can be better than you would expect, on a 500 mile round trip it returned 32.5mpg average and did the whole thing on 1 1/4 tanks of super unleaded...around town you see high teens, combined has been 23mpg on average.
Including the purchase of the car, that's over £8,000 spent in the last 12 months, and I fully expect to lose a huge chunk of this (Chris Harris, you think your Ferrari Man Maths went wrong? Come talk to me and I'll show you how to properly lose money).
Tax expires at the end of July 2013, I will be renewing this for 6 months.
The MOT is due on the 14th December 2013.
More than happy to negotiate/discuss, please contact me with any questions.
For reference you can easily fit two people in the boot, but three is a squeeze. Equally, two full sets of golf clubs will fit, but probably not at the same time as the bodies.
Car is located in Chorleywood, Herts. (WD3).
You can reach me on 07889 749 748.
Cheers
Chris
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