Bringing back to life an 18 year old Audi A8 D2 part 10 - OEM+ mods

This post will cover various oem+ mods added to the car

The first quick and easy mod i found is D3 rear boot lid gas struts, they are chrome and look really cool especially if the car is black. I used Febi ones from autodoc:

Next, a full set of D2 diesel sound proofing add ons: extra bonnet wing seals, diesel engine under tray with extra sound proofing, diesel front axle surrounds and gearbox undertray which only came with diesel d2's in europe. This idea was inspired by https://forum.a8parts.co.uk/showthread.php?t=6546

Stock D2 undertray and diesel one with extra sound deadning (left)

Diesel gearbox undertray fitted:

Diesel shaft covers:

Fitted:

Diesel engine bay seals:

Before and after fitting:

Rear right boot divider was replaced with a proper, very hard to find flat cover:

Next, I managed to get my hands on a set of comfort front and back seats. I prefer them because they don't have bolster that stick out and force the driver to be supper skinny. I'm very fat.

First of all, both front and rear seat were transported to the workshop. Pic below shows a Kia Sportage NQ5 with a boot full of Audi seats:

The seats were unpacked and checked for functionality using a scrap piece of loom connected to a 12v power supply so it all can be ran out of the car:

The only function that didn't work were the electric headrests. So i took the seats apart and removed the mechanism:

It turned out that the drive shaft inside the bowden has shortened over time, so all i had to do is shorten it by 1cm and it started working:

Headrest mechanism all working ok now:

Next the seats were cleaned to a nice matte finish:

To my surprise during the cleaning, the passenger seat also came with seat memory which is a rare option, so now i had the added task of making the passenger memory work..

I started by souring the correct connector and pre-making a little loom for it:

I also had to source 1 more new memory switch with a * instead of 4. According to Elsawin wiring diagrams, if a D2 had passenger memory, the driver side switch had a * instead of 4 which allows for the passenger seat to be controlled from the driver's switch allowing to for the seat to recall memory #4 on the passenger seat. I modified this so that also the rear electric headrests are moved all the way down when this happens. This way at a press of a button the whole of interior can be put into its 'default' position at a press of a button.

Having soured the switches, i took the passenger door card to run all the wiring through, it all had to be ran through the rubber boot which wasn't easy:

Then, i had to poke a hole in the door card to feed the connector to the switch:

And here it is coming out the other end and the switch plugged in and installed:

Then i ran the rest of the loom just like at the factory:

And then finally to under the seat. There was no VCDS coding or anything required as its an old analog system:

The rear seats were a bit more difficult, i didn't have the loom for it, just a cut off of the old one.

Luckily my friend in Devon had a whole complete loom of a car with the rear heated seats option, which I could borrow to copy it.

It just had to be extracted from this:

Here it is:

A few weeks later, i managed to copy this and make my own loom:

Then, the wiring had to be ran in the car, i don't have may pictures of it, but here's how the extra loom is ran inside the car. Instead of going straight from the boot to the rear seats, it goes like this:

I took very few pics of the whole process but here's what i got. I started by tapping into power from the correct fuse holder in the boot of the car:

Some of the loom stays at the back to connect to the seats:

Here's the loom fed back to the adjusters by the vents, for testing purposes i didn't strip the interior just yet to have it all done just like at the factory:

Once i tested the seats and they worked ok i took the interior out to run the cables properly and finalise everything:

This was way too much work, for a car that doesn't have much space for rear passengers, especially with me as the driver!

I also added a radio controlled clock which automatically sets time and date:

Notice the little antenna icon symbol :

Another upgrade the car received was a complete set of pre-facelift interior carpets. They are thicker and softer to touch compared to facelift cars, but I forgot to take any pictures of the interior carpet swap 😦

Part 11: