2003 Audi S8
40v 4.2L V8 360hp
5spd Auto
Avus Silver exterior, Oxblood interior
Sport seats and pretty much every option minus the solor sunroof
Got inspired by a few people talking about the forums recently so I decided to FINALLY post a project thread about my S8 that I bought over two years ago now...
Back in 2017, I knew I was going to sellback my 2010 Toaureg TDI since they were offering a stupid deal. I had recently completed the 1.8T swap into my 95 90qs, but having gotten a very large Great Dane the prior year I was yearning for something larger. I had always lusted after the D2 S8 so I started to hunt for one. Coming from a black Touareg and black 90, my color preferences were simple...not black! I then discovered the 2003 series of Audi Exlusive S8's. In 2003, Audi imported 300 S8's into the USA and did 100 of each of 3 exclusive color combos. Having loved the Mouton red leather interior of my Coupe GT as soon as I saw the Oxblood red leather interior with an Avus silver exterior I knew that was going to be my top pick. I would have also graciously accepted one of the nice greens or metallic reds. I planned to have the Toaureg for a few months more, so I decided to put the 1.8T B4 up on Bring a Trailer and see how much of my S8 budget I could make up. It didn't end up being as much as I had hoped, but it was still a good portion. When shopping I specifically wanted something with a freshly rebuilt transmission, or one nice enough but cheap enough to do a 6spd conversion. I had actually had a line on a 6spd swapped one at the start of the year, but I didn't sell my 90q quite fast enough. The 6MT S8 actually got posted on BAT a few days prior to my 90qs. So alas I had to keep looking.
A few weeks later I connected with a fellow QuattroWorld member out of Denver. He used to have his and hers D2 S8's. He previously had sold his and replaced it with a W12 D3 A8, his wife got an SUV , and the 'hers' S8 got their son through college. His son graduated and his wife gave him permission to persue getting a Panamera Turbo, thus his W12 D3 and the now spare D2 S8 had to go. As he was planning on getting the S8 ready for sale the prior year, the transmission started to act up after 180k miles (which is pretty good). He decided to ship the car to Gabor/Tozo in Chicago and have him rebuild the trans just to sell the car. They were the 2nd owners and kept the car very well maintained at the dealer and had a massive stack of receipts for the car.
The car was originally just out of my price range, but after mulling it over and a little negotiating I knew I couldn't pass it up. I sent a deposit and booked a one-way plane ticket from Seattle to Denver in April 2017. When I got it, the car had 183k miles and was mostly stock with the exception of a lip spoiler in the rear and an RSNE swap.
Picked up the car early in the morning and headed to Rocky Mountain National Park before heading out of town. The road through the park wasn't open just yet, but you could drive around a little in the park so I did.
Kept powering through back towards Seattle and stopped off in Twin Falls, ID. Despite having driven through several times on the way to BBQ, I had never stopped at the bridge over the snake river. Saw a few people base jump off while I was there which was pretty cool.
Shortly after making it home, had to take a family photo with the B4. The buyer on BAT went on a business trip shortly after winning, so he paid and had me store it for a few weeks. So I ended up buying the S8 before he even picked up the B4.
Just going to say, I like seeing the B4 and CGT in your garage
Re: RONINS8: Project Luxobarge
Posted: Fri Aug 23, 2019 12:33 pm
by mr_aj_johnson
I've always wanted a d2 s8 as well, cool car.
Sent from my SM-G950U using Tapatalk
Re: RONINS8: Project Luxobarge
Posted: Sat Aug 24, 2019 12:20 am
by the german
Shorter commute = manual swap time?
Re: RONINS8: Project Luxobarge
Posted: Sat Aug 24, 2019 1:18 am
by alxdgr8
Circa September 2017
Hover mode engaged! Car desperately needed some new brakes. Found some crazy deals (50-75% off) on Amazon for some EBC stuff. Got some EBC USR front rotors and EBC Yellows all the way around. Now if I were to do it all again, I'd probably choose a different pad because the Yellows dust like a bitch! They stop great, are quiet, and don't require much of a warmup but the wheels are covered after one stop.
Car also got some ST Coilovers. They ride great and are firmer than stock but still very much DD friendly, I've been very happy with them. And being in the NW, I don't need to worry about corrosion as much, so ST was a good compromise over the full stainless KW's.
FYI, this single-sided strut compressor (knockoff of the VAG tool) made this job possible. Pretty much impossible to do the rears unless you drop the subframe or you have the single-sided compressor. Lots of cheap knockoffs that work well on Amazon.
Found these TSW's on Ebay for a pretty cheap price ($420 shipped for the set). Thought they might look good, but after installing them they never quite grew on me. I didn't like the contour that the spokes had, would've been nicer if they had been flatter. 255 was also pretty beefy on the 8.5" They stayed on for a few months and I sold them for a pretty penny more than I paid.
Found these from the same seller on ebay and ended up scoring them for even cheaper ($320 shipped). Wider with a more aggressive offset and Rotary Forged so they were even lighter than the 8.5's that they replaced. Same 255/40R19. I liked these wheels better, but would've preferred the silver option they made, but I couldn't get those for stupid cheap. Kept these on for quite a while though.
I'm an acoustical engineer by profession, so I've got a pretty high standard for what I like in an exhaust sound. I wanted something louder than stock, but not something that ruins the nice comfy essence that is the S8. I wanted something slightly louder inside and out, but drowning on the highway was not allowed. Especially since the S8 has pretty short gearing with the stock auto trans.
Exhaust setup #1 = stock...too quiet
Exhaust setup #2 = replaced the stock H-pipe with an x-pipe and swapped out the rear muffler with a B5S4 Milltek rear muffler that I scored for cheap locally.
End result, WAYYYYY too much drone pretty much all the time. This lasted maybe a week.
My shitty TIG welding I know.... I really need to take some time and practice, along with getting a band saw and belt sander for proper fitup.
Exhaust setup #3 - dual flex pipes, X-pipe, dual 12" Vibrant bottle resonators, Magnaflow x-flow muffler for the center resonator, B5S4 Milltek rear muffler
Quickly converted to this setup after the previous one which was way too annoying. This was quite a bit better, but had an odd resonance between 1500-2200 rpm. It wasn't a problem on the highway, but on my daily commute on city streets it was pretty annoying, especially going up the hills under low RPM and high load which is pretty abundant in Seattle. I did keep this setup on for quite a while since I didn't want to mess with it. Looking back, doing a y-pipe to a large single pipe would be way easier. Getting two pipes to line up all the way back with multiple mufflers and sight straight in the rear is a huge PITA!!!! Lots of shitty welding to fill gaps...
Drove the car from Seattle to Vegas for Battle Born Quattro. Teamed up with my buddy Ryan in his Mustang GT and Todd with his immaculate CQ.
Ate up the miles, and the gas...average was around 20-21mpg pure highway due to the high speed limits and lack of a 6th gear in the auto. Found 150mph on a closed stretch of road in Nevaxico. Could hardly tell besides the bad door seal getting a little loud around 120. Thought she was topped out around 140 and then it shifted into 5th
Wheels setup #4 (the winter setup) = 18x8 ET? Team Dynamics Motorsport with Blizzak LM60
Decent snow tire, not super impressed but they were cheap on craigslist. Same for the wheels, they had multipel bends that I had to have straightened. Rattle canned them silver and modded some Audi center caps to fit.
This is great! I also always wanted one and the oxblood is killer
Re: RONINS8: Project Luxobarge
Posted: Sat Aug 24, 2019 3:03 pm
by alxdgr8
March 2018, about a month before my wedding
My wife and I were heading to dinner, sitting at a stop light and the car changed idle which was odd, then as I started to pull away from the light the car was misfiring very badly and had zero power. Limped it the few miles home.
Got around to doing a compression test and found bad news Guessing the others were low due to fuel washing the walls since I drove it about 5 miles while misfiring.
Wasn't going to mess with it before the wedding so it got parked. Originally planned on just buying a beater to get me by a few months, but my soon-to-be-wife and I decided that we'd spend more and get something nicer/newer that would replace her Ford Fiesta once I fixed the S8. Ended up with a 2007 A4 2.0T TIP Avant with just over 100k miles and a recent timing belt service.
After letting the car sit for 3 months I finally got around to pulling it into the garage and starting the investigation. I had also sourced a used S6 motor in case the engine was screwed. Also contemplated doing a 6spd swap if I did end up pulling the motor. My commute had changed since I had bought the car. I originally wanted the auto since my commute was 45 minutes in stop and go traffic, but had recently changed to about 15 minutes of city streets, so a manual wouldn't be bad.
Pulled the valve cover and found out why I no longer had compression. Center valve spring had broken and the valve would no longer close. After some searching and asking around this isn't completely uncommon and has actually happened to a few other S8s. The S8 has higher lift than the other 5v heads, and the center intake spring specifically has the highest lift. The other people who have had this happen also had the center intake break. Haven't seen it happen on A8 or 1.8T, but I'm guessing that's because they don't have the lift that the S8 does.
Decided I'd pull the head to see if the bore was still good. I had a spare A6 4.2L sitting around that I could salvage a head from if the block was still good. Thankfully the valve didn't break off and was actually still spinning in the guide, just bent and no spring.
Amazing what quality oil can do for an engine. Top is the original S8 head with 190k miles, but with documented oil changes with Mobil 1 its whole life. Bottom is the lower mileage but unknown oil head from the A6 that I swapped on.
I originally thought I could salvage the rocker from cylinder 2 and just replace the hydraulic lifter/compensator, but unfortunately the rocker had been damaged. S8 and A8 rockers have different part numbers and new ones are insanely expensive! I set the A6 one side by side with the S8 one, and from all of my measurements they appear to be the same with the exception of the two tabs sticking off of the A6 ones. I'm guessing with the higher lift of the S8 ones these tabs might have some interference with the head casting, so I carefully took the A6 rocker and ground the tabs off. This provided me with a as far as I could measure a comparable S8 rocker.
Since I had failed to do the starter while I had the oil cooler off in the winter to replace the plastic pipe with a Bufkin metal one, I decided I should do it while I had the head off. Otherwise they're a major PITA to replace.
My timing belt/waterpump/etc were only about 30k miles old, but since I had everything apart I redid everything anyways to make her good for years to come.
Of course I couldn't help myself from collecting some parts while it was down. Scored some euro bixenon headlights and euro amber turn signals (US are red). I eventually swapped to '97 USA A8 lights though as those are amber and keep the small side running light that the euros don't have.
While I had the engine apart I had to do some powdercoating to clean things up. Did this red/silver vein powder, which I was hoping would turn out a little more red, but came out kind of pinkish which ends up being a good match for the oxblood.
The first D2 S8 in the world (that I can find) with the updated D3/Touareg style valve covers and engine covers. Had this crazy idea before the engine went, and slowly collected the parts. Really love how it turned out, there's way too much plastic on the original D2 engine.
It always bugged me that Audi put covers over everything, but then for some reason stopped on the driver's side and didn't cover the coolant and PS reservoirs. Found that Audi did make some for a V6 TDI engined D2 and ordered them from Audi Tradition via Issam. Finally completed the look I was going for!
Right valve cover: 077103476T
Left valve cover: 077103475AA
Cut D2 timing covers…or use these D3 ones:
Left 077109117B
Right 077109118D
Fuel Rail: 077133681AA
Timing belt covers:
Upper Right 077109124B
Upper Left 077109123F
Lower 077109121C
Engine Covers
Front 077103925E
Rear 077103926A
Coil conduit
Red Right 4E0971824S
Red Left 4E0971824AA
D3 coil packs (I used the black Touareg ones since I didn't like how the red ones didn't match the coil conduit or my powdercoat on the valve covers)
077905115AA
D3 valve cover gaskets
Also a good time to change the valve cover bolts to make sure things seal properly.
077103831E (x20)
077103831D (x4)
D3 injector conduits don't work with the D2 injector connectors.
D2 injectors, FPR, and lines are plug-and-play with the D3 fuel rail.
It looks like it's possible to use the D2 rear timing covers as the D3 ones look like cut D2 ones. But it's probably just easier to buy the D3 ones. If you were really careful it might be possible to remove the D2 valve covers and cut the D2 rear timing covers on the car, but that's probably pretty risky. This swap is best done while performing a timing service since the cam gears need to come off to remove the rear timing covers.
Driver's side D3 rear timing cover needs to be drilled to attach the cylinder head timing belt roller.
On the D2, the wiring for the coils and injectors are in one harness that runs between the two. For the D3 they're split because the D3 coil wiring comes from below. Thus you need to cut back the insulation on the D2 coil/injector harness and fan it out into an 'upper' and 'lower' harness. I was able to do this without cutting any wires or undoing any connectors. Depending on how far back you fan it, you might need to extend some wires. I believe the only extensions I made were for the passenger cam sensor and the two resistor packs or whatever they are that bolt to the fuel rail. I then used some split loom and silicone electrical tape to recover the harness.
Rear engine cover needs to be trimmed to clear the intake tube. There is also a bracket on the D3 for one of the engine cover mounts that I couldn't find the p/n for, but the cover fits on my car without it just fine as the fuel rail has 2 mounts.
Passenger side radiator hose will now rub on the D3 valve cover ear. You can't use the D3 hose as the radiator has different connections. I'm not sure if this will be an issue, it could eventually rub a hole. For now I've left it as is, but I'll eventually probably fab up a pipe to route around the VC ear.
For the front engine cover, I painted part of the silver red to simulate the differences between the A8 and S8 D2 engine covers.
Even though the trans had been rebuilt 15k miles ago, I decided to due a flush and install a transgo valve. Tozo had used some generic red ATF, I put in the OE green fluid.
Another family photo in September 2018. My good buddy Rudy gave me deal I couldn't pass on for a running/driving well modded '83 UrQ. This forced me to sell my silver '83 and my 20v GT. Due to some scheduling constraints he was actually kind enough to deliver the car to me before I had even gotten rid of the other two cars, so I had to take the opportunity to pose the D2 with 3 B2 coupes.
Took a business trip to England around Thanksgiving and had 4 days off. So me and a coworker bought some cheap tickets and spent a few days in Munich and of course had to travel to the motherland.
Exhaust setup #4 - Same as #3 but with a custom designed Helmholtz resonator to remove some 110Hz drone
dual flex pipes, X-pipe, dual 12" Vibrant bottle resonators, Magnaflow x-flow muffler for the center resonator, custom Helmholtz resonator, B5S4 Milltek rear muffler
This was better, but still not exactly what I was looking for. I swapped out the rear Milltek muffler for a duplicate of the center muffler, another Magnaflow X-flow. Still better, but not 100% of what I wanted...yes I know I'm picky, but that's my curse for doing acoustics everyday
Exhaust setup #5 - dual flex pipes, X-pipe, dual 12" Vibrant bottle resonators, Magnaflow x-flow muffler for the center resonator, custom Helmholtz resonator, Magnaflow x-flow rear muffler
Decided I wanted to swap to a chambered muffler to get rid of a bit more low frequency. Ended up choosing the smallest Flowmaster Delta Super 50 I could find, but unfortunately I could only get a dual in/single out. This barely fit and then I had to find the absolute shortest single in to dual tailpipe tips I could find, which I still had to shorten to not stick too far out. But alas, I finally had the tone I was looking for. Sporty on the outside but still very comfortable on the inside as to not ruin the mantra of the S8.
Exhaust setup #6 - dual flex pipes, X-pipe, dual 12" Vibrant bottle resonators, Magnaflow x-flow muffler for the center resonator, custom Helmholtz resonator, Flowmaster Super 50
At some point in time I also added these factory rear mudflaps. I also have a set of fronts that I found, but they were only made for pre-facelift cars and don't quite fit the same so I haven't mounted them.
We got a massive snowstorm in Seattle that dumped about 10" at our house (and 20-30" in some parts of the area!) Doesn't happen very often in the city so we definitely enjoyed it!
And then almost a year to the day (about two days off) from when the S8 engine died, the wife's B7 2.0T took a shit. I could go on and on about how much of a turd the B7 2.0T is, but I'll save you the trouble. One of the worst car purchases I've made...we only put 3k miles on it before I had to replace the engine, cut our losses and sell the pile.
Purchased these right before the engine died so they sat in a box for a long time. Never fully got sold on the color of the TSW's and wanted something a little different. Ended up getting a pair of these CCWs on ebay for a song, but then had to pay full price for a matching pair. Regardless, it was still a pretty decent deal for a very nice forged wheel.
Had them powdercoated a nice metallic silver. Wish I had gone just slightly darker with the silver, but I'll live. I still think they look pretty great.
A fellow Audi guy also started a great business call Right Away Tire. It's a mobile tire mounting/balancing service that comes to you! No more hauling everything to a tire store, brilliant!
And since a number of you guessed it...manual swap time! Ordered a new lengthened driveshaft from Scott at Advanced Automotion. Already had a B6 FYF 01E sitting around. Sourced some OE 01E trans mounts from europe. Have a nice steel flywheel coming from TTV Racing that will accept a B7 RS4 clutch/pressure plate. Also have an OE clutch pedal on the way which will be adapted to fit the standard AT pedal pox. Hoping to get all of the parts collected to do the swap over Thanksgiving or Christmas. Need to get the garage organized and the lift installed first.
P1170173 by Vex Art Media, on Flickr
P1170154 by Vex Art Media, on Flickr
P1170178 by Vex Art Media, on Flickr
P1170205 by Vex Art Media, on Flickr
P1170217 by Vex Art Media, on Flickr
P1170224 by Vex Art Media, on Flickr
P1170235 by Vex Art Media, on Flickr
P1170246 by Vex Art Media, on Flickr
P1170256 by Vex Art Media, on Flickr
P1170268 by Vex Art Media, on Flickr
P1170277 by Vex Art Media, on Flickr
P1170282 by Vex Art Media, on Flickr
P1170298 by Vex Art Media, on Flickr
P1170338 by Vex Art Media, on Flickr
Guessing the others were low due to fuel washing the walls since I drove it about 5 miles while misfiring.
