S4s rolling restoration project

[tomcattom]

Back in March 2018 I took what I hope won't prove to be a miguided chance and bought a running S4s in need of tidying up. As one of my good friends aptly described it, the car has been "thrown back together" so while everything is largely there and working a lot of it hasn't been put back together with a great deal of care, so lots of things aren't fixed in where they are supposed to be.

Seems this car was a topic of debate on here when it went up for sale last year, so I thought I would start a thread on the work I have and will be doing on it as time allows.

Here it is all tucked up in my new garage patiently waiting for me to start work on it once the main chunk of work on our house refurb is completed early this year. So updates are probably going to be a little thin on the ground in the short term.

 

So far I have managed to do the following things in the past year in the odd hours/days I been granted time off house refurbishment by management.

• Replaced the breather hose between the fuel tanks, the one up over the rear window.
• Replaced the clear hoses to/from the charcoal canister.
• Fixed the non-operational ABS light - dodgy connection in the dash binnacle.
• Replaced the tailgate gas struts
• Repalaced a faulty dashboard temparatued gauge sensor
• Sourced a missing battery box
• Source but not yet fitted a replacement pair of door mirrors

This lunchtime I have managed to carve out a cheeky hour on the car and managed to replace the ailing vacuum pump and restore my heater controls.

Before

After

 

and then having done that I decided as a treat I would fit some new shiny bits that my wife bought me as a Christmas present

Before

After

Annoyingly I managed to scratch the new control panel plate but I'm hoping it will polish out, becuse it appears all the colouring and markings have been applied to the rear of the plate.

[stephenwhyte]

Great to see this S4s slowly being brought back to its best. Keep up the work and keep the photos and content coming👍

[tomcattom]

Just been out for a tinker while the wife is on her way home. Decided to have a look at the lack of reversing lights tonight. I'd already ordered a reverse light switch on the assumption that it was the most likely cause of the failure and even if it wasn't it seemed like a good idea to replace anyway.

Upon closer inspection the cause of the failure was that the terminal had snapped clean off the switch.

I installed the new switch and then on pulling the remains of the snapped terminal out of the connector, the rest of the connector crumbled out with it I've lashed up a temporary connection with whats left of the terminal in the plug, but I'm going to have to order in a replacement set of right angle spade terminals to completed the fix.

[Chillidoggy]

Suggest you order a new gearbox bracket bolt while you’re at it, Tom.

[tomcattom]

I was going to ask/check the parts manual to see if there was supposed to be a bolt in there. From where I was working under the car I couldn't get my head far enough up to see if that bracket lined up with a hole in the gearbox.

[Escape]

Looks like a very rewarding project car! Good to see it's gone to someone who will put in the necessary time and effort to restore it to former glory. The great thing about a rolling restoration is you can enjoy driving the car in between jobs. Good way to stay motivated. 😉

Best of luck,

Filip

[Chillidoggy]

12 hours ago, tomcattom said:

I was going to ask/check the parts manual to see if there was supposed to be a bolt in there. From where I was working under the car I couldn't get my head far enough up to see if that bracket lined up with a hole in the gearbox.

Yes, there should be a bolt in there. Hopefully it hasn’t sheared off!

[tomcattom]

I sincerely hope that isn't the case, but that prospect was in the back of my mind while I was search the parts list last night. Given all the other things I've found missing I'm hoping it was just through sheer laziness that the bolt wasn't put back rather than because its broken.

[Chillidoggy]

A quick poke with a bit of wire will tell you.

I can't remember that particular one being a problem to remove, but steel into alloy is always a potential (no pun intended) problem. The frame bolts were a different story.

[Sparky]

Tom, is your car far from me in Watford?  If in Bucks I'd be happy to come say hello one day and give it a good once-over...

[tomcattom]

9 hours ago, Sparky said:

Tom, is your car far from me in Watford?  If in Bucks I'd be happy to come say hello one day and give it a good once-over...

The car and I are both in South Bucks so not very far from you at all Sparky.

Though I think it might be easier to tell me what's right with it rather than what's wrong with it when giving it a once over 😋

 

 

[Sparky]

Hehehe!  Well, give us a couple of dates if you fancy it, and we can meet up...

[Dan E]

9 hours ago, Sparky said:

Tom, is your car far from me in Watford?  If in Bucks I'd be happy to come say hello one day and give it a good once-over...

Apart from him probably turning up in a mini skirt that is probably the best decision you will make chap 

[Sparky]

I only do that for my regulars.

[Dan E]

And there I was thinking I was special. The Elan passed the MOT with flying colours yesterday only advisory was a g string in the offside brake calliper so thank you x

[Sparky]

You are most welcome.  And it's a thong.

[Mightymetro]

Good luck Tom, my favourite colour for an esprit 👍🏻

[tomcattom]

Just snuck a cheeky hour on the car this evening and fitted another bit of bling.

Bought some alloy stalks a good few months back for shade under £20 and rather than risk destroying the original stalks I bought a new pair of pattern stalks to cut up for £12 the pair from the bay-of-e last week.

 

Half way through the butchering process

 

All fitted and tested

 

Time permitting I'm hoping to spend some time diagnosing the lack of fan control from the ECU this weekend.

[Clarky5150]

Good effort! Looks like you have many of the jobs I went through working on my S4 18 months ago. Don't give up on the wing mirrors, they can usually be repaired and adjusted. There's a walk through on my resto blog  

[tomcattom]

I've already got a replacement set of mirrors in the correct colour ready to go on, but while I'm doing other work on the car I'm going to leave them safely tucked up in a box in the garage for the time being.

[tomcattom]

Been out to do some investigations to try and ascertain why the ECU in incapable of turning the fans on. I know the fans work because they activate off a very crudely installed fan override switch, proving the power to the fans via the relay is sound, so I've been investigating the rest of the circuit with the help of my trusty multimeter.

The wiring from the ECU to the relay (Black/Orange) is without fault and impendance it good. The 12V supply to the relay (Green) that is earthed through the ECU from fuse A21 is working as expected, with 12V present when ignition is on. The permanent 12V feel to the fans (Brown) is sound too.

I've used Espritmon to check the ECU and there was a code 26 error so I cleared the codes and restarted the car and its not reappeared, yet. When I try to activate the fans from the mode 4 screen on Espritmon (engine running) they don't come on. I've tried a couple of other QDM circuits in mode 4 and the only circuits I seem to get a response from are the CEL light and the throttle jack, but otherwise no signs of life from any of the other circuits.

One thing I didn't measure was the output on the ECU when I was using Espritmon, so I'm going to test that tomorrow, but prognosis for the ECU isn't looking too good. Any of the bright souls on here got any other suggestions for checks I can do before I completed write-off the ECU?

If the ECU really is toast, it does beg the question of what caused it. I really don't want to replace the ECU and then find it get fried too. I'm sure I read somewhere that the secondary resistors should be checked. So I've measure the impendances of all the injectors and everything seems okay there. Primaries all measured 2.0 to 2.1 ohms and the secondary measured 15.9 ohms, which appears to be in spec according ot the manuals.

To conclude out a somewhat inconclusive evening, I decided to do a finish off with a nice simple job and replace the tatty looking seal under the aerial base. At least I completed one task tonight!

[Barrykearley]

When the ecu fails - most of the time it leaves the fans on all the time.

have a look on USA eBay and internet and grab another ecu - a couple of years ago they were only $100 or so

[tomcattom]

I've found several US ebay sellers listing replacements for about $65, by the time I pay imports tax etc that will be about £100, so I might just get one on order anyway, but I'm still aprehensive about just slinging it on the car in case whatever fault killed it (assuming it really is dead) still exists.

[Barrykearley]

Fan issues and ecus are a common occurrence. You will need to swap over the memcal from your old unit.

[Chillidoggy]

From memory,  the ECU gets a signal  from a temperature probe on the engine to tell it when to switch the fans. Suggest you have a look at the other wiring diagrams for it, then change or check that first, along with the wiring to the switch. The switch is a bit of a pig to get to from memory.