Chat Project : Scrappy (Alexa)

Sarge

A2OC Donor
Last year a car was brought to my attention, It was a Silver A2 TDI and one of the last of the greats being a 2005 model.
A guy had placed and advert selling parts from it. I messaged him asking what was wrong with the car but got no answers. This annoyed me as I could see pictures of the car and the advert was on an app called Shpock.

I managed to open a dialogue with the guy but he was being vague about the car and was just offering parts from it.
After trying for several days I finally managed to convince the contact to let me take the car as complete, so deal was done on the phone. Eventually I tracked him down and it turns out to be a garage in London SE2. One of the young staff was tasked to sell parts from the car which had been owned by the daughter of another of the guys working at this garage.

I hired a recovery truck and went down there to buy the car, when I arrived I got a bit of a shock as the car had no bonnet, no driver’s door, and no front bumper, which they had sold off. The stereo had been yanked out and the vents were broken out as opposed being properly removed. To add to this, they had drilled a hole in the fuel tank and drained its Diesel and cut out the cat in the exhaust system (I wasn’t to know about these two issues as they weren't obvious and I wasn't told about them, till I discovered them months later), they then pushed it outside under a tree exposing it to the winter elements, the inside of the car was totally piled to the roof with scrap metal and the car was ready to go to the great scrap yard in the sky, not to mention full of mould as rain and other debris had been continually blown into the car through the missing driver’s door.

I asked the guy what was wrong with it and he said cambelt had broken, I asked why didn’t you fix it? he said ‘we don’t deal with diesel cars, petrol cars only!’ this started to bugged me, as to me, it appeared he ‘had been let loose’ on this car to do as he pleased, as it was destined for the scrap yard anyway. With what he said about the cambelt, and after looking at the status of the front bumper showing that they had simply ‘cut the front bumper off’ to get the intercooler out left me feeling uneasy, but, I thought as this is a 2005 model and I have to have it, I just can’t bear to let it go, with that, I did a deal and we started to empty the car’s inside and it took best part of a couple of hours to ‘unload’ all the ‘scrap metal’ totally filled inside the car, and loaded it up onto the recovery truck.

As soon as we got it home I fitted a door to it immediately and made it water tight. During the night I kept thinking that as the guy didn't seem to now anything about cars really, was he correct about the cambelt?! I couldn’t wait for the morning and as soon as it came, I shot out to the car, removed the cambelt cover, and low and behold, the cambelt was all intact, I fitted a battery into the car as original one was missing, tried to crank her but it seemed seized. To cut a long story short, the crankshaft sensor had failed, the garages didn’t know what the fault was, or how to fix it, somehow concluding cambelt had failed (how do these garages work?) so they scrapped it, pushed it out, leaving it out in the elements without a bonnet to cover the engine, this then caused the alternator to become seized and wouldn’t let the engine turn thereby giving the impression that the engine was seized. So, a Last of the greats nearly went to the scrap yard because of a 'crankshaft sensor'! what kind of garages are these, these days?! a simple scan would have identified the sensor issue!

So, I fitted a new alternator, new aux belt, new Crankshaft sensor, Intercooler, New 3-piece clutch, New Starter motor (very recently), matching silver driver’s door, Bonnet and front bumper, both rear and both front lights, undertray.

Thanks to A2Steve for supplying the body parts in correct colour – and thanks to SteveB for kindly offering to bung them into his van and bring them to London from Wales for me.

I have made other modifications to the interior and continue to do so, also added a new luxurious leather interior (Thanks SteveB)

So, Ladies and Gentle I give you, a reborn ‘Scrappy’ !


Better Pictures to follow, but for now, here's a few


Sarge





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Audi-a2-1-4-Tdi-breaking NO PLATE.jpg
 
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Well done Sarge for retrieving it from the 'mechanics' of doom. It doesn't really surprise me the garage had written it off, there's a reason we need specialists. I invariably stick with vehicles I know as I don't have time to 'specialise' in all of them (currently two Focus and two A2 at home).
 
That looks great Sarge! Glad to see you finally managed to secure a red leather interior for it, it really suits the work you've done on this one :)

Also well done for finally doing a write up on it. Might I be able to persuade you to expand this a little for inclusion in a certain well known Audi magazine?
 
That looks great Sarge! Glad to see you finally managed to secure a red leather interior for it, it really suits the work you've done on this one :)

Also well done for finally doing a write up on it. Might I be able to persuade you to expand this a little for inclusion in a certain well known Audi magazine?


Thanks Pal, if you think it's worthy?, how does one get it into the Mag then? :)


Sarge
 
You really did save that little car Sarge. Well done for taking on this project. I can believe they cut the bumper off like that. It's only 35 minutes work to get off anyway.
 
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