Rusty911
A2OC Donor
@gills thread is brilliant and like you, and pointed me towards the whole block heater thing as my commute is fairly short. This is bad, but what's worse is that within 1/4 mile I hit one of the steepest hills in Sussex (up, not down). Always makes me cringe, the thought of a stone cold engine having to pull a car up that hill, however sympathetically I try to treat it. We're lucky to have @Joga 's expertise on hand in this regardA quick update - After bleating on about Adrian Flux above, I ended up cancelling my policy with them within the cooling off period(!).
There were a number of errors they kept making, such as they kept getting my name and also my email address wrong, meaning confirmations and follow-up emails were not received; then when I chased, I had to sit on the phone for long periods of time (at international rates) to get things resolved (they couldn't call me back on an overseas number) - and most annoyingly of all, their member "hub" portal, through which all policy documents must be downloaded as they couldn't just email them to me(!), blocks non-British internet addresses.
All of this was giving me a bad vibe, so I gave up and cancelled. I chose to go with the RAC for our Touran, who did a very competitive quote with all the above included for just £600-ish.
I will reassess AF for Merlin's insurance when I'm back in the UK and closer to the time I actually need it I suppose - right now I'm focused on getting a passport for my new-born daughter from the incompetents at the passport office; now there's a REALLY frustrating organisation to deal with!
Meanwhile I've been collecting a few further parts: From @CreweAudi, all at very reasonable prices I might add:
From other sources:
- A new brake light switch and engine dipstick (both to keep as a pre-caution as failure of these parts is common)
- "Aero mods" - FSi winglets and subframe spoiler
- Audi child seat underlay, car seat protector (link here) - to protect Merlin's seats on the occaision that any of my three young children are in the car
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- As per @Birchall 's very informative and well-composed thread on this, an automatic headlight conversion with coming home/ leaving home lights - Currently a secondhand headlight switch purchased from @Clackers is with @2work - Tom kindly agreed to help me out by converting the candidate switch fascia to accept the lovely aluminium trim ring that completes this conversion; this has turned into a bigger job that expected with the fascia needing a repaint. I will be forever indebted to Tom every time I look at it once installed.
- Genuine Audi luggage compartment inlay - Bought from https://shop.audi-zentrum-goettingen.de/, now I see it is no longer listed on their site so I must have bought the last one.
- Thule Roof bar kit (WingBar 118 Roof Bars / Rapid System foot pack 754 / Rapid System vehicle fitting kit 1195) - These were secondhand purchases from Ebay for about £90 all-in - I always think having a set of roof bars for my cars is good insurance just in case you need to carry extra luggage / bulky items that won't fit inside! Note that in the pic of the Thule website vehicle finder you can see that the correct bars and foot pack for the A2 are also correct for a Hyundai i20 - the lady I bought mine from had listed these for that vehicle - hopefully that helps anyone else who wants a set of these.
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Finally, as per @gills got me intrigued in the idea of using an engine pre-heater (sometimes called a block heater) in his thread on his car Eco Alan HERE - As I too fancy the idea of a warmed-up car ready to go from the off; especially as the 1.4 TDi takes a while to warm up by itself and I doubt the electric heat element built into the car's climate control system will be much cop in terms of quickly warming up the cabin from a cold start.
I have focused on a Calix setup, as they list the TDi90's ATL engine on their website, whereas Defa were of no help even when directly approached with the request for a parts list. I will reveal how this progresses when when (if?) it is done, but suffice to say the UK Calix dealer is pretty useless and @Joga, who is based in Calix's native Sweden, has been of enormous help in identifying the exact parts needed and the best way of obtaining them (the dealers in Sweden are much cheaper, however postage may be an issue! Time will tell) - so I would like to publicly thank him here; hopefully this turns into a viable installation, current costs are around £200 which is a little more than I'd wanted to pay.
Loving this thread and as I've said before, your forensic approach to the whole thing. I did wonder whether, as a second car, an A2 could now attract a classic policy which tend to be of the agreed value type as a matter of course? Forgive me if you've already floated this and I've missed it!