moonstone
Tyre Kicker
...and almost a year later, I finally got one.
After drooling over @Che's car and with the departure of the M5, it left me in a position to spend a bit more on a weekend project car. the TTS is pretty much perfect both cosmetically and mechanically and in terms of ownership and service history. It really set the bar high for a replacement. I honestly still feel a bit torn about moving the TTS on. It really is one of my favourite cars and is one of the best examples of any car I've ever owned.
That made me even more cautious when it came to R8s. I had assumed that cars in this bracket must surely all be enthusiast owned and well-cared for, but the reverse is true. In hunting for a good example, I've never come across so many poor ones in any other time I've been looking for a car.
In the closing stages it came down to two, sensibly priced V10+ models. One white with bucket seats and a Capristo exhaust and the red one with standard comfort seats that I ended up with. The white one had a patchy service history with no evidence of particular work having been carried out. The red one had a perfect main dealer service history, only 5 owners (compared to the 8 that the white one had) and was up for sale by a professional detailer in Essex who had done a great job on the paint work, PPF'd the blades and lower side sections and added a CarPro ceramic coating. Carpro is the brand that I usually have applied my to cars and in a further coincidence it turns out the that detailer round the corner from me (who I've been using for years) is the exclusive UK agent for CarPro's professional range. If you're a detailer in the UK and you want Prof CarPro products, he need to buy them from him. He knows the guy I bought the R8 from and gave him a glowing report.
So for a private sale, I think I had all the bases covered and the car looks fantastic. It's completely stock inside and out. Here's an instagram vid that the previous owner did:
There's a few jobs need done to bring it up to where I need it to be.
Interior trim
Couple of bits need attention. Passenger door handle clips are broken so I'm going to replace the part that the carbon handle clips into. A couple of other bits had been poorly installed. The owner before last, had installed wing-back seats and then put the originals in when he came to sell it to Alex at AWC, who I bought it from and in doing so had missed out a couple of bits (found in the glove box) and hadn't bolted the passenger seat down properly (so it was rattling on my journey home). The battery access cover was broken (common fault) so I've already fixed this.
Battery
I reckon it's on its first ever battery by the looks of it, so I've got a new uprated one arriving tomorrow as I notice it's a big sluggish to start up sometimes. Especially if the stereo is already on or I've pressed the window button. There's a fair bit of trim needs to come out to do that so that's a job for the weekend (new one arrives tomorrow).
Infotainment
The Audi MMI unit is really dated. It doesn't even have bluetooth music streaming, DAB etc or even Carplay. However at this age, the unit doesn't integrate with the cars systems the way that modern infotainment units do so, it's easy to replace. I got a Pioneer SPH-DA360DAB dual DIN head unit that turned up today and I'm now just waiting on a custom trim kit and wiring harnesses from RTA Fabrications to arrive so I can fit it all.
It'll look something like this when I'm done:
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