tanya_charbury

Hello good people,

I was active here in 2017 when several people were super-nice to me, so this post is mainly for those who remember me and wonder where I went.

At the time I also had a vendor account here for my company, Old Car Life Extension Systems, Inc. I've been missing in action off AudiWorld as a vendor (since I stopped being able to afford the monthly be-a-vendor fee) but I didn't mean to vanish personally too, though it's a fine line and I don't wanna cross it thus alienating the AudiWorld vendor management folks but it's also hard for me to pretend I'm a non-vendor so I don't really know how to behave properly, and so I've been quiet, except for tonight when I'm saying "hello" again.

Anyway, I'm alive and well. I've been working hard on trying to make my business profitable, and I'm health and happy. I've also bought two more C5 A6 4.2 cars, both gold-colored. One is a 2000 and one is a 2003. So that plus four silver ones plus a black one plus a white one ... yes, I need a 12-step program. I'm evidently addicted.

I've been immersed in understanding the ZF 5HP-24A transmissions in these cars well. They are complex with many subtleties but after messing with them for 3 years, I think I have a pretty good handle on them. I have a University degree in Accounting and Auditing, and I have learned more about these transmissions by working on them and reading up on them, and getting advice from industry gurus, than I ever learned while getting my nerdy girl degree.

Aside from what I've done to try to keep my little fleet of C5 A6 4.2 and D2 A8 cars functional, so far my little team has done transmission swaps at no charge for three customers who've bought used or rebuilt transmissions from me. My biz is not a licensed repair shop so I can't charge for the remove and replace work on their cars legally so I don't, but I'm hoping to make some sort of deal soon with a local shop so they might do the work and charge a reasonable fee. It turns out that selling used or rebuilt transmissions doesn't do the customer much good if they can't find anyone to install them. So in the same way as Henry Ford ended up in the rubber-tree plantation businesses too, to make sure customers will have tires for the cars he made, so I've been trying to solve the problems in a wide sense.

Removing and replacing these transmissions is A LOT of work but my team and I also leaned a much; so far having completed work on a 1997 A8 and a 2003 S8 -- it hardly gets more extreme than that in the D2 context. And currently in my shop is a customer's 2003 C5 A6 4.2 V8, being put together after a transmission remove+rebuild+re-install. .

I also discovered Burning Man (see picture of me in a poncho), which was life-changing.

... and that's the news from me. I hope you're all doing well. The other pictures are from 2018 too, as I recall.

~Tanya