okcitalia

Hello A8 lovers,


I'm about 800 miles into my first experience with Audi. I recently purchased a CPO 2006 SWB A8 with 46k miles. It's black and amaretto.

Thanks to many of you, I have become an Audi A8 lovin nut. My wife says it's the new baby in the house and she's right. My kids are even lovers of Audi's and I've only had it a month or less.

I spent about a year researching this car on many websites reading posts and reviews, so I learned a lot reading many of your posts, so thanks for educating me. My family and friends are about getting tired of me talking about it, but I tell them it's like riding on a magic carpet with the cockpit of a stealth fighter! I look for excuses to run errands and take the long route.

Even after all the research I have done, I still find cool things about the car I did not even know about. I also have several observations and comments I want to make and get some of your feedback.

I am also itching to make some mods to the car, but given it's a CPO, I won't be doing much. The biggest change I'm itching to do is upgrade the wheels. My practical side tells me to wait (as does the wife) since the car came with a brand new set of Pirelli P6's. Hard to justify upgrading to 20" with new 19" tires on it now. I have compiled a booklet of every wheel package on an A8 I can find from this site and others and printed them all out to narrow it down to a couple, but doubtful I will actually pull that trigger.

Here are my upgrade desires/comments/qustions:
- 20" wheels. What's the market for seeling my 12 spoke fan wheel on a new set of Pirelli's?
- VAGCOM the seat belt chime ASAP!! This is driving me nuts. I wear my belt, but other times it drives me nuts. I have read and learned some about VAGCOM, so guess I need to find someone within a reason who can do this. I would guess the Dallas area is closest to me.
- VAGCOM - other desire is to lower the car about 1", but have been advised not to given the CPO. Other Vag ideas I've read from you guys but I am unclear about are window functions on the key fob? Are there other easy and harmless things to do?
- For some reason, I want to get a Euro tag for the front grill. I found one for around $130 on an Audi site.
- Have always liked and had sunroof wind deflectors, but wonder if it would cheaper the A8? Probably so, sure don't see any on the pics I have.
- Looked into performance chips, etc, but I don't know much about them. I won;t do this either cuz of the CPO, but maybe someday. Don't have $$ haning on trees to do this anyway.
- IPOD - I've read some on this, but still unclear what I need to do or buy to make this work. Guess I will read some more posts.

Other comments, questions or issues:- The stereo is my favorite feature. The sound is incredible.
- I noticed on my front grill, I am missing a thin horizontal chrome strip just about the sensors. The bottom one is there, but I noticed it is loose on one end. I assume I can order one from the dealer and these tend to fall out. Any thoughts?
- As I was installing my rear tag, the small threaded bracker that receivews the screw fell back inside the frame, therefore I had to screw my tag in on the bottom. This is not good becasue I was ordering a chrome Audi tag frame with only top screw holes. How or where can I get another bracket or make this work? I don't think I can fish the other one out. Small issue, but a pain. Any ideas?
- One dissppointment is the AC blower. It's a weak blower compared to my Acura and Nissan Maxima. Those cars would blow on high and cool the cabin down and I would have to turn the blower down. I keep the A8's on 12 the whole time in the car, and when comparing it, it just does not mvoe the air our as much as I would hope. Anyone every notice this compared to other model cars?
- I am also trying to adjust to not having much storage. The console is very small and shallow. Small issue, but one to adjust to. I suppose thoe buying one of these new don't have a need to keep much crap in their cars! FOr some reason, I see in the manual storage bins mine does not have on the dash. Is there a difference in the LWB and SWB for the dash storage? I would not think so. I see a pic for storage just to the left of the stearing column if my memory is correct.


I could go on and on, but will try and stop there for now. What a blast this car is to drive. Heads are already turning along with comments from co-workers who saw it out in the parking lot. I look forward to staying up to speed on this car and learning more from you guys about all the features, upgrades, and nuances of this fine machine!


Thanks.

UkiahA8L

Congrats and welcome.

Hennessy

Congrats and welcome to the club. I've only had my A8 for about 4 months and just love it. Will be doing some VAG-COM mods this weekend hopefully so can tell you about that on Monday.

The Ipod ordeal I know pretty well. First you need to know if you have an AMI module (would be located in glove box next to CD changer). If you do then you only need a cable that connects from AMI to ipod. If you don't have this then you need to get that kit and install it, costs about $700 I think for complete retrofit kit.

My AC seems to work fine for me, it blows out slightly cool air in bunches after I've started and then settles down as the temp in car gets to desired setting. It but may be different for me cause I have the solar sunroof. I keep my settings on 68 degrees.

Windscreen for sunroof, there should be a "wind deflector" on the car already but you don't see it till the sunroof is open. It's not big and probably doesn't deflect much wind but it's there.

You have found the map pockets on the front doors right?

Good driving.

Brozee

The air thing could just because the car is so large?
Personally if I had the 19's I'd ride em out until the tires are bald then get the new rims and tires.
Wind deflector if not a really good looking one could look cheap (IMO i wouldn't get one)
I also want to get a euro plate front bumper piece. As mine right now has a small lip on the bottom where you can fit a front license plate, but as I don't live in Ohio, I have no use for it.
And one of my parking sensor small circle pieces are loose as well and hanging on, the sensor is behind it thats just a plastic cover basically. Mine became loose when a buddy accidentally backed into me causing no damage besides that. The a8's bumper bended nicely to prevent other damage
Hope it helps

ModestW12

First of all, congratulations on your purchase of a most excellent car.

Second, I recently bought my A8L W12 which came from the factory with the A8 Sport Package Wheels option (the ones in my avatar pic. It's a pic of my actual car). Although I love the look of the wheels since they give a very clean aggressive look, I'm going for more of a classy refined look and love the 19" OEM fan wheels especially on a black A8L body (I loved my previous A8L 4.2 with the fan wheels). Unfortunately, I'm in Northern California so I don't know if that would prevent us for working out a trade. I know my tires still have the majority of the life left so we could both save by not having to buy tires (over actually buying new wheels and having to get new tires). All my TPMS sensors are working as well so that should just be a matter of resetting to work with the new car. Feel free to PM me if you have any ideas on possibly making a trade or if you'd like to talk more about it via phone.

MP4.2+6.0

I VAGCOM lowered my suspension, but not as much as an inch. Do figure the sport package would otherwise have dropped it 20mm though. If you go to 20" with stock rubber, you will be going up about 7mm actually due to the larger overall tire diameter, though also filling in the upper wheel well by about 1/3 of an inch too. Thus, you could drop it some with 20" wheels and be at your current net ride height. I went down about another 10mm FWIW. No issues with warranty coverage nor I expect my CPO, and they did change the front upper arms for me no questions asked under the TSB/warranty.

I undid my seatbelt chime via VAG COM, but later went back to it. Trouble for me is it then kills the headlights still on warning chime as well, and I don't use the auto lights on function. However, I did enable the background instrument lighting and needles illuminated at all times function with VAG COM. Thus, I have lost some of the other cues I have left the lights on. After about half a dozen times of this forgot to turn the headlights off stuff, I gave up and turned chime function back on. Since then, no issues. And, I like the illuminated instruments day or night, and it's a good trade for the chimes annoyance in my mind.

HVAC. Remember, Piech didn't want the car drafty. As Top Gear would say (about old Lambos prior to using the A8 instrument and other gear in the Gallardo), I suppose you could have "an asthmatic wheezing through a straw," but that's not the A8 design. In other words, lots of air vents, maybe somewhat slower movement and definitely less drafty. Or, jet blower through a few postage stamp vents. I'll take the former. Put it on recirc as the obvious thing for initial cool off. That, plus drop the windows for the first minute. Program the remote via VAG COM to drop the windows (and even open the sunroof if you want) on clicking it, and you can pre vent the car a bit even before getting in. And yes, like me welcome to a black exterior...

iPod. As commented, if you want it, it means the car optical plus power cable splice adapter, the control head unit that goes in the glove box, and the end cable to the iPod. I did it about two years ago now and think it's great. Suggest forget about trying to do the swiss army knife stuff tying into a current iPhone, and instead just use an old iPod (or iTouch as I do) for your music server source. Much easier then, since, it just stays in car except when I sync it to add albums.

Wheels. Yes, I like the 20's. But, if those 19's are 9" width, you could also look at sizing up to 275's (as used in the stock 20" size except some S8's at 265; I expect you are at 255 now stock) for your next set of rubber and keep running current wheels. The 19" fan ones that you describe are the only other A8 forged ones besides the new and old style 20" sets, so they are light wheels as they go for OEM. Lighter than the 20's (at least the "old style" 9 spoke 20's; the new style twin 7 spoke are lighter than before), and the 19's are lighter than the baseline 18's too. Sounds like you may have a fellow NorCal'er of mine wanting to swap 20's if you want to go there. If not, I tend to see more A8 wheels on Audizine's classifieds than most anywhere else. Unfortunately they tend to get recycled down to guys with VW's and sometimes smaller Audi's who want really big wheels for their cars (too big in my estimation). The market prices are somewhat lower (plus some actually exist--true A8 wheels are very hard to find, especially in decent shape), but the A8 tire size is all wrong for those fitments too (and vice versa).

UkiahA8L

Don't mean hi-jack the post but how far north are you? Im 2 hours north of SF?

ModestW12

2 hours north-east of SF, near the capitol of our fine state.

Brozee

I was interested in turning on the instrument lights all the time, as sometimes I turn the headlights on just so I can see my instrument panel. That would be a definite change I would do with vag-com, as well as turning off a few chimes. And turning on the roll down windows with the unlock would be great.
Do you hold the unlock button to roll them down? That's how it was on my honda accord.
Great posting here

ModestW12

Hmmm, I've always felt like the blower is more than adequate on my 2004 A8L and on the W12 as well. I'll have to take another look when I get it back from Audi service on Monday.