A little background:
I'll start off by saying I've always loved the wagon body style, ever since my first ride in a Volvo wagon, sitting in the rear-facing seats.
In terms of cars, it took me a bit to get here as I love fast cars. I've had a 240z (which I still have), a couple 300zx TTs, and a G35 coupe (see a trend here) before finally getting into sedans and AWD with a Subaru Legacy Spec B. I loved it because it made a perfect year-round daily along with providing space to carry people/stuff. Mind you, I was still wanting to get into a wagon at some point. If I had kept the car, I would have done the same thing and swapped it all into a wagon body. But, I got fed up with how unreliable the Subaru motor was.
I started looking and, in terms of AWD systems, Audi was the logical choice as they had it down whereas other manufacturers were just getting into AWD. Of course, I still had to have a fast car and in my price range was the S4. Reliability and problems came into play and, after a ton of research, I settled on a B8.5 S4. People were modding them, taking them to track days, and still dailying them with upwards of 30-40k on tuned cars with practically zero issues. Initially I wanted a manual, but with my commute, the DSG sounded better and better. I found one at a local BMW dealer, test drove it, and I was instantly in love. Still just as fun even though it wasn't a manual. Car had been owned by a middle-age Audi sales woman so it was fully optioned and very well taken care of.
A few pics of the S4:
Of course with all the research, I stumbled across GMGs S4 conversion, so I knew I had to do it at some point. So I kept it in the back of my mind, looking for good A4 wagons, and going back and forth between using an A4 or an Allroad.
I enjoyed the S4, modded and issue free, for almost 3 years before finding a good condition A4 back in February of this year.
I drove it around for almost a month before deciding to move forward with the conversion.
Started off tearing down the Avant. Since I wanted a full B8.5 Avant with all the features working (sport diff, adaptive headlights, etc), I knew there would be differences in the body harness. I also didn't want to run into issues with incompatible modules, component protection, etc. Unlike just swapping in the motor/trans and making a B8 Avant, I had to tear the entire car down to a shell.
I started by stripping the interior:
After getting the interior stripped, it was time to get out the motor and rear end:
Until finally, it was a bare shell:
Next up was the S4:
So after stripping both cars, I realized there were a few more differences, other than B8 to B8.5, than I had initially anticipated being that the S4 was a Prestige and the Avant was a Premium Plus.
One difference being that, I had to swap the door handles so that I could retain Keyless:
After getting that sorted, I put the door harnesses and door panels on:
After doing all this, I started comparing the wiring harnesses and realized that there were a lot of differences from B8 to B8.5 in terms of connectors and modules. It was then I thought, well the Allroad is technically a B8.5 version of the wagon, so the harness should have the updated connectors and module differences. Luckily, I found a scrap yard that not only had an Allroad body harness, but it was from a 2014 as well!
After getting it in, it was time to compare Sedan to Allroad:
Eureka!! Body harness differences were now limited to S4 and A4 (Allroad) differences. Unfortunately I don't have any pics but I stripped out the wiring for the Sport diff and the Sound Aktor from the S4 harness, and wired them into the same places in the Allroad harness. Now let's just pray it worked once I got the car back together.
So now it was time to really start putting it all back together. I apologize because now the pictures get a bit spotty as I was cranking getting the car back together.
Had to swap the gas tank and evap system as the A4 had 3 lines going to the engine bay whereas the S4 only had 2 plus the evap plug was different and I had already upgraded the fuel pump in the S4:
Power and ground for the electric steering:
Motor and rear end going in:
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Originally Posted by Allthea
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