The original idea was to pull the entire suspension and sub-frame from the Santorin car to transfer over to the Silver car, this would hopefully save me the time of removing the KW V3 coilovers and StopTech Big Brake Kit. Additionally it was possible the control arms and TRE’s on the Santorin car had fewer miles than the Silver car, even though the Silver car only had 43k on it, because I had replaced the CA’s and TRE’s about four years prior and I had only been putting about 5k miles on the car each year.
While the sub-frame in the Santorin car looked fine, I was worried that if it had been slightly damaged it would cause alignment problems when it was installed on the Silver car. Once the sub-frame were installed it would be a major pain to remove and replace it, so I decided just to pull out the suspension components from the Santorin car, since in the event one of them had damage that was not visible it would not be too difficult to replace a component.
The interior rear view mirror was missing from the car. A curious item to be absent, the wire to the Auto-Dimming mirror looked to have been disconnected and the entire mirror assembly had simply been removed. I wasn’t aware of how to remove the mirror so I thought it interesting that a potential car thief would know how to remove the mirror, if that was what happened.
I found a DIY on adding a Compass equipped mirror to the S4, a feature absent from the factory, and that guide detailed the proper method for removing the rear view mirror. The process is pretty easy, simply use a wrench to turn the base of the mirror that attaches to the windshield counter clockwise 90 degrees to remove the mirror. Putting a towel between the wrench and the mirror is a good thing to keep from marring the base. Installing the mirror is simply the reverse. I removed the mirror from my Santorin car and installed it in the Silver car.
I also worked on replacing the driver’s side outside mirror which had begun to peel. I assume the early demise of the mirror was partly due to the auto-dimming feature, something which I did not have on my Santorin car. I replaced the mirror with the good mirror from the Santorin car and also replaced the plastic Silver colored housing with the Aluminum housing from the Santorin car. I’m undecided if I like the look better, but the housing is metal and much more solid which I do like.
