Tear down the car!

Yesterday I finally gathered enough courage to start the disassembly of the A2. I have been driving around in it for almost nine months now and I really start to like it. I guess I'll have to do the conversion really fast!
I am starting with the front of the car so I can work on the engine and transmission from the front instead of from underneath. Also I will remove the radiator and some more unnecessary stuff in the front.

The front without the bumber cover (I do use jack stands BTW)

One interesting finding was that the condenser for the AC is located just in front of the radiator (and actually looks the same). My plan right now is to keep the AC circuit intact and maybe get it to work later. I don't want to remove any AC hoses since that would cause refrigerant to leak out and that's not good for my own health nor the environment! So, I will just have to be very careful and also find a place to stuff the condenser while building.

The (really dirty) condenser and the radiator behind

Before I started this I knew there are a lot of cables, hoses and wires attached to a car engine, but I didn't know there are a billion! After a full day of detaching stuff more or less access friendly I have managed to get through 11 of the 22 pages of instructions for removing the engine. And all of that is removing stuff attached to the engine.Well, not all of it. It did remove the bumber as well and some other things like wheel linings to get better access to the wires and stuff.
This is was the poor A2 looks like now.

The poor A2

As a sort of compensation to all that I got a friend today. Our dog Jenny decided to join me and supervise the battery balancing.

Balancing OK!