The Project Pad

PRY4SNO wrote:In for a penny, in for a pound... my vote is to do it all and be done with it.

At any rate, if you do remove the rear windows there's no better time to install the euro-spec rear opening windows (basically vents). Would come in handy with that Arizona heat.

...or plexiglass .

PRY4SNO wrote:At any rate, if you do remove the rear windows there's no better time to install the euro-spec rear opening windows (basically vents). Would come in handy with that Arizona heat.

Are these relatively available? I want some badddddd.

Also, OP, put a rear strut bar on your coupe. It's awful how flexxy these chassis are! I did it on mine and It made a huge difference.

Colin2750 wrote:

PRY4SNO wrote:At any rate, if you do remove the rear windows there's no better time to install the euro-spec rear opening windows (basically vents). Would come in handy with that Arizona heat.

Are these relatively available? I want some badddddd.

Also, OP, put a rear strut bar on your coupe. It's awful how flexxy these chassis are! I did it on mine and It made a huge difference.

Planning on putting in a 4-pt cage, at minimum, when I get around to it .

Started (hand) sanding the hood today. An hour of work in 105F humid monsoon weather got about a quarter of it down to metal, and another 15%ish percent a little on its way there. Hand sanding is an atrocious amount of work; unfortunately I really don't have anything to allow the use of power tools in my apartment garage. At least I don't feel bad about not hitting the gym enough lately, lol. I tore into the old driver's door to see how things would go with the finish on the unibody (having been repainted once already). I was able to confirm it had been repainted, and that it would be a pain in the ass.

Based on those findings, I think I'm going to take the bolt-on body panels in the front down quite a bit (the hood to metal due to metal and paint damage), but I may just scuff and respray the fenders and the bumper. I'm leaning towards doing spot repair on the rest of the car and then respraying it, versus stripping the entire thing.

Sam

Hood is half done:



I'm trying to devote 30-60min a day on this. I've been good about that so far, sanding is a good upper body and a mediocre cardio workout in these temps. Definitely feeling it in my shoulders and forearms after a few days of it.

FML I see my project next winter.

And I don't like the look of it one bit lol

Sam-

I rented an RV storage unit for 60$ a month and painted my car in that. Included power but no water on premises. Might be worth a day or two's time to find something similar. Took me a week of asking around, but in the end well worth it.



You said something about running QRS strut mounts back in your earlier posts. Any more details on those? P/N?

Now that RV rental space idea is fucking brilliant, I had a waterless garage and found an old sink and a big office water cooler 5gal? jug into a bucket, I was happy to have it when I got acetone in my eye (ow)

Hmm, we may have to look in to something like that. Me and two friends are entertaining the idea of going into a shop three ways. Figure for $300/mo or so, if we can get a 1500-200sqft space it would make sense for all of us.

Many people have done it successfully, I just wouldn't want my name on the lease and have to be the one collecting dough.

About those QRS strut mounts, you have a part number?

I do not. I bought them used a couple years back.


Sernt frrrerm Terrrperrterrrk

I got the top of the hood completely sanded this weekend. Only some OEM primer and metal left there, plus whatever is on the underside (which I will need to paint, as it's green). With that, I moved on to the front fenders and doing some exploration on the parts of the unibody that had some chipping paint I needed to take care of.

Unfortunately, I quickly uncovered some previous filler work that may have been the source of the surface rust that caused the paint chip. There appears to be some in the lower left rear quarter panel, as well as the rear panel under the tail lights. I will likely have to dig all of that out and start fresh there to make sure the next paint job doesn't have the same issues.




Next step is to pull apart the interior so I can get at the backside of the exterior trim and remove it.

Sam

Pulled the interior apart today to get at the quarterpanels and rear pan. Pulled the rear wheels, fender liners, side and lower moldings, rear bumper, and license plate tray off. Did some more sanding and discovery of what I have in store.

First up was the filler ahead of the rear wheel. When I got the interior apart, I could see some stud weld marks on the back of the panel, but it was generally pretty flat...just barely noticeable at the fingertips. I did some more sanding, getting through the edges of the filler to see how it was holding up and how it was applied. I think with some high build and blocksanding, this will come out fine as-is. There is some flaking paint/surface rust that was hiding under the lower moldings. It is going to be a pain in the balls to sand as it's right near one of the molding studs, but should be easy enough to prep and paint.

Second was the filler at the back of the car. I pulled off the interior trim to get a look at the backside, and to remove the license plate bucket to do some sanding. I found some worrying signs when I pulled the interior trim off--it looks like the car was rear ended, and the sheetmetal was pushed out roughly with a pry bar and hammer--there's lots of sharp dents. I did more sanding and found the lines between the metal and filler were very irregular, meaning that the metal was very deformed with potentially lots of filler present. I bit the bullet and started pounding on the backside, and was able to get some filler to crack away. I found the filler was pretty deep, 1/4" at some parts, and there was some very crusty surface rust going on underneath.




So best case, I have a lot of filler to remove, and a lot of metal to shape/pound out. Worst case, if I find a good rear panel I may entertain just replacing that section. It would be pretty easy to cut out and replace if I found a shell.

When's Battle Born again?

Sam

It would to be battle born without a last minute body work project!

Rigged up some power in the garage and tore into the back of the car with the angle grinder and wire wheel. I would've been ripped by the time I manually removed all the filler after 14 hours of work in a 115F garage, but the wire wheel took it down to metal in about 90 seconds. Very nice, but what I found underneath was a pain in the ass...




I'm not even sure what kind of damage was originally there, since the repair following it was so fucked. They crudely beat the panel out until its average height was 'ok' for filler and then paved the whole thing. I'm reading up on metal panel repair now, but before I go out and buy a hammer and dolly set, I need to figure out where the panel actually sits. It's so crudely beat up, it's hard to tell what is a good reference point, and how low everything else is relative to that. I have decent access to the backside of the panel so I'm willing to get it a shot, but the idea also crossed my mind just to cut this out and replace it--I think it would be an easy cut-and-weld job.

Sam

just replace it

itll prob save a lot of time and hassle

my2000apb wrote:just replace it

itll prob save a lot of time and hassle

This.

Sandsandsandsandsand. Take apart door and trims. Sandsandsandsandsandsandsandsand. Replace fender.



Sandsandsandsandsandsandsand.



I have some edges of this fender to do, then the lago fender. One rust spot needs to be brushed and ground out. Front fenders need to be heated and rolled. The rear panel needs to be taken care of, and the door trims as well. Then the car gets washed, then I can lay down etching primer, then I can start some filler work and all the other priming and filling that comes after that. There are only 5-6 weeks until I want this done for BBQ, so time to get off my ass and stop going to the mountains to camp and screw around and start getting dirt(ier).

Has anyone ever refinished the CQ midline fender trims with the Audi logos in them? The logos are perfectly flush with the trim and presumably cannot be removed without damaging them. My trims need some sanding to make them flat and smooth, and I'm not sure how I'll protect the logo while doing that, and get a nice crisp edge once I repaint.

Mmmm, I don't miss that filler dust taste in my mouth.

Pictures like that make me neurotic. A very good representation of how my car will turn out with the bumper painted, and to be honest I'm not a huge fan.

For one, the profile/curvative of the bumper doesn't match the rest of the car; the bottom is sucked too far inwards. I've noticed my bumper did the same depending on how it was fitted:


This would be caused by the fenders being too wide, or the bumper being too narrow. If the fenders are too wide, it might be adjustable through those, but wide fenders are also good as they can/do rub. The bumper itself is perfectly centered on almost everything on the front of the car, and is so well made I doubt it is asymmetric itself. If the bumper is too narrow, I would have to cut and bridge the bottom to widen it, which sounds messy, difficult, and time consuming with what I have left to work with.

Second, the all red bumper is boring when the rest of the car has the nice satin black trim around the bottom. I want to grab some satin/matte black vinyl and do something similar to this:


This kind of stuff is keeping me up at night. It doesn't help that the monsoon went goodbye and now it's 108F for the foreseeable future...time to get a bigger water bottle for the garage, I guess.

Sam

Completely agree on the black lowers.

RS2 bumper looks best on an RS2 avant. For all other B3/B4 cars, S2 bumper fits the car best, in my opinion.

All this work will pay off, keep at it!! I don't envy the heat there though.

EDIGREG wrote:Completely agree on the black lowers.

RS2 bumper looks best on an RS2 avant. For all other B3/B4 cars, S2 bumper fits the car best, in my opinion.

All this work will pay off, keep at it!! I don't envy the heat there though.

x2

Keep at it, really enjoy the updates.

Sandsandsandsandsandsandsandsandsand.



Sandsandsandsandsandsandsandsandsandsandsand.



Front fenders are both done. Hood is touched up, as I've gotten way better at sanding than I was when I first did it. The top of the doors (next to the window seal) got hit with red scotch-brite after I taped over the seal, as did the edges of everything else. I put the front wheels back on, installed headlights, and turned the car around in the garage. I stared at the fucked up back panel for 20min trying to figure out what to do with it (there are some high spots I can't seem to knock down before I cover it in filler), before deciding I will mess with that later. I threw the tail lights and rear crash bar back on, and will be going to give the car a bath tomorrow. Once clean, I can start with etching primer and filler! Progress!

Sam

I've been working with a customer at work to tune his car, which is an R8 V10 coupe with a custom made twin turbo kit he built himself. I've been working with him since I think April, and about a month ago his car was finally done and ready to be dropped off for tuning. I go in and open the shop at 9am on a Sunday, expecting him to show up in a truck and trailer that he transported the car in and stayed overnight. 9am rolls around and a silver R8 rolls up. I point him into the shop and see there's no rear bumper on the car, exposing the turbos and exhaust.



"Did you leave the truck at the hotel?" I asked. "No, I decided to drive it over (from LA) like this. I just took it easy." 10 minutes later he showed me the kit, which was beautifully made. Hard lines everywhere, flawless fit and finish, top quality components, no corners cut at all. I come to learn he is a professional fabricator, heavily involved in the SoCal hot rod industry. He does a bunch of stuff with shops like Nelson Racing Engines, working on show cars like their Maximus Charger, which his shop was largely responsible for the bodywork on (it is a custom metal-finished widebody in bare steel--no filler or paintwork on the entire car). Pretty damn cool guy to know.

Anyways, we get to work tuning his car this past week. Ends up putting down just over 700whp on 91 octane at just under 6psi on the stock motor. Full boost around 3500rpm, peak torque from 3800-6500rpm, and incredible top end power. The car is so smooth and so fast, and sounds unbelievably good at full chat and high RPM. One of my favorite projects to be involved in.




Anyways, in the process of chatting pretty frequently for the past few weeks his car has been in my hands, I bring up what I've got going on with the Audi. I showed him some pictures of that shitty rear panel, and his thoughts were 'yeah, that should be an easy fix, won't take long at all if you want help'. I appreciated it, but I also felt like a noob, having previously resigned to it being a quagmire to get involved in. I decided to give it another shot this week, and I'm glad I did.






I probably have 3-5 hours in to this, working the metal and looking at the damage to figure out how to work it. With a better understanding of what was wrong with the panel and what needed to happen to fix it, I methodically went through it working from the outside in, and fixed it. There are still some gouges and minor wavy spots near the middle where it had gotten hacked on in its previous life (see all the dark spots near the middle), and the bodyline at the bottom is not as crisply defined all the way across as it was originally, but this went from a rusty hack pavejob, to being doable with plenty of filler, to hopefully only requiring a well-sanded skim coat. Once I gave it a solid effort and got the hang of how things work, it was actually a pretty neat thing to do and I'm sure will definitely be a valuable skill in the future. Having started filler work elsewhere on the car, metal finishing is a much quicker and cleaner process when possible than using filler is.

I got the rear panel, a couple minor dents on the sides, and some rock dents on the hood in filler, and the smaller stuff is all sanded. I have to finish the hood, and tackle the rear panel. The next step after that is to pull the window trim and windows, and sand the roof down. Then it's time for epoxy, which has to be quickly followed with 2K primer. Lots of sanding then, and finally time for final paint and reassembly. Four weekends left until BBQ...

Sam

So you stopped at 6psi!? Lol

Nice work on that bumper.