New to me a4..
Posted: Mar Thu 03, 2011 11:52 am
Coppied from audizine.
Evening Gents. I posted awhile back asking about a b5 that i was considering. Well, i pulled the trigger and bought it. It had a pretty extensive list of repairs needed, but overall im extremely happy with it. Ive got my degree in collision repair, so fixing stuff doesnt scare me at all. I figured id make a separate thread to keep track of all i fix or do to it, with pictures of course.
It a 99 1.8T Quattro Manual with around 70k on the clock. Volcano Black Micah paint. Like i said, it had its issues, so i was able to pick it up for 3600. Here are some pictures from before/ right when i bought the car.
So heres the list of stuff that was wrong with it.
Bought the car on 1/31/11
Hood and Front Bumper damaged. Looks like the PO just hit something. No structural damage.
Cracked windshield
Left front turn signal out
4/6 headlight mounting tabs broken, headlights both scratched and foggy.
Hail damage on left rear sail panel, trunk lid, and a door ding on right fender.
Weird clearcoat defect on entire roof.
Rear license plate bracket damaged. PO had the plate just duct taped on[rolleyes]
Left front door sags, hits doorframe, squeaks.
Fuel, oil temp, coolant temp gauges dont work.
Driver display more than pixelated.
Dash cup holder damaged, wont go in all the way.
Paint on shifter bezel peeling off.
Sunroof shade cloth sagging
Cruise control doesnt work
Exhaust system needs work. Just bent up/ rusty.
2/1
Finally got to do some work this week.
Had the windshield replaced.
Changed the oil, and swapped the thermostat. The coolant temp gauge never worked, and i thought it may have just been the sensor. But didnt have much dash heat, so i swapped the thermostat. Problem solved
Vacuumed and detailed the interior.
2/7
There was this weird paint on the shifter bezel. I think its factory, as the same stuff is on the lighter socket cover, and the window switches. I thought it was funk from the PO, but no. Stripped it down and repainted in flat black.
2/18
Did a bunch this week.
Adjusted the door by just loosening the bolt and hauling up on it. Not quite sure how they designed it, as theres this little 7mm pin that seems to adjust the slop...i Just cranked it down tight.
Plastic welded the the broken top tab on each headlight. The PO was a big fan of gorilla glue/ JB weld[rolleyes]
Got into the gas tank and fixed the sender via: http://vader.inow.com/~drbob/fuel.html
Tore the front end apart a bit to asses the damage. Most of the tabs on the bumper are torn, and the PO just globbed glue on everything. Its pretty nasty. On the plus side, its still solid enough to use, and since its already beat up i can hack it up some more without feeling bad. Not a huge fan of the way the stock front looks, but i cant afford an s4, or aftermarket right now. I decided to just cut the bottom of the bumper/top of the lower valence, as well as removing the factory bumper grilles. Also shaving the headlight washer holes. I think it looks better, and makes room for a FMIC later on.
Last night i spent most of my night just roughing everything out. Added some steel to support the bottom of the front valence, cut out a bunch of mounting tabs, and did a whole lot of plastic welding
Did some bodywork this weekend. We had a crazy hailstorm last summer, so i had three dents on the trunk lid and one on the left sail panel. Theres also one on the right front fender, but i decided to leave that for another weekend. I thought id document the way i fixed these, as i used tools that most everybody has access to. I was able to use a nice miller mig welder, but other than that, pretty standard.
So first step, unhook the battery. Ive seen some people weld on a car without damaging anything, but ive also seen people fry computers and modules by leaving the battery connected.
Next is to remove the paint from just the dent. The goal is to keep the repair as small as possible, so dont take a ton off yet.
Heres how i pulled the dent. Normally, a special gun is used to weld small pins to the dent, and a slide hammer is used to pull the dent up. I had neither. No problem.
I cut four pieces of 1/8 inch steel rod, and clamped a vice grip to the top. Put the ground clamp on the vise grip, and then put two tack welds on either side of the rod. Behold the porcupine.
To pull the dent up, i clamped a vice grip to the rod again, and used a pry bar against a block of wood to pull upwards...The goal isnt to just lever up hard enough to pull the dent out, as the surrounding metal will be pulled up as well. Tapping all around the dent while pulling gets the steel molecules moving enough that just a bit of upward pressure is enough to put the steel in the right spot.
Body filler works best if its under 1/4 inch, so once the dents most of the way out, the rod gets cut off and the weld ground away, Keep the heat down to avoid warping the steel. I used a DA sander to feather the repair out a bit more. I usually go to around an inch outside the damage.
Some filler.
Ill shape the filler with 80 grit, leaving it a little bit high, then finish up with 180 grit to get ready for the filler primer. I used to use the rattle can stuff, but a quality urethane primer is soooo much nicer to work with.
I did some more work on the front bumper too, and got it in primer too. Ill get pictures of that stuff later. Im hoping to have a hood and get some paint laid this weekend, but well see.
Evening Gents. I posted awhile back asking about a b5 that i was considering. Well, i pulled the trigger and bought it. It had a pretty extensive list of repairs needed, but overall im extremely happy with it. Ive got my degree in collision repair, so fixing stuff doesnt scare me at all. I figured id make a separate thread to keep track of all i fix or do to it, with pictures of course.
It a 99 1.8T Quattro Manual with around 70k on the clock. Volcano Black Micah paint. Like i said, it had its issues, so i was able to pick it up for 3600. Here are some pictures from before/ right when i bought the car.
So heres the list of stuff that was wrong with it.
Bought the car on 1/31/11
Hood and Front Bumper damaged. Looks like the PO just hit something. No structural damage.
Cracked windshield
Left front turn signal out
4/6 headlight mounting tabs broken, headlights both scratched and foggy.
Hail damage on left rear sail panel, trunk lid, and a door ding on right fender.
Weird clearcoat defect on entire roof.
Rear license plate bracket damaged. PO had the plate just duct taped on[rolleyes]
Left front door sags, hits doorframe, squeaks.
Fuel, oil temp, coolant temp gauges dont work.
Driver display more than pixelated.
Dash cup holder damaged, wont go in all the way.
Paint on shifter bezel peeling off.
Sunroof shade cloth sagging
Cruise control doesnt work
Exhaust system needs work. Just bent up/ rusty.
2/1
Finally got to do some work this week.
Had the windshield replaced.
Changed the oil, and swapped the thermostat. The coolant temp gauge never worked, and i thought it may have just been the sensor. But didnt have much dash heat, so i swapped the thermostat. Problem solved
Vacuumed and detailed the interior.
2/7
There was this weird paint on the shifter bezel. I think its factory, as the same stuff is on the lighter socket cover, and the window switches. I thought it was funk from the PO, but no. Stripped it down and repainted in flat black.
2/18
Did a bunch this week.
Adjusted the door by just loosening the bolt and hauling up on it. Not quite sure how they designed it, as theres this little 7mm pin that seems to adjust the slop...i Just cranked it down tight.
Plastic welded the the broken top tab on each headlight. The PO was a big fan of gorilla glue/ JB weld[rolleyes]
Got into the gas tank and fixed the sender via: http://vader.inow.com/~drbob/fuel.html
Tore the front end apart a bit to asses the damage. Most of the tabs on the bumper are torn, and the PO just globbed glue on everything. Its pretty nasty. On the plus side, its still solid enough to use, and since its already beat up i can hack it up some more without feeling bad. Not a huge fan of the way the stock front looks, but i cant afford an s4, or aftermarket right now. I decided to just cut the bottom of the bumper/top of the lower valence, as well as removing the factory bumper grilles. Also shaving the headlight washer holes. I think it looks better, and makes room for a FMIC later on.
Last night i spent most of my night just roughing everything out. Added some steel to support the bottom of the front valence, cut out a bunch of mounting tabs, and did a whole lot of plastic welding
Did some bodywork this weekend. We had a crazy hailstorm last summer, so i had three dents on the trunk lid and one on the left sail panel. Theres also one on the right front fender, but i decided to leave that for another weekend. I thought id document the way i fixed these, as i used tools that most everybody has access to. I was able to use a nice miller mig welder, but other than that, pretty standard.
So first step, unhook the battery. Ive seen some people weld on a car without damaging anything, but ive also seen people fry computers and modules by leaving the battery connected.
Next is to remove the paint from just the dent. The goal is to keep the repair as small as possible, so dont take a ton off yet.
Heres how i pulled the dent. Normally, a special gun is used to weld small pins to the dent, and a slide hammer is used to pull the dent up. I had neither. No problem.
I cut four pieces of 1/8 inch steel rod, and clamped a vice grip to the top. Put the ground clamp on the vise grip, and then put two tack welds on either side of the rod. Behold the porcupine.
To pull the dent up, i clamped a vice grip to the rod again, and used a pry bar against a block of wood to pull upwards...The goal isnt to just lever up hard enough to pull the dent out, as the surrounding metal will be pulled up as well. Tapping all around the dent while pulling gets the steel molecules moving enough that just a bit of upward pressure is enough to put the steel in the right spot.
Body filler works best if its under 1/4 inch, so once the dents most of the way out, the rod gets cut off and the weld ground away, Keep the heat down to avoid warping the steel. I used a DA sander to feather the repair out a bit more. I usually go to around an inch outside the damage.
Some filler.
Ill shape the filler with 80 grit, leaving it a little bit high, then finish up with 180 grit to get ready for the filler primer. I used to use the rattle can stuff, but a quality urethane primer is soooo much nicer to work with.
I did some more work on the front bumper too, and got it in primer too. Ill get pictures of that stuff later. Im hoping to have a hood and get some paint laid this weekend, but well see.
