Thread: Ordered New A4 Avant

Hi.. I havent been on here for sometime.. I had an A3 07 plate and fitted an armrest and found loads of people very helpfull.. So i changed the A3 for a A4 09 plate, 2.0 tdi Sline Avant.. Loved the car but wanted a change

So i ordered this week a A4 Avant Sline Black Edition in white.. With a number of extras.. Now to my question...

On the A3 and the A4 and probably many cars, the disc's where the wheels attach goes rusty and turns a stunning new car into looking like crap..

So wot are the options?? Remove he discs and paint/powder coat (not gettting any on the braking part !!)

Or had anyone done anything else???

Thanks Dodge

Great to see the forum still going and good as ever..

Mine too....and many other peoples.

Some dealers have painted these bits for people. I'm gonna pop my wheels off and do the hubs and brakes with Smoothrite at some point.

Good choice
Picked mine up on Saturday 17 weeks to
The day of ordering!

Originally Posted by Keef

Good choice
Picked mine up on Saturday 17 weeks to
The day of ordering!

Ordered mine on monday this week and was told end of septemebr... Will see !!

Originally Posted by scoTTy

Mine too....and many other peoples.

Some dealers have painted these bits for people. I'm gonna pop my wheels off and do the hubs and brakes with Smoothrite at some point.

Seems a bad design to me, u have a stunning new car and then rust and it looks crap...
If i was doing like u, would i need to remove the disc's ? Is that easy?

Dunno .... but I painted the calipers on my B6 S4 with them in place and I'll do the same on the A4. The disks/hubs I need to look at but since it's only for aethetics I'll only paint the visible bits so I doubt I'll have any unassembling to do.

I expected the hubs and calipers to be painted!
Does look a bit odd!

rxs1407 - have you been given a build week yet?
I got mine when I placed the order.

They look really nice new and even the edges of the disks are painted the same colour silver ... but it doesn't last !

Originally Posted by Keef

I expected the hubs and calipers to be painted!
Does look a bit odd!

rxs1407 - have you been given a build week yet?
I got mine when I placed the order.

Yes last week in September woteva the week is, forgot allready !!! Hope it comes earlier, as the wait is killing me allready..

Originally Posted by scoTTy

They look really nice new and even the edges of the disks are painted the same colour silver ... but it doesn't last !

Wot about Poweder coat?? Or would the heat buckle the disc's ???

I'm sure there's loads of better ways but I'm not gonna throw any cash at it. It's not a major thing for me so a fiver's worth of Smoothrite will do me fine.

Originally Posted by scoTTy

I'm sure there's loads of better ways but I'm not gonna throw any cash at it. It's not a major thing for me so a fiver's worth of Smoothrite will do me fine.

I'm a biker and quite a few bits on my bikes are powder coated... £35 for an hour of coating, so the discs would cost that or less, if u had more bits to do.. I dont use one of the wheel places as they are expensive.. Engineering companies are good.. I use green silicon tape to stop the powder getting to places..

But i will probably go the same as u.. cos i'm sure taking the discs off isnt fun..
Ta for help.. Just hate rust !!

To be honest the cost if just one consideration. The other is I don't think it's worth pulling the calipers and disks off. For some people it will be but not me.....and I've not had anything powder coated on my bikes so far so I haven't even found anywhere that does it.

There is an easy fix for this. Just fit the 20 spokes, then you spend so long cleaning them you don't really care about (nor can you see much of) the disks.

<glum> Car swapped for a VW Fox (yuk) this week, if Gilders don't fix the bodywork properly this time I'll go mental. Already got a full tank of fuel out of them as an apology for the cock up. Chances of them actually delivering on that???

Toasty
Sorry to hear your still having problems with the body shop!
Have you been brave enough to try the launch control yet?

On the Fox? No.... :-)


To be honest I've been so busy I've barely done anything with the car, I've only used Sport mode once and that was when I was late for a train. Also not had much motivation knowing it's going to have work done.

Better be back by the end of this week or I'll be putting nitromors in my water pistol.

I painted mine a few weeks ago, you need to be careful with painting the disc hubs as if you build up too much paint you can cause an imbalance that can induce wheel shimmy.

Stu,
Cheers for info on Carbon and wheels..
Wot paint did u use and colour? Do u have any pics? Did u do callipers as well? As my 09 is very rusty callipers..
Are u close to Andover?
Dodge

I'm about half hour away from you Dodge.

I used an automotive 2 pack paint on the calipers and an Acid Etch primer. Just gloss black applied with a brush but you can have aerosol's filled too.

For the disk hubs I used Hammerite smooth aerosol.

Hardest part was jacking the bloody car up. I did mine over a weekend allowing drying over night so I wanted to put the car on axle stands for safety.

I removed the calipers (I've only done the front so far) and hung them in the wheel arch, the carriers were removed to the garage for painting and along with the disks.

I bought S4 logo clips from Audi but they don't fit as it appears the S4 calipers have 2 holes drilled for the logo clips to fit in.

Originally Posted by VRStu

I'm about half hour away from you Dodge.

I used an automotive 2 pack paint on the calipers and an Acid Etch primer. Just gloss black applied with a brush but you can have aerosol's filled too.

For the disk hubs I used Hammerite smooth aerosol.

Hardest part was jacking the bloody car up. I did mine over a weekend allowing drying over night so I wanted to put the car on axle stands for safety.

I removed the calipers (I've only done the front so far) and hung them in the wheel arch, the carriers were removed to the garage for painting and along with the disks.

I bought S4 logo clips from Audi but they don't fit as it appears the S4 calipers have 2 holes drilled for the logo clips to fit in.

I will PM u my number, maybe we could meet to I can take a look ?
Do u have any pics ?

I don't have any pics mate but you're welcome to have a look - Not much to see though, they're just black

I painted mine on my A3 with Smooth Silver Hammerite... Never rusted again and still looks good over a year on... Cost less than a fiver!

Originally Posted by audicruiser

I painted mine on my A3 with Smooth Silver Hammerite... Never rusted again and still looks good over a year on... Cost less than a fiver!

Did u do the callipers as well? did u have to remove them? did u spray or use brush?

Using spray whilst still on the car is risky in case you get overspray on the car.

Originally Posted by rxs1407

Did u do the callipers as well? did u have to remove them? did u spray or use brush?

I used a brush, just take care in doing it. I haven't done the callipers on my A3 yet but I will do. I did them on my Mk4 Golf GTi with hammerite and it was fine. Didn't come off or bubble, just did it's job and looked good.

Dropped into Halfrauds for something earlier and noticed Hammerite was on Half Price if anyone is thinking of having a go.

Gilders Audi are all c*nts and can kiss my arse.

F*ckers.

Didn't go well then

Despite telling me Weds PM that all was left was the sat nav firmware are it'd definitely be ready for pickup at 1pm they rang me while I was on the way to the dealership (passing down the M1, thankfully not made a special trip) to say it wasn't ready after all as they weren't happy with the bodywork. So as I was only 15 minutes away I turned up anyway, found the car and had a poke around. I don't know what gorillas they use for bodywork. Jeez. Small dents into door now turned into poorly filled ripples along with crease marks where I think they've refitted the roof bars before the paint had fully cured. Paint scratch on bonnet not dealt with at all. I also now have an optional extra - swirl marks and incredibly bad machine polishing marks across the whole car.

Not happy.

Got a S Line A6 instead of the Fox, only 2.0 (jeez it's slow), manual. bit crap but can't complain after Fox.

Tempted to get a detailer or equivalent in Sheff to to an independent assessment of the repairs before I accept it now. If they'd made half decent job to start with....

Recommend a dealer? Not a bloody chance.

Doesn't sound too special mate.

Any word from them or are they just doing it and hoping you'll go away?

They've said they'll correct it all, and polish it properly. We'll see - the scratch on the bonnet is definitely below the basecoat and they keep on polishing it out. It won't get accepted now without me going over it much more thoroughly that I originally would have done, so it'll have to be right.

Just taken me 10 minutes to work out how to open the glovebox on the A6 - I'm feeling a bit thick.

Well - place bets now - Sheffield based detailer (who I'll happily name and recommend if they do a good job) attending Gilders tomorrow to assess the car - which as returned from whatever cowboy bodyshop they use.
Bloody expensive for a paint report which is going to take half a day but could be worth it in the long run.

Fingers crossed for a good outcome then.