Black Lights

[gphilla]

Morning All, i saw a thread on here about blacking out some of the chrome in the headlights so i thought yea why not lets give it a go. I personally think it looks much better than they did before but please feel free to air your comments.

 

[Stringster]

Looks great! Exactly what I'm planning to do.
How easy did you find it to split the lights?

 

[gphilla]

Actually a piece of cake the whole thing only took about 4hrs from start to finish including bumper removal

 

[Stringster]

That is encouraging! I will get on with it as soon as I have a spare weekend.

 

[gphilla]

Only tricky bit was there are 3 tiny Torx screws, i have the range but not that small so i used a flat headed electrical screwdriver

 

[D8UGF]

Hi Gphilla,

That looks very nice, can I ask, was there a guide to remove the bumper that you used, or could recomend, or did you just do it from knowledge? I have a black optics RS4 grill waiting to go on that I have started to do twice now, but the guides I have used dont seem to be too comprehensive so have bottled it!

Thanks

Dougie

 

[viceroy]

There are loads of guides out there, just google "A4 B7 Bumper Removal"
Basically it involves:
- Get willing friend to help (offer beer if it will help)
- Jacking car up at the front and removing both wheels.
- Removing the air intake guide to the airbox (two phillips screws)
- Remove the top headlight torx screw
- Loosen but don't remove the two side headlight torx screws (the one is easy to get to, the other is deep down inside and you need a long thin ratchet extension to get to it)
- Removing three torx screws along the top of the grill (size 30 IIRC)
- Removing three screws along the bottom of the bumper (mine weren't there, and neither were a mates with his RS4)
- Removing the plastic along the inside of the wheel arch (you don't need to remove the whole thing, just enough to get inside the bumper)
- Remove a further two screws per side from behind the arch cover (also torx I think)
- Remove two bolts per side deep inside the bumper (accessed from wheel arch) (OS is more tricky because a water bottle interferes, but not badly)

Then grab hold of the bumper and pull firmly (don't yank).
It should just pop off, and then you unclip the fog light connector and you're done.

Putting it all back together is just reversing the order.
WARNING - don't touch the bumper height adjusters though.

I have my lights apart at the moment and will be blacking them out tomorrow.
Have also decided to smoke the indicator cover too.

 

[D8UGF]

Thankyou Viceroy,

I have printed off a couple of guides but to be fair they all seem to be different. I just picked my car up from Audi today and had a quick chat with the mechanic. He said it was simply the three bolts underneath that hold the undertray to the bumper. Two either side in wheel arch liner, peel it back, two behind wheel arch liner, then two 10mm bolts verticaly inside bumper.

BUt he did say that as well as the three bolts on the top of the grill, the bumper adjuster bolts should be loosened. No mention of anything related to the headlights.

Dougie

 

[Cribbon]

bumper is easy to get off takes me max 20mins, not as bad as a3 took me 1hr to get bumper off to fit black grille

 

[viceroy]

Well the thing is, if you don't at least loosen the headlights, the bumper will not go back on, which is why I mentioned it

 

[D8UGF]

Phill and viceroy, many thanks for both your help, got the job done at the weekend results are here:

http://www.audi-sport.net/vb/audi-s...44-rs4-black-optics-grill-lava-grey-pics.html

After all that Phill I forgot to loosen the bumper adjuster bolts too!! It still came off though.

Dougie

 

[mitch_h_88]

Alright mate was just wondering if you had any pics of your black alloys as ave got a black a4 with same wheels and was thinking about getting them done myself??