Juice's Bagged White B8 Avant Build
BTW, my name is Jay, and I've been a club/corporate DJ in Vancouver, BC for 12 years full time. In that time, I've exclusively owned VW's; a few Corrados, a couple GTIs, and a GLX. When my DJ business expanded, I needed to make a tough decision and ditch my cars for an SUV. Soon my business outgrew that, and an equally tougher decision ensued... buying a van.
For the past 3 years, I've been driving a 2005 Ford Freestar for work, but in that time it has also been my daily driver. At first I didn't mind, it was fully loaded with more creature comforts than all of my other cars combined. It could haul all my gear plus my photobooth for a party of 400ppl, then turn around the next day and bring 7 friends hiking. With all seats reclinable and a DVD player playing 90's hip hop music videos, it's the road trip vehicle of choice. But it wasn't long until this wore off and I found myself facing reality. I'm driving a god damn van. So I found myself again liking and following all VAG content on instagram, dreaming. One day, I saw an old friend post his red B6 Avant for sale, some people may know of it as Jonny Tokyo's Red Dragon from RPI Equipped. I already had a soft spot for wagons, seeing as I could use the extra space to haul gear for my smaller events, I sent him a message. Jonny, being a good guy had priced the car very well, and it was sold almost immediately and I had missed my chance to get a fun car on the cheap, and more importantly to keep myself sane.
October of 2015 - I'm determined to get myself an Avant
I began building my perfect Avant in my head, while saving Craigslist and Autotrader searches and turning on all notifications to alert me when cars came up for sale. Being in Canada, you'd think people would drive Audi wagons... well, crickets my friends. Crickets. In the first 6 months, less than five B6/B7's came up. All were crap, high mileage, moldy cars. As frustrated as this was because of how long it was taking to find a decent car, it was a bit of a catch 22. Because the longer it took, the more money I was setting aside. And that Avant I was building in my head, it was only getting nicer as my budget was increasing daily.
I then spotted iacro_rilber's B8 on instagram one day, and that was it for me. I actually first saw a video of his car before the widebody transformation, specifically this one and that was it. Something about a clean low B8 wagon struck me as a perfect combination. So I now added "B8" to all my search criteria.
For the next 4 months, crickets...
As time went by, and I dug deep into all of the options, trims and configurations of B8's (big mistake BTW), and I soon found myself looking for a needle in a haystack, in the middle of the Mojave Desert.
The car had to be:
Black
Sport Seats
Navi (for console controls)
Titanium (black trim/headliner)
Non Drive Select
Paddle Shift
Under 100k
Good f***ing luck!
I soon gave up on that and went to my local Audi dealer to test drive an Allroad. Being a business owner, I could write off a huge portion of a new car. But being super anal about certain things, I immediately realized that any Allroad build after 2014 has factory tint/privacy glass. Instant Deal Breaker.
It was at this point I decided I would travel anywhere to find my perfect B8, and thus expanded my search Canada wide. This is a Major Key Alert. There were approx 40 B8 Avants for sale, mostly in Calgary, Montreal, and Toronto. However, out of 40 cars, zero had the options I was looking for. I then decided I had to make some concessions to my list if I was ever going to find a car to buy. I'm sure most of you Avant guy's who did not factory order new can relate at this point. So my next colour choice was Grey... Nothing. So I then dropped the Titanium Package as a must-have. Now we were getting somewhere. But the cars that hit all my other needs had well over 100k. No dice.
Then one day I got an alert of a White 2009 Avant with 77k for sale in Toronto. White being my favourite Allroad colour, I found myself saying hey, not bad. I clicked on the interior shots.. Sport seats
, no drive select , Navi . I knew right then this was the car. I wasted no time getting in touch. Turns out the owner was originally from Vancouver, had owned various Euros including a widebody M3. Although his Avant was bone stock, we had similar ideas of what the car could be. Being that I had been looking and researching for so long to this point, I knew all the questions I needed answers for. We went back and forth through email, phone, and skype over the course of a week, and at this point, I decided to book my plane ticket and an AirBnb to see it with my own eyes. Date was set, and in a couple weeks I would fly across the country to see, and hopefully buy my first Audi.Having already built the car in my mind 1000x over, I couldn't wait to get started. So before I even set eyes on the car, I went hunting for parts. Before I even got on the plane, I ordered my Airlift 3P and Rotiforms from RPI. From what started as a $6-8k budget for a B6, now turned into a car I could only dream of owning thanks to waiting.
On October 12, I flew out to see the car... with cash. My first time in Toronto, and I wasn't even there for 24 hours. But I damn sure flew home with a receipt from the shipping company and the Registration to my Avant. And a grueling 12 days later, I picked it up, now safely on the West Coast.
October 26 - The day I brought it home:
Seeing as it took almost 2 weeks to ship the car across Canada, all of my parts I ordered were already here. First thing I did was ditch the ugly Shrek ear-shaped pre-facelift shift knob.
For the next few days I resisted driving it around to show friends my basic bi*tch station wagon until the majority of the parts I had sitting around were installed.
I installed the front plate filler, changed the fogs to yellow LEDs, upgraded some interior lighting, rolled the front fenders, removed some rear emblems, and detailed the snot out of it.
I also wasn't a fan of the silver trim on the doors and dash, so I wrapped that in 3m Brushed Aluminum in Black (3M 1080-BR212)
I now have to give a huge shoutout to Xclusive Auto Spa in South Surrey (IG: xclusiveautospa_ltd). He's been a long time friend and offered up full use of his shop and lift so I could get to work while he was at Sema. If you live in the GVRD and need some detailing, he's the man to see, and there's always something cool in the shop like aircooled Porsches, Diablos, & Ferarris. So, the months leading up to me actually buying the car, I had read the Official B8 Air Ride thread through and through and had already figured out exactly what I wanted out of my bag install. All black, and all hidden. I also wanted to keep the factory subwoofer. Again, I can't thank those of you enough who have put time into posting their setups and installation solutions. I had bought the actual bags used so they did not come with instructions, so I relied heavily on the knowledge of member posts and articles throughout the forums.
November 3 - Airlift 3p Install
Forgive me as it was a very long, bloody, sweaty, greasy day under the car, so I did not manage to take any pictures of the process. But with what I learned that day, I hope to chime in and help others with their install questions in the future.
I arrived at the shop at 10am with a wagon full of parts, and most of my spare tire setup wired. I figured it would be pretty straight forward removing the old suspension, running air lines, and putting in the new suspension parts. Well, I can tell you a modern B8 car is not like working on an old Corrado. I've probably re&re'd coilovers 20 times on a Mk2 chassis that I could do it blindfolded. This car needless to say, is a LOT more work. I'm talking 20 fender liner clips a corner more work. Long story short, I left the shop at 8:45pm, on BAGS. Although I did do the install solo, I highly recommend having a buddy, and use of a shop lift and air tools. Some of the bolts on these cars are torqued by Lucifer. Especially if the suspension has never been out of the car before, be prepared for some cussing and cursing along the way. I did run into a couple issues, like missing upper front strut nuts (no fault to Airlift, I bought them second hand). Thankfully 3 doors down there was a machine shop with a wall full of nuts and bolts and this was sorted on the spot. Being my first bag install, I was cautious of torquing the tank fittings, so I had redo all of those the next morning because of leaks. The display on the controller makes it super easy to troubleshoot problems because of the psi information it displays in real time. When fixing leaks on the fittings, I found that 2-3 layers of teflon tape, and 2 full turns past hand tight solved any leaks (Airlift recommends 1.5-3 turns past hand tight).
At this point, I was beside myself that I had a car on air ride. Even more so that I did the entire install by myself in a day. I still have some things to do, like clean up the hidden setup in the trunk by building a panel to have the manifold secure and hide all the lines. But for now, it's working 100% and I'm absolutely stoked.
One thing I was super keen on continuing with the theme, was a stealth 3P controller location. I really did not want my Airlift controller to be seen, and especially did not want any lose cables in view, or have a controller I had to take out from the center console every time I needed to make an adjustment. The solution: mold it into the ashtray. Smoking is disgusting, and there is an extra hidden 12v in the center console for phone charging, so I did not mind deleting the lighter and tray one bit. I also liked the idea I could close the tray door and be 100% hidden.
There are many firsts with this car, and up to this point, I have never worked with fiberglass in my life. But I started by digging out my dremel, and hacking apart the ashtray to make room for the controller.
The process was pretty straight forward, but very tedious and time consuming. The basic steps above were:
Wrap controller to protect from resin during molding
Lay fiberglass, wait, lay some more for strength, then wait again
Remove mold
Cut and trim
Add filler, wait, sand, more filler, wait, sand, repeat, then repeat what you just repeated
Paint
And voila:
Once this was done, it was time to put the wheels on.
November 5 - Wheels
I've been a fan of Rotiform since I first heard of them, and watched a short film a few years back on how they got started. After looking through 80 pages of wheel specs and tire sizes, I knew I could get away with tucking 20's.
Specs are:
20x10 et35
225/35/20
I recommend doing your bag install on stock wheels so you can have the car calibrate the air ride all the way up and down without mucking up your fenders or scratching your stanced wheels. Once you know you have no clearance issues, then you can do your presets on the new wheels. Airlift makes this super easy and precise with their app, I can't say enough good things about this system. I've heard guys with V2 switch to 3P and swear they would never use anything else. I can be outside the car, and with the Bluetooth app, I can adjust each corner individually by the mm, watching for clearance careful not to touch wheel to fender. Because I rolled (and slightly pulled) my front fenders, I can air out with no problems. Having mad stretch on my tires doesn't hurt either:
So, almost exactly one year to the day from when I began my search for an Avant, and exactly 2 weeks after owning it, I have my B8 on bags and wheels. It was a long time to wait, but I feel it was well worth it, because I have a car that is far beyond what I initially set out to build. And for the first time in my life, I have a car that I always turn around to look at every time I park it.
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Originally Posted by Teggin
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