belms4's Silver Auto Avant Conversion to Noggy 6 spd Widebody Build Thread

[belms4]

I've been meaning to get this build thread started for months now, but been so busy with the project itself I've had little spare time to actually sit down and start posting about it! I'll try to retoractively begin posting with pictures and comments as this build has evolved since March.

The Basics
In March 2021 I found a half decent silver 2002 S4 Avant with automatic transmission, black leather/wood trim interior, and 183,000 miles at a Copart lot local to me in the south Denver, Colorado metro area. Supposedly ran based on the listing. Unfortunately title was branded salvage from the accident it had been in. I ended paying $1,100 plus delivery to my driveway. I'd always wanted an avant and this would be my 4th B5 S4 overall I've owned/restored. Looks to me like someone hopped a curb and basically destroyed the front bumper and punched a small hole in the radiator, so all the coolant had leaked out. I think it had some previous damage on the rear bumper from someone backing into something low. Only other damage I found was 2 leaking tires on the left side and a scraped lower control arm. Nothing wrong with any other body panels besides clear coat in various stages of peeling on one side and some hail damage on the roof. I guess with the overall values of these cars the bumper, radiator, and wheel damage was enough to consider it totalled and now salvage. Doesn't much matter to me, as I decided to keep it, get a rebuilt title, and not resell.




Original Plan
The original plan here to start was check the engine condition, pull the engine, find everything broken from the accident and replace it, perform all maintenance, and maybe install K04 turbos along with basic mods needed to support that. I'd also clean up interior and restore it to the S4 interior since someone had taken the S4 headliner, C, and D pillars along with other avant pieces and reinstalled light gray A4 avant pieces or lost/broke some of the interior. Finally, I'd convert the car from automatic/tiptronic over to 01E 6 speed transmission and drivetrain and have myself a simple stage 3 S4 avant I could daily drive and potentially sell my imola yellow B5 S4 stage 3 daily sedan.

What actually happened...
Well as time went along this plan underwent major changes. I found the engine to be in great condition when I initially did a compression test on the cylinders (180-190 psi on all cylinders - wet test) after filling it with oil and also found a ton of parts replaced with OEM new parts. Even almost brand new BW K03 turbos and OEM aux water pump relocation kit installed. It seems based on the carfax report I got the car had one long time owner that took great care of it, and the owner between me and that person had it about 10 months and did their best in that time to tear it apart.

I ended up deciding on BW K04 turbos and got a 6 speed swap kit ordered via Audis4parts. While I had the motor pulled I spent time looking over the body and really wanted to restore the paint or repaint it entirely. I decided on repaint entirely and see if I could strip the car down for delivery to a body shop for a full repaint of the exterior and engine bay to my dream build color of Nogaro blue. Well as I found body shops were all way too busy to deal with a full repaint project without waiting 6 months and wanting $10,000 as a starting point. My neighbor ended up asking if I wanted help in repainting it myself. I said yeah what the hell and my adventure into paint and body work began!

I spent pretty much the entire summer buying tools and equipment needed to start painting at home, tearing the car to pieces, and sanding and repairing the body panels. I also had an OEM RS4 front bumper I planned to narrow, paint and install since I had no S4 front bumper cover for this car.

The last week of August as I was getting close to starting primer, sealer, paint, and clearcoat and I'd sanded down and mostly prepped every panel of the car (or shell as it is at this point). A friend one night pointed out a mostly complete OEM B5 RS4 widebody kit available at a very reasonable price. I spoke with the seller and gave it some thought. Of course with the car being torn down so far ready for repaint anyway, it was more a matter of just spending money on the parts and I decided to go down the rabbit hole further and buy the widebody parts to convert this car into a mostly complete RS4 body. The trunk hatch is the only part I don't currently plan to change to RS4. So this blew up my plans as, I'd need to sand and prep an entirely different body... almost every panel again... 4 doors, side skirts, fenders, and rear quarter panels. I'm still going nogaro blue, just with the RS widebody panels now!

As of 10/1/2021:
Widebody parts have shipped just today coming to me through freight delivery. I'm doing everything except cut and weld the rear RS4 quarter panels myself. I'm having a custom body shop in Denver do that part at the end of October. I'll then get the car back and begin with primer on the rear quarter panel area and we'll see how far I am with sanding and prepping the rest of the panels by then.

[belms4]

Place holder for update #1

[PoVolks]

Big up!!! Big build! Abolish Rare Silver B5 S4s.

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[off_set]

Haha I’m glad I was a bad enough influence to create some of this madness , better bring it down to vegas when it’s done so I can see it in person.


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[belms4]

Haha I’m glad I was a bad enough influence to create some of this madness , better bring it down to vegas when it’s done so I can see it in person.


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Yeah you're half the reason my bank account is drained lol. I'll drive out there and hand deliver your parts I been sitting on for 6 months when this thing is done and we can go cruise! Better find yourself a widebody sedan by then!

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[off_set]

By that time b5 rs4s will be legal to import and I’ll have brought one over is the hope


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[avant1987]

Good luck man! You and I are on the same journey. My Avant goes under the knife at the end of the month. Similar mindset, I scored a 6 speed Nogaro Avant for a ridiculously low price and decided on a conversion based upon that. Looking forward to your updates!


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[belms4]

Good luck man! You and I are on the same journey. My Avant goes under the knife at the end of the month. Similar mindset, I scored a 6 speed Nogaro Avant for a ridiculously low price and decided on a conversion based upon that. Looking forward to your updates!


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Oh nice! We're both building the dream!! Yeah I'd have loved to get a 6 speed and noggy avant to start. Woulda saved me like 1000 hours of work here haha. We'll get to the same place in the end though, that's awesome!

I'll get going on this thread adding pics and updates from the past 6 months, but here's a little taster of where I was at the other week before I power washed the carpet and got that back in. Dash is still out and I'll probably leave it out til I'm done with painting even though I'm just doing exterior. Allows me to pull the front end wiring back into the car. Just received my rebuilt (partially anyway) 01e transmission and swap kit this week as well.

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[bshanna]

excited for you. can't wait to see it come together!

good luck man, not that i'm much help but lemme know if i can help. Maybe i'll get my body work done some day and we can go for a cruise. Well, we can go for a cruise regardless, i suppose

bret

[belms4]

October 9, 2021 update:

Widebody parts arrived Wednesday this past week! I've been able to bump up the schedule for having the rear quarter panels cut and RS4 panels welded in. Car will be trailered over to Emmel's Enamels in Denver on Saturday 10/16 where Ryan will be doing the work over a couple weeks.

I think I've decided on having the antenna hole in the roof welded closed as well and I'll hide the antenna in the headliner or pillar or something instead.

I got to start on mocking up the body panels today and installed the 4 RS4 doors on the body along with hood and the 2 fenders I put on a couple days ago. Kinda looking like a car again for the moment! This is all going on in order to align the rear doors where they should be so the body shop can line up the rear quarters panels with them properly. Still need to get the trunk hatch back on as well. Front subframe went back on Friday night with uprights and suspension so I can put on wheels to roll the car into a trailer.

Nice to find that the driver's side RS4 fender seems to fit perfectly with the brackets that stabilize the S4 fender. No modification needed there that I can see. Passenger side is designed a lot different and it looks like I'll need to drill two holes in the frame to fully mount that side fender. Maybe install a couple rivnuts with m6 bolts so I'm not just using sheet metal screws direct into the frame. I'll also need to spray an internal frame coating in the areas I drill so this thing doesn't start rotting from the inside down the road.

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[RMode]

Great progress so far !

[lowestA4]

Ah! Finally you managed to have a thread Mike.

I will follow closely.

Keep going!

[belms4]

Ah! Finally you managed to have a thread Mike.

I will follow closely.

Keep going!

Haha I know, it was long overdue!

Should be more interesting updates on the way soon. I finished aligning the doors, fenders, and hood last night (painful process). The car will be trailered off Saturday morning for the body shop! I hope to get some good pics out of that process as long as the shop takes some for me.


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[belms4]

Well unfortunately a shitty update this time around. As I mentioned before Emmel's Enamels (in Denver) and Ryan there were set to be doing the rear quarter panel work. Ryan is the owner and was supposed to be picking the car up on Saturday 10/16 at noon. I got a call from him right around then and he managed to break something in his foot earlier in the week and needed to reschedule pickup to Monday 10/18. No big deal.

Well pickup time today came and went this morning and I haven't heard anything at all from him. Called many times throughout the day and left voicemail and emailed. I've still heard nothing after a no call/no show. No idea what's going on there. I picked this guy because he's worked on B5s before and specifically done a widebody conversion before. I did also get 2 different people that mentioned Ryan there does good work but has either bailed on work for them without ever hearing back from him or it's been next to impossible to reach and get an update from him. Really hoping he'll come through and call me back tomorrow to reschedule, but based on other's experiences he may have bailed on the work.

Based on what happens tomorrow I may need to scramble here to get another shop to do my rear quarter panels. Massive waste of my time and I was fuming mad earlier with a body shop owner scheduling me for work then not even having the courtesy to call if he can't make the pickup or do the work. This may be at least a month setback if I don't hear anything more because the other shops I initially spoke with were at minimum a month out from being able to schedule me. I'll probably be looking at more of a restoration shop since they're pretty used to working on rust and cutting and welding to deal with that on older cars along with fabrication if needed to extend the rear wheel wells underneath.

If anyone else on here has body shop recommendations around the Denver area or even down to Colorado Springs let me know. This setback is also going to likely put me spraying the car in December or January now, which I really wanted to avoid since I'm spraying in the garage and need wet floors and ventilation and can't go too cold for spraying temps.

In other random news I got my basecoat and clearcoat spray gun delivered this week from the UK. Went with a DeVilbiss GPi with 1.4mm tip and needle. Stay tuned to see where this occasionally aggravating project takes me next!

**Update***
Finally got in touch with the owner today. We'll try for a 3rd time to get the car picked up and in there tomorrow and see what happens. Fingers crossed.



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[Rmr1499]

Just curious why you went with a devilbiss instead of something like a sata. Nothing wrong with your choice was just wondering what made you choose this one. And yea at the body shop I use to work with that no call back stuff would not fly at all. Especially being one of the top 3 rated shops in NEOhio.


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[belms4]

Just curious why you went with a devilbiss instead of something like a sata. Nothing wrong with your choice was just wondering what made you choose this one. And yea at the body shop I use to work with that no call back stuff would not fly at all. Especially being one of the top 3 rated shops in NEOhio.


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Just based on the research I did I feel like this is a great all around gun for starters that's hard to mess up with. This one can do anything from basecoat to primer and in between, though I do have a separate primer gun. Sounded like a good option to get the level of orange peel that european cars usually come out with. Once I get into this more I may decide on another and investing more money into my new spray gun collection. I did look at a sata or two and others.

I'm also somewhat limited being in a home garage with air supply. I don't have a 220 power supply to run any 1 powerful/larger compressor of 50 gallons or more (or the space really), so what I'm doing is actually running two 26 gallon portable compressors I've rigged up with check valves to both flow into 1 regulator/filter/separator setup and out to my lead in hose to the gun to get the airflow and capacity I need for spraying. I don't think I'd have enough airflow to support a 13 cfm gun for very long and this devilbiss gpi uses around 9.5 cfm I believe. I know that works with my setup because that's right around what my primer gun eats and I've already done about 6 coats overall (block sanding between) on the roof with that gun. No problems at all with air supply or compressors keeping up. So if I can get a good finish out of a gun that's not going to cost me $500+ and one that fits my air supply at home, then I'm all for it. I will likely spray a spare fender I have here fully first to be sure this is indeed getting me the finish I want before I move on to spraying the body panels I'm installing on the car.

The car did get picked up today! So I'm happy about that at least. This guy is a small shop with maybe a couple others there working with him. Would be nice if they had a real phone at the shop to call and talk to someone when he's not in, but I don't think they have that. Unfortunately all the bigger shops I called around Denver and ones I know have done this widebody work (like SVE autobody) in the past are all so busy they are only taking collision work for the foreseeable future. Options are somewhat limited. Good news is he has the car now and I know he's done some great work in the past, just a bit of a mess with communication. 2-3 weeks I should have it back!

[RMode]

While it's been a while since I painted a car (10 years or so IIRC), I've had so many different guns over the years. What you find is among the best out there, it's user choice. I've had good results with all of them. The biggest thing separating things is obviously the prep work. The better you are as far as skills, and of course, the better the prep, the better the job comes out. At the end of the day, the more you practice with a given setup, and particularly a given paint system combo, the more confident you'll be, and the better your end result.

[belms4]

Yep, I'm very ocd and meticulous in my prep. I'd gladly spend 6 or 8 hours working on a single door if I have to to get it prepped right haha. The RS4 panels all had a bit more damage as far as dents and bends go than I'd hoped, but I'm having the body shop take care of them all properly through metal work before I get it back and I should have a nice clean slate to work with when it comes back.

[RMode]

looking forward to seeing more

[xalents23]

Awesome build, if you can get some pictures of how you mount the RS4 front bumper to the RS4 fenders that would be greatly appreciated. I am looking into doing this conversion to my sedan.

[belms4]

Awesome build, if you can get some pictures of how you mount the RS4 front bumper to the RS4 fenders that would be greatly appreciated. I am looking into doing this conversion to my sedan.

Thanks! Sure can when I get to that point. I'm actually widening a narrowed oem RS4 bumper back out. From what I understand the mounting is totally different from the S4. There are no plastic guides that the bumper cover clips into on each side any longer. Relies more on 2 holes I think on each side where you put bolts directly upward through the bumper cover and into the RS4 fenders where it has a couple holes. Yes, I'll grab some pics next time I have the car for ya.

[Danza]

Hope the quarters go smoothly

[xalents23]

Thanks! Sure can when I get to that point. I'm actually widening a narrowed oem RS4 bumper back out. From what I understand the mounting is totally different from the S4. There are no plastic guides that the bumper cover clips into on each side any longer. Relies more on 2 holes I think on each side where you put bolts directly upward through the bumper cover and into the RS4 fenders where it has a couple holes. Yes, I'll grab some pics next time I have the car for ya.

Awesome, yeah I looked at my RS4 fender and front bumper. And mocked them up on the ground and could only see using the two holes you mentioned to button everything up. Would be great to see how you do it. Can't really find much on it on the internet.

[Rmr1499]

Yea not complaining about the gun was just seeing why you decided. The guy who trained me used a $10 harbor freight gun at the shop for 10+ years and you would never be able to tell because he dialed it in and knew what he was doing. What paint line are you using


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[belms4]

Yea not complaining about the gun was just seeing why you decided. The guy who trained me used a $10 harbor freight gun at the shop for 10+ years and you would never be able to tell because he dialed it in and knew what he was doing. What paint line are you using


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No I got what you were saying/asking. I'm not using anything fancy... mostly Finish 1 line. I went over to a local Sherwin Williams Automotive paint store over the summer and spent some time talking over my options and the project with someone there who helped make recommendations. Outside of small rust bubbles all along the rocker panels under the sideskirts I had to sand off I did take the whole roof to bare metal to work on hail damage myself.

So I've started with a high build 2k DTM primer for the roof and other small patches: Finish 1 FP415 - this will go over any other areas I need to build up and block sand (doesn't have to go onto just bare metal). Rear bumper would be a good example where I disassembled and took a large patch of paint off where I did some some polyurethane plastic welding to fix a crack. That was a fun experience and valuable skill to pickup.

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Once the whole car is prepped and ready I will be doing a black sealer layer all around. Seeing as I have about 3 different colored body panels I'll be painting over I thought it a good idea to just get the whole car covered in one black sealer layer under the basecoat of paint so I don't have different blue shades showing up based on what's under the area. This will make it all uniform color before paint and provide a nice level layer with some chemical adhesion as well. I'm using Dimension DS694 2k acrylic urethane sealer (which I believe is a Sherwin Williams brand).

Next up will be my basecoat of the nogaro blue paint: Dimension National Rule High Hiding Basecoat (Sherwin Williams mixed this up for me based off factory nogaro blue paint code)

Finally, for clear we've got another Finish 1 product: FC720 Ultimate Overall Clearcoat

[Rmr1499]

No I got what you were saying/asking. I'm not using anything fancy... mostly Finish 1 line. I went over to a local Sherwin Williams Automotive paint store over the summer and spent some time talking over my options and the project with someone there who helped make recommendations. Outside of small rust bubbles all along the rocker panels under the sideskirts I had to sand off I did take the whole roof to bare metal to work on hail damage myself.

So I've started with a high build 2k DTM primer for the roof and other small patches: Finish 1 FP415 - this will go over any other areas I need to build up and block sand (doesn't have to go onto just bare metal). Rear bumper would be a good example where I disassembled and took a large patch of paint off where I did some some polyurethane plastic welding to fix a crack. That was a fun experience and valuable skill to pickup.

20210927_210500.jpg
20210911_152545.jpg
20210918_203247.jpg

Once the whole car is prepped and ready I will be doing a black sealer layer all around. Seeing as I have about 3 different colored body panels I'll be painting over I thought it a good idea to just get the whole car covered in one black sealer layer under the basecoat of paint so I don't have different blue shades showing up based on what's under the area. This will make it all uniform color before paint and provide a nice level layer with some chemical adhesion as well. I'm using Dimension DS694 2k acrylic urethane sealer (which I believe is a Sherwin Williams brand).

Next up will be my basecoat of the nogaro blue paint: Dimension National Rule High Hiding Basecoat (Sherwin Williams mixed this up for me based off factory nogaro blue paint code)

Finally, for clear we've got another Finish 1 product: FC720 Ultimate Overall Clearcoat

Hmm sounds like a great plan going here I will say plastic welding is fun especially if you have the nitrogen welder. I’ve actually never used sherwin willams auto line I use there paint line for the house as I get a discount but, I mainly use PPG or Dupont(axolta).I’ll have to see if I can get a discount and try out the sherwin line. the wife does want me to repaint her GTI. But keep up the awesome work. I love garage painting way better then the headaches of working in a shop.


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[belms4]

11/1/21 update:

Car is still in the body shop. Hoping sometime next week I'll have her back and can get to work! Tomorrow or Wednesday I'll be going in to have a look and snap some pics.

I will also be bringing in my upper and rear quarter panel S4 exterior window trim. I received the lower RS4 window trim on the 4 doors I got and wasn't expecting how much I really like that trim against a darker colored paint. Turns out I love the look once I had it in person, so I have a request in for shipping quote for the rest of the upper trim from the UK, but I'm expecting with shipping this upper and rear trim piece will be costing at least $1200. So I think what I've decided is to get the upper and rear quarter window trim pieces off the S4 painted to match the RS4 trim pieces I have for the doors. This should be a hell of a lot cheaper than shipping an almost 9 ft long trim piece across the globe and seeing as these RS4 pieces don't seem to actually have a brushed look to the aluminum, paint matching them should come out exactly the same. So I've got those pieces prepped/scuffed and will drop them for paint when I go in to see an update on the car. These took some time to scuff! First pic there shows the little difference between a 400 grit scuffed S4 trim piece (right) and untouched S4 piece (left), which hopefully you can see looks more like dark chrome even though they are supposedly dark anodized. RS4 trim is much brighter than both shown there (unpictured). I wouldn't care so much about matching this trim normally but I do already have oem RS4 roof rails that match the RS4 window trim, which I got shipped from the UK, already in hand along with RS4 mirror housings to match.

Also while I've had plenty of spare time with the car in the body shop I was working on recoating and painting a driveshaft for my other imola b5 sedan. I had some leftover 2k satin black chassis paint from that I had to use or toss. So I cleaned up the back half of the transmission (center diff) and repainted that since the original black had mostly come off. Came out really nice! Happy with the results for just a 2k spray can of chassis paint from Eastwood.

I've also got a new avant key and lock set from Phil at Audis4parts. Someone in the past had replaced just the ignition tumbler and the only key I got with the car would turn the ignition but it was not the right key for anything else... door, trunk hatch, or glovebox. Probably explains why someone broke the entire handle and lock off the glovebox too, which I've also entirely replaced. So new key and lock set from Phil. Got the ignition tumbler swapped out, which was super easy with the whole dashboard out of the car sitting on a table here in the garage! Other work I did in the past few weeks on the dashboard included replacing the heater core with an oem b5.5 Passat heater core. It wasn't broken or leaking in this car but I figured with the dash already fully removed it was a nice time to replace that with an all aluminum one that won't ever break and leak. The back edge of the dash around the middle under the windshield was also beginning to separate and peel back. With a nice recommendation from Kyle (kh-innovations) I was able to get that fixed with Dap Weldwood contact cement. Worked beautifully!

Finally, I made a decision on a headliner for the car. I had bought a good S4 avant headliner for the car months back but we could never find a way to ship it without basically going freight by itself. So I decided to get a refund and put that money toward Alcantara material to recover my A4 avant headliner that came in the car. So I'll be doing a black or charcoal Alcantara headliner and likely cover the A pillars as well. C pillars in the avant are hard plastic and not covered in the A pillar material like a sedan. I'll likely be doing the headliner reupholstery myself unless I decide to get some sort of nice stitching pattern done in it, which is tempting.

Next update should have pics with the wide RS4 rear quarter panels installed!!



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[Shahek]

keep up the great work man can't wait for the pics!

[belms4]

For anyone interested there's a pic of the differences between the b5.5 Passat heater core (I went with OEM not a cheap aftermarket brand) and the original S4 core. The Passat core I noticed was a bit loose when installed compared with the original I pulled out. I ended up adding a lining of high density foam tape around all the edges of the Passat core since I saw that's pretty much what came on the edges of the S4 heater core. That seemed to fit much better and hopefully sealed up any gaps that were around the edges once it was slid in there in the back of the dash.

Almost forgot to mention in my previous post I received my new Depo ecodes in the past few weeks as well. Was about a 5 month wait to get these new! Luckily I had plenty of time to wait. Still plastic wrapped in that pic.



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[rkern]

Just out of curiosity, what ballpark figure would one be looking at to do a widebody correctly? Talking parts and install, paint. I know install price would vary pending where you live

[belms4]

Just out of curiosity, what ballpark figure would one be looking at to do a widebody correctly? Talking parts and install, paint. I know install price would vary pending where you live

Really hard to say, depends what you want to do yourself and what you want to pay a shop for. Only thing I'm having done at a shop is the rear quarter panel cutting and welding (along with fabricating a section to fill in the new gap in rear wheel housing), which is roughly $3k @$75/hr labor if not painting or anything.

I stopped keeping track of my expenses for tools, supplies, and parts on this build a while ago lol... it got too disturbing. But if you have a shop fully repaint your car you are looking at around $10k+ to begin even stripped down yourself for a decent shop. I think in all the RS4 original panels cost me around $12.5k. So easy to see how you get up to $25k+ having a shop do this all. Even doing this all myself I've had to spend a ton on tools/supplies to get started buying everything needed to paint myself. Nevermind the likely 1,000+ hours of my time in all tearing down the car, removing windows, fixing rust patches, prepping panels, spraying, learning, etc. With RS4 conversion kits now costing $15k alone, I'd say it's easy to go over $30k+ on the build today with shop labor.

[rkern]

Thanks. That around the ballpark I was thinking. Glad that you can do a lot of the work yourself. I’m no paint and body guy.


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[belms4]

Went in to drop the windows trims this afternoon and see the car's progress. It's coming along! They were working on fitting the last quarter panel. Once that's done and a piece is fabricated to fill the 2" gap you see between the edge of the S4 wheel housing and the RS4 quarter panel they can do all the welding at one time. Clearly these quarter panels were cut for going on a sedan because this is a horrible spot to cut and weld quarter panels right down the middle in the back. With the avant you'd normally want them cut higher up in the window pillars and the spot welds on the rear around the tail lights drilled out rather than cut down the middle of the panel. But hey, that's why I'm paying a professional to do this part!

Still estimated to get the car back by end of next week. As you see from all the repair areas on the doors and fenders there were just too many dents, bends, and deep scratches to repair in this lifetime, so some putty was used. I probably marked 25 dents and bends before handing the car over, so not surprising. They ended up getting the doors and fenders ready for me and I can hopefully just spray, sand, and spray some more once I finish the rest.

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[Hiduke73]

How hard is it to get the window trim off? And tricks or places to start first?

[bshanna]

Went in to drop the windows trims this afternoon and see the car's progress. It's coming along! They were working on fitting the last quarter panel. Once that's done and a piece is fabricated to fill the 2" gap you see between the edge of the S4 wheel housing and the RS4 quarter panel they can do all the welding at one time. Clearly these quarter panels were cut for going on a sedan because this is a horrible spot to cut and weld quarter panels right down the middle in the back. With the avant you'd normally want them cut higher up in the window pillars and the spot welds on the rear around the tail lights drilled out rather than cut down the middle of the panel. But hey, that's why I'm paying a professional to do this part!

Still estimated to get the car back by end of next week. As you see from all the repair areas on the doors and fenders there were just too many dents, bends, and deep scratches to repair in this lifetime, so some putty was used. I probably marked 25 dents and bends before handing the car over, so not surprising. They ended up getting the doors and fenders ready for me and I can hopefully just spray, sand, and spray some more once I finish the rest.

looking good man! Great to see progress.

[belms4]

How hard is it to get the window trim off? And tricks or places to start first?

That was way too much fun!

Yeah, this thread I started when I was working on that a few months ago may help:

https://www.audizine.com/forum/showt...moval-on-avant

The door pieces are easy... pull door cards and window frame, then drill the rivets, maybe break a plastic clip or two on the end that's not needed. Pretty straight forward.

The big upper piece above the windows is the tough part. You do have to remove the rear quarter panel glass whether it's an avant or sedan. Once the glass is cut out, start up on the front end of the car/trim and from what I remember peel apart the rubber strip from the trim and work your way backward. Just be careful and don't rip the rubber piece. Once that's out the rivets are exposed and you can drill them to remove the trim. Rivets, rivets, and more rivets! Only piece I think that didn't have rivets was the bottom piece under the quarter panel window, it just comes apart without tools really. Snaps/slides in on the corner.

[belms4]

Alright... a lot of waiting over the past month, but I go the car back from the body shop doing the rear quarter panels and other work last Wednesday, the day before Thanksgiving. So I've had it back about a little over a week now. To start out, here's a couple pics from right when I got it home with most of the panels still installed. Due to 10 different colors, bare metal, putty, sanded paint/clear it's a bit hard to make out all the body lines and see how much different the widebody actually is (stock suspension with no weight and small stock wheels doesn't help either). It does extend things a good 2 inches outward around the wheel wells. Really excited to get this all primered over and in one uniform color so I can get a better preview of the end result to come! Also shown are the welds inside the trunk area. I will be spraying these over with sealer at minimum when I get to that point.

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Roof antenna hole also has a patch welding it shut now.

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I've been going over everything and sanding and cleaning up some bare metal areas with my angle grinder so i don't have oxidized spots under the primer. Got the doors stripped down to the skins, removed the sound deadener in them since I'll be placing Dynamat all over the doors and body. I think I'm finally at the point now where the car body is ready and I've been cleaning it up, masking everything off the past couple nights after work, and putting plugs in all the body holes. I should be on track to spray primer over the body this weekend. I don't know that I have the garage space at the moment or enough parts stands/hangers to spray the doors and hood too, so I'll do those separately in a second round.

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[belms4]

Got the trunk hatch primered and block sanded twice while the car was at the body shop. Looks like all the repair areas are level after the second round, so this part is just about ready for sealer and paint when I get there with the rest of the car. It did have a good dent right under where the Audi rings usually mount, which I pounded out to best of my ability and leveled with a tiny amount of filler, then primer finished it.

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Also, big thanks to Danza (Ian) in the Denver area for the OEM RS4 trunk/roof spoiler! He's just finishing up (maybe done now?) his widebody sedan and obviously didn't need an avant spoiler, so I bought it from him. Got that primered up with the second round on the trunk. Need to sand that next, I don't anticipate needing a second round of primer on that part since it wasn't damaged.

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I think someone else on here asked about pics of how the RS4 front bumper meets/attaches to the RS4 fenders. I got some pics of that just before I cleaned up the fenders, which I'll add next.

[lowestA4]

How hard is it to get the window trim off? And tricks or places to start first?

Super simple task once the rear side windows are out. There are plenty of aluminum rivets which you have to drill out. Don't be afraid.

[avant1987]

I love to see the progress! I dropped mine off about a month ago for the conversion. I am in awe of you taking on the last 75% on your own. I wish you the best of luck, and hopefully some good temps for paint!


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