2007 S8 restoring to its former glory

A8 All/ S8 All
#61

Still in the process of painting the bumper, its prepped, primed and 2 cans of base color. However having not done this before I only purchased 2 cans of color. Nowhere near enough, so more paint on order.

I did get a chance to finish the grill, at first I was only going to paint the bumper but decided to refinish the grill in satin black as well. I always felt the OE grey grill looked a bit odd on everything but the grey cars. Really pleased how it came out. Ready to go, and a pic of what it looked like before.

http://audirevolution.net/addons/albums/images/873132416.jpg

http://audirevolution.net/addons/albums/images/440807029.jpg

http://audirevolution.net/addons/albums/images/796454396.jpg

#62

Time for an update, seems to be taking a long time to fix the bumper. I didn’t order enough paint, basically you need at least 1 can of primer, I used 4 cans of basecoat and will use 2 cans of clearcoat. Paintscratch.com was great but takes around 2 week to deliver.

Sorry I didn’t take pics of the complete process, but here is where I’m at.

  1. Prepped as noted before, one tip I would say is just sand down the clear and the base as a key. And then use fine bondo (I think it’s called putty filler for very small chips). I sanded every chip down to the base plastic. In hindsight it’s a bad move, you can just about see this through the final painting, I’ll try and take a pic to show it once finished. I couldn’t see it through the primer, nor the base. You can only make it out now with the clear and you have to be really close up. Below is a pic of the prep where you can see I tried to sane out everything.

http://audirevolution.net/addons/albums/images/575536290.jpg

  1. Priming was easy with 1 can. I followed the priming with more filling some imperfections with the fine putty.
  2. ONE BIG TIP, buy one of those $7 spray handles that attach to the can and save finger cramp, they are awesome and painting with cans will never be the same 
  3. Base – I used 2 cans and didn’t get a really good color coverage, so purchased another 2 and had to wait another 2 weeks. One thing I would note about the base which panicked me a little was that it has absolutely no gloss, and when you spray it on irrespective of good coverage and painting in low heat and humidity it looked pretty shit to be honest. It looked patchy and almost like it had humidity blush. I cant say whether this is right or wrong but once the clear went on it looks fine ….phew. So overall the bumper took 4 cans of base color.
  4. Clear – unlike the base as noted above that seems to go on patchy (may be due to the metallic), the clear goes on thick, the nozzle seems to put a lot of clear per pass. Its easy to modulate but just be careful. I also noticed that the primer and base dries really quickly, the clear takes longer which helps with the leveling. It takes a bit of practice to balance too little that gives more of an orange peel look and too much that runs. Last night I put a can of clear on the bumper and it looks good. However now the clear is on you notice dust and inclusions, I don’t have many but enough to annoy. So tonight I’m going to wet sand it with 800, let it dry and then throw another can of clear to finish it off.

I’ll try and remember to take some more pics tonight, and tomorrow once it is done.

#63

Tonight I 800 wet sanded the bumper tonight, and learned another lesson. BIG TIP lightly wet sand at every stage, especially after primer. Clearly when I primered the bumper the were tiny dust/inclusion high spots. So when I flatted the clear tonight I sanded those high spots which lead to very tiny primer marks in the paint >:(

Luckily I had just enough base paint left to touch these in, here is a pic of the base on the bumper, as you can see it looks really patchy as noted in the previous post. Imagine the shock when you see that, thank god the clearcoat puts it right.

http://audirevolution.net/addons/albums/images/656116516.jpg

#64

good work. plastic weld FTW. paining is lots of work. Its fun to follow along. Thanks for posting all this.

#65

Spayed the clear this morning and I’m really please with the result. its a tough balance to get enough on to lay flat without orange peel and getting a run, I have a slight run in one area that I will send out with 2000 once dry and polish.
The whole thing needs cutting to give it more of a smooth shine, but here it is:

http://audirevolution.net/addons/albums/images/680397967.jpg

And here is the repair area that I think came out really well

http://audirevolution.net/addons/albums/images/418749751.jpg

And here is the can adapter I mentioned, impossible to paint a large area well without one of these

http://audirevolution.net/addons/albums/images/197399299.jpg

I think I achieved what I wanted and more, I was looking for a 5ft paint job, id say its a 1 ft ;D. I sincerely home when its on the car the color match is good. One think for sure, its a better paint job than than before I started.

Really want to get the car back together, but have to leave it a few days to a week to fully harden before cutting it back and polishing

#66

looks fantastic from what you can see in the pictures you posted.

#67

yup get some good thick coats on there. The gloss is good, lots of peel. But that can all be wetsanded down as long as you have enough clear thickness! looking good.

#68

So after it fully dried, I went to look at it and to my panic and shock it had dried to this finish

http://audirevolution.net/addons/albums/images/152762503.jpg

Paintscratch in their tutorials explains to some degree covers that the clear needs cutting with rubbing compound, I decided to go one stage further and gently wetsanded it smooth with 1500

http://audirevolution.net/addons/albums/images/768553576.jpg

Following that I DA’d with 3M rubbing compound

http://audirevolution.net/addons/albums/images/234879077.jpg

Still have some more cutting and polishing to do, but it’s looking better than I had hoped to be honest

#69

^ey there you go it looks great now after some work!
but TBH once you finally lay some paint out of an actual gun ( ireally really like Tamco paint!)
the way it lays down is beautiful. goes on wet and smooth, and then smooths out to glass when drying.
I got a mirror finish on my lexus urethane bumpers…didn;t have to touch em after paint (other than the few areas I got runs…)
but very good work so far

#70

Thanks, I totally agree that this rattle can job is not the way to go for a great finish!!, It worked in the end but took a lot of time and effort. Wish I had the right equipment and space to do it right.

#71

Rattle can is how I’ve done a lot of my paint work. You just have to be careful it dosent orange peel on you. It looked like it was starting to do that in the top picture but a good time and lot of work getting it sanded and polished to a near OEM finish.

#72

Looking pretty damn good.

#73

Bumper assembled and on the car, really please with the backed out grill and glad I removed all the chrome trim vs painting the whole thing. I feel it looks more OE and an a black car works better than the original grey finish. Below is a before and after:

http://audirevolution.net/addons/albums/images/873132416.jpg

Yes the car needs a good cleaning!

http://audirevolution.net/addons/albums/images/699319148.jpg

#74

that black license plate filler does look much better!

#75

AGreed. That black looks better.

#76

Its exactly 1 year today that I picked up the S8 from PA, I get very board with cars and swap them out all too often. I year in and I still really enjoy driving the V10. There is just something so compelling about the mix of a huge powerful engine that pushes you along in almost silent speed.
Driving to the airport today I rolled over 105000 miles on its anniversary, wafting along with the adaptive cruise doing it thing
http://audirevolution.net/addons/albums/images/501235688.jpg
Sorry about the side on image, cant see how to rotate it in teh forum album.

It’s due an oil change and tire rotation as well as changing the rear diff oil. Anyone changed the front diff oil, doesnt look like a simple job?
I’m torn on the tranny oil, seems that the D3 has a very robust tranny vs the D2. So unsure whether to just leave it as its working fine, or do a partial oil drain and change as I’m not that interested in dropping the cross member and exhaust to get the pan off. I was considering dropping the tranny oil and replacing whatever I can get out every 20k. Interested if anyone have any views/experience of this.

#77

the pic that didn’t work in the last post

http://audirevolution.net/addons/albums/images/501235688.jpg

#78

Since when did the S8 have bumper-to-bumper detection? :o

#79

its the joys of adaptive cruise control, without doubt for me one of the best features of the car

#80

Not really a big update, but I serviced the car this weekend. All that was needed was an oil and filter change + a tire rotation.

Oil and filter change has been covered many times, it’s an easy job to complete, a couple of things to watch out for:

  1. Damn this car runs hot, I did a few miles to get the oil up to temp, exactly the same as I have done with multiple other cars. Yet the oil temp was soo bloody hot I was surprised. So be careful, even with gloves on that sump plug felt like a red hot coal!
  2. The oil filter housing location us a bit of a pain, when you unscrew the filter housing the filter comes away with the housing cap. On replacement you need to fit the filter to the car then screw the housing on.
  3. Slowly refill the oil, I was a little absent minded and the oil cap overflowed down the valve cover and onto the side of the engine and headers, gave me an excuse to clean the engine bay I guess.

Couple of hours work and the car is ready for another cold MN winter that will soon be upon us. Still amazes me how with some simple DIY you can run these cars relatively cheaply. Mobil 1 from Walmart and an OE oil filter from Amazon came in at $70.

Just over 1 year and 10k of ownership, and after the initial fixes the car is still oil tight with the pan and engine bone dry. And its burning maybe ½ quart of oil in 10k miles which is impressive for a 100k mile car. Drove it to work this morning and the car still impresses me with its mix of speed and comfort. Can’t imagine why I would sell it. It’s probably worth $15-18k at best, what can you drive as good as an S8 for that money?