so my girlfriend recently bought a 2007 Audi A4 Cabriolet in santorin blue. long story short, she had been shopping around for one for quite a while, and it was understood between us that i would definitely have to be there with her if she decided on a particular car. well that went right out the window as she called me at work, telling me how she was at an area used european car dealer, and they had "THE CAR". well, against my advice, she bought the car (for too much money..). she swore it looked great. well, right after work i went to the dealer with my surefire LED and PTG handy. upon walking up to the car for the first time, i could plainly see that the hood and rear bumper were resprayed. she just COULDNT WAIT....anyways, the deal was done, so there was nothing i could really do about it. surprisingly, the paint readings on the hood were in the normalish range, nothing too high that would indicate a respray, but after seeing the orange peel, fisheyes, solvent pops, and dust specks stuck in the clear, it was pretty easy to determine it was resprayed. color match was pretty good though. the rear bumper, well it was done pretty poorly by a mobile bumper repair guy, which means it was re-shot outside, on the lot, out of the back of a van. disgusting is the word to describe the job they did. i instructed the dealer to not touch the car at all for delivery, she would just take it as is, stickers and all. the project....well im going to take a weekend off as soon as i have time and tear the thing apart. im actually looking forward to it as most of my customers that i have dealt with recently have very well maintained vehicles, so its been a little while since ive done a really really serious correction. for this one, i'll be DA sanding the whole hood, rear bumper, and some of the deeper RIDS you will see in the pics. as far as correction, well, we'll see how that goes once i get the car stripped and see exactly what im dealing with. im assuming theres still some glaze or something on the paint thats really hiding the true carnage. i've asked Roger (slanguage) to lend me a hand with the project as im expecting it to take me a bare minimum of 25 hours. Looks like they tried removing this one already. oh well. ill deal with it.
At least you have some clear coat to play with, should be a fun project. Bust out that Zep Citrus and see what we're really hiding under that glaze.
yeah me too. yeah the lowest point i could find was the reading shown in the pic. everything else was between 100-178. enough to play with. what really threw me off was the hood though. i thought for sure i was going to be getting 300+ micron readings, but they were the healthiest on the whole car. they must have replaced the whole hood and shot that.
Your GF knew that you were gonna perfect it. That's a great color Billy. 845 makes that color look amazing. The last Audi I did was that same color. Can't wait for the results!!
You should check if the car has a clean title... I mean if the bumper and hood are in the normal range, but yo know its been sprayed, then check the files stat! They could have replaced that bodywork due to an accident? Hey, you never know. Great color! Hopefully she got a good deal.
thanks gianni. i was already thinking going 845 on it, as thats what i put on basically everything now, but i'll have powerlock by then so i might go with that. the title is clean, at least nothings been REPORTED on the car. i thoroughly inspected the car for the signs of a front end collision, but it seems to be alright. its possible it could have previously been in a minor collision though.
dude i love the look on her face. priceless.. my 2007 bumpers front and rear (jet black) show tones of what looks like oxidation. it is way weird. if i were ever to resell mine i would have to have them sprayed too. i'm guessing thats what it was. as my buddy picked up an a3 same time as my a4 and his plastic bits look the same as mine. btw the front bumper is a complete utter bitch to get off and back on.
Its possible your front and rear bumpers were resprayed at the dealer by a mobile bumper repair guy. They have a guy come in to do it to cars sometimes at the dealer I work at, and most of the time they come out looking "oxidized". Its actually just from them laying the clear on too thick and not sanding it down afterwards. Usually we sand them down and it takes away the spotty cloudy look.
haha yeah man. its probably going to be worse once i get it stripped. thats for damn sure roger. its going to be quite the endeavor.
