Well, she's back! it was touch and go for a while because I had the paint on the front bumper and bonnet upgraded to PPG Ceramiclear, which is tough as nails. It took them three late nights just to sand and polish. When I collected the car, they told me they could have easily polished four bonnets in the time it took to do mine. One of the parking sensors threw up an error code and the bumper had to be removed and refitted to chase the problem, which was simply that it was plugged all the way in.
In the end, they straightened and painted both nearside doors and the rear quarter for the collision damage. In addition to that, I asked them to paint the bonnet and bumper. They discovered the nearside front wing had been previously painted and was a slightly different shade than the rest of the car, so I asked them to re-paint that. They painted the offside front wing for free to blend into the factory paint.
I had the wheels refurbed by Lepsons at the same time, a new front grill was fitted and both nearside door handles replaced (original front grill will be up for sale shortly).
KDS took some 'during' pictures which they said they'd forward to me as soon as they've imported them from their camera.
The paint looks awesome, bags and bags of depth and clarity, with metal flecks popping and glistening at every light source. The car looks a lot darker than before, but that's partly a result of the wheels being brighter, now that they're the proper colour. Again, if anyone uses Lepsons in the future, their
Straight Silver SP is a perfect match for the Audi 8z8 wheel colour.
I have a lot of work to do polishing the rest of the paint to try and match it to the new paint. I would have loved to have asked KDS to do it, but funding just wouldn't stretch that far and I'd also like to do it myself.
Driving away, I'd forgotten how many looks that car gets. Even the lady at the petrol station commented on the car. On the way back, I was testing all the systems I could to make sure all was well. I was using the adaptive cruise and had it set to the furthest possible distance from the car in front... felt very un-Audi.
Enough of my fevered rambling, on to the pics...
