So, I think I mentioned my little hit-and-run incident I had last year. If not, here's a brief overview:
Before driving the car to Glasgow to get the transmission flush at Mackies (we all know how that turned out!), I thought I'd give her a wash. Once finished, my Volvo was making puppy-dog eyes at me, so I moved the Audi out of the drive to wash the Volvo. Having washed the Volvo, I started packing my gear away when my neighbour pulled into the shared drive. As she came in, she looked at the Audi and commented "Wow, I like that car". Feeling quite pleased with my efforts, I packed the rest of my gear and took a quick shower before returning to pull the Audi into the drive.
As I walked up to the car, I saw a streak of blue down the side of the car and, at first, I smiled at the incredible reflection I'd achieved. Of course, as I realised the reflection didn't move as I got closer to the car, I realised it wasn't a reflection but actually a giant blue scrape.
Here's the damage, as photographed on the day:
To cut a long story short(er), my neighbour has the only blue car on the street and admitted causing the damage. She didn't want to go through her insurance, so offered to pay for the repair.
Fast forward six months, and the Audi was taken to KDS Keltec Detailing in Gillingham for the repairs yesterday. I'm a horribly picky git and they're the only people I'd trust with painting my car... especially considering the poor job Audi did with my tailgate handle.
Here she is as KDS, looking filthy after a combination of driving through some awful weather, and also another neighbour removing the rendering on the front of their house to cover all the parked cars in plaster dust:
You can see the damage looks a lot better without the chalky paint marks, which were removed during my normal wash routine.
While the car is in, I'm also having the wheels refurbed at Lepsons back to the factory colour, the front bumper resprayed and a new front grill fitted. Funny story about the wheels: Audi were kind enough to lend me an alloy wheel in the factory colour, so I could be sure to get the right colour. FYI, the Audi colour code for our wheels is 8Z8. Lepsons told me their closest finish to factory Audi S8 wheels is 'Silver Chrome'. When I told KDS that I was planning on borrowing a wheel for colour comparison, they thought I was a little crazy and commented that Lepsons will have done thousands of Audi wheels. I stuck to it, and when I got there, compared the Silver Chrome to the OEM wheel and it was WAY off! Silver Chrome is a match for the semi-chrome finish I've seen on some of the new A4 courtesy cars I've had. Their actual closest match was 'Standard Silver ST-SP'. Which is a normal silver wheel with a little added metal fleck. I'm so glad I went to the trouble of checking!
I've made enquiries about having having a little damage to the driver's seat bolster repaired too, but they weren't too keen on doing that. They're also going to see if they can match the finish on the mirrors. If so, the mirror casings will be resprayed too. The car was too dirty to make an assessment at the time. I may also get them to paint my rear brake callipers silver.
Although I know she's in good hands, I still feel very nervous leaving her and couldn't stop looking back as I walked away.
