DeejayH's B8 S4 Storyboard

[deejayh]

Hi Audizine B8S4 Crew -

I've been on here for quite some time, been in the Audi family since 2011 when I purchased my cactus B5 S4 6-speed as a young and eager 22 year old college grad.

This thread will be living/breathing as updates and mods are completed on my B8 S4.

A little bit about my S4...

• Purchased in Dec 2016 from Audi St Paul MN
• 66k miles; Brilliant Black; 6-speed+ sport diff; Premium Plus; alu optic exterior package

Within the first month of ownership:

• CTS Supercharger pulley 57.3mm
• EPL Stage 2 tune
• AWE Touring Exhaust + Diamond black tips
• Roc-Euro Intake

I drove the car ~80k miles with these mods up until July 2023, when I started having issues getting the car to go into gear. I had just moved from MN to southern California and was forced to ditch my shop, tools, and garage space. Not good timing for the b8 to start needing things...

I had no choice really, car had 144k miles on factory clutch. What a run, given 80k of those miles were stage 2.. I ended up forking 5500$ for a clutch replacement along with some suspension components (upper CA *4 + struts) to an indy shop in Encinitas CA. It was also time for tires, so Michelin PS4s went on the factory peelers.

Two weeks later, while casually driving down the coast, my center driveshaft support bearing blew. Called AAA for a tow home and the car sat. I knew about the JXB kit and this being a relatively low cost solution, however I was still irked by the huge clutch bill and started asking myself if it was time to get rid of the car. I ran some numbers and decided to start searching for my next vehicle. Took me a while to find the one, but I purchased a b9 rs5 sportback with 8k miles on the odometer - fully loaded, and had it shipped to me, so the b8 continued to sit as I had lost all desire to fix it. I was certain I was going to dump it.

Ended up taking a sweet job opportunity and needed to move to norcal in Q4 2023. This meant I needed to either sell the s4 before I left socal, or bring it with me. After running some numbers and looking at how much I could actually get for the car as it sat, I couldn't stomach it. I had to get it back on the road and take it with me. After all, it wouldn't be the worst thing in the world to have a daily driver to keep the rs5 nice and minty at all times....

I went back to the indy shop and had them install the jxb kit

One week after that, my water pump blew.

So I went back again for a full cooling refresh. crossover pipe + hoses + water pump + t stat (PCV done at 110k), and added on a couple more mods since I was now pot committed...

• 034 fuel pump piston upgrade
• E40 tune
• APR Carbon intake + carbon back tube

Car was finally mechanically sorted and in really solid shape to take north to my new digs. Once I got up here, the s4 didn't get much love. It had to sit outside in the driveway after I added a B9 Q5 prestige to the stable for the gf to drive. Didn't make sense to leave a new q5 outside in place of a 152k miles b8 s4 with crappy black paint that is impossible to keep minty... so I started losing pride in the car again. The water spots accumulated over the first couple months of sitting outside, and the paint really bugged me. I was back in the same "do I sell it now?" situation I was in before, only this time, I had 8000$ more money into it with almost 0$ increase in value.

So what do I do? The most financially responsible option possible, spend more money!!!

As the holiday break approached, I knew I needed a project. Boredom and I dont get along. Having never wrapped a thing in my life, I thought it'd be a great idea to take on wrapping my car. I always regretted choosing a black car. I purchased a 5x75' roll of Gloss Storm Gray (3M) vinyl to wrap the B8. This project scope quickly snowballed. "If I'm going to take off the wheels and bumpers" turned into about 6000$ of spend in parts. I am still in progress with the project, but thought I'd pause here and start a thread.

The car wrap is done, with the exception of the roof, which I will do once the car is back on wheels and the roof is a better working height. I have to say, I impressed myself with this vinyl stuff. It is totally doable if you are patient! It's definitely not perfect, but it looks really really good. I basically took the car from a 10 footer to a 1 footer. I will post photos soon.

Current list for project:
Bilstein B8 Struts
H&R Sport Springs
Inner + Outer Tie Rods - Meyle HD
Zimmerman Z Coat Drilled Rotors (front and rear)
Akebono Euro Ceramic Pads
APR High Output ignition coils
NGK Iridium BKR8EIX
Cam Follower + Fuel Pump O-ring (small leak)
AC Condenser (TYC)
Radiator (nissens)
CTS Heat Exchange upgrade
ECS Carbon Fiber Rear Diffuser
ECS Carbon Fiber side blades
Deval Carbon Fiber front lip
Carbon Mirror Caps (amazon LOL 99$ and you can tell)
Custom S4 badgery
Honeycomb grills (foggys too)
New AWE Exhaust tips Diamond Black
Aodhan AFF7 19x8.5 ET35 Matte Bronze

Cheers!
Dwight

[deejayh]

Huge PITA to remove the butyl tape from the badges, and especially the side blades. 6' of butyl tape on each side of the car. so so so so brutal to remove. took me a few hours.

I started with the hood, thinking it was the flattest panel and should be the easiest. It took me about 6 hours to get the hood right. If I had to do it again, I'd be surprised if it took me longer than an hour.

Moved onto fenders, they didn't look too intimidating - this turned out to be pretty easy!



Then I moved onto the rear quarters, which were a huge pain working with the 12' piece of vinyl to cover lower rocker panel all the way up to the front wheel well, and the upper door piece that runs down to the front fender. It was tricky figuring out how to cut out the big chunk of vinyl over the doors to use later, and not trim too much or too little. I definitely wasted a bit of vinyl making some bad cuts. I measured 2x, too. Would've been really helpful to have a second set of hands.
Doors were pretty easy.

Front bumper - I did this in 1 piece. It was not easy, it was scary. I had to make relief cuts in the vinyl to lay it into the lower fog light grill area. I almost screwed this up!!!!

Not bad for a first timer... I guess a lot of people will inlay the bottom 1/3 of the bumper and run a seam just over the edge of the fog grill area with a second piece covering top 2/3.

Rear bumper was actually fun to wrap.

Starting to come together

Everyone says the car looks white in photos. I can't disagree. this was a photo i snapped for friends back home in MN that wouldn't believe the car was gray.

Hand trimmed door lock. I have to say I outdid myself. It's pretty clean! Sure the pros are better at this and get the vinyl all the way back against the metal lock, but I dont let perfect get in the way of gutenuff.

Door handles were a breeze - I started wrapping them on the car, then removed to finish off. If anyone wants to know anything about audi door handle actuators or mechanisms, I'm now your guy.

Sexy.

Starting to come together! Shark fin antenna is removed - ready to wrap roof as soon as I get the wheels back on and car is at a better working height for roof wrapping.

[deejayh]

New Carbon pieces... Rear diffuser is beautiful. I dropped ~2400$ on carbon fiber for this 152k car LOL!!!! Still waiting on AWE Exhaust tips to get here. My tips were scotch brite'd by a detailer - he thought my diamond black was dirt. No worries bro - i'll pay you your 1000$ and I'll spend another 330$ on exhaust tips..
Deval front lip is out for delivery, but i'm looking at another week of waiting for parts to button up the front end (AC Condenser 4th times the charm - 3 wrong parts sent to me -misboxed)

[AlfredWatki]

Replying for the updates.

[Slvrbul8]

Nice work!

[deejayh]

Thanks! It's been quite the ordeal. Getting the right parts undamaged during shipping has been a challenge. I'm now on my 4th AC condenser order. First 2 were the wrong part (rock auto) 3rd was damaged during shipping (ECS).

APR ignition coils and new conduit/loom come today. I will post pics of the updated engine bay tonight.

Wednesday will be suspension day. Will try to get the rear springs/struts/suspension components done on Wednesday night and post an update then too.

[rawatamit]

Sometimes these cars makes you want to sell them to the scrapyard, but after spending more money it lures you back in until the next time, sigh great job though, looks good!

Sent from my KB2005 using Tapatalk

[a4darkness]

The CF rear diffuser looks nasty good against the white wrap.
Digging the build thread too. In for updates.
Carry on sir.

[deejayh]

It's storm gray, but you're with everyone else calling it white :p Thanks for the compliments - cant wait to get it back on the road!

[deejayh]

Update:
Apparently my AWE touring exhaust is "really old". New diamond black tips came yesterday and looked completely different than what I pulled off the car. They are beautiful. Tried to fit them and I had the bolts tightened to the point of snapping, and the exhaust tips were wiggle loose. I pulled them right off the exhaust pipes...

measured the diameter with the digital caliper... 58.6mm on the tips, 56mm on the exhaust pipes out of the muffler.

contacted AWE... "oh sorry you have a really old exhaust system and we dont make tips for that anymore - take it to an exhaust shop"

so I ordered this exhaust expander tool off amazon.. Just need to stretch it a little bit. Planning on using a little heat gun to warm up the steel prior. It's always something....



H&R springs came 2 days early from original ETA. Rear passenger is in. This isn't that fun to do by yourself. I could really use a 200lb dude to stand on this rear lower control arm.

[a4darkness]

Wouldn't it be possible to put a jack under the hub, disconnect the rear lower control arm and lower it down enough to get the spring swapped? Or am I missing something here.

[deejayh]

rear lower has 2 bolts that connect to the hub. It's a big chunk of metal and 2 more TTY bolts I'd need to replace. From the DIYs i've seen on here and other places, easiest way is to drop front part of the rear subframe and pry the spring out. Really helps to have a 2nd person, but obviously, it can be done by yourself.

Update - rear passenger suspension is back together - will load suspension and torque tonight - moving on to driver rear install.
New bilstein struts were pretty tough to slip back in the hub - ended up pushing against subframe to compress strut, and very very very quickly move into position to thread the top 2 16mm bolts into the mount.
Then I got underneath the bottom strut bolt mounting point, and pushed up on the strut by hand until I could barely feed the strut bolt through the strut into the hub. Pulled the floor jack out and precisely jacked the strut up ~1/8" to be able to hand thread the bolt into the hub.

Whenever I buy a house, I'm putting a lift in.

[deejayh]

My current daily driver - not the worst situation in the world.

[deejayh]

As I was buttoning up the rear passenger side, noticed torn boot on my caliper piston.... it never ends.

Seems like the path of least resistance is to source a pair of OEM rear calipers off a low miles parts car instead of getting rebuild kit, and monkeying around with that. I'll have to bleed the brakes anyway. I have an offer in on ebay for 2 calipers totaling 160$ shipped for both.

[deejayh]

Driver rear spring and strut are in - prior to starting this project, my headlights were behaving very abnormally, as if they couldn't find "home" on the y-axis. Figured something was up with the level sensor in the driver rear wishbone. Found a broken arm when I looked. Ordered a replacement sensor assembly with bracket, stole the parts I needed off new sensor (arm and bracket to lower CA, and put them in. will need to run the programming adaptation on VCDS

I'm digging the custom badges.


25$ milwaukee 3lb sledge. Best hammer ever. Highly recommended. Great price. Took my tie rod out on the first swing. Hadn't even removed the tag before getting value out of it!

[734jeant]

Great thread! Can't wait to see the "gray" color outside. Thanks for posting.

[19birel]

Great thread! If you don't mind me asking, how much did the wrap material cost and how much did you need?

I'm starting to think this is the play for my A4, it's paint is showing its age at 127k haha

[deejayh]

Great thread! If you don't mind me asking, how much did the wrap material cost and how much did you need?

I'm starting to think this is the play for my A4, it's paint is showing its age at 127k haha

5'x75' roll was 750$. You probably only need 60-65 feet for a sedan but I bought the big roll cuz it wasn't much more and my first time trying to wrap anything. I dont have much left over, if that says anything ;)

[19birel]

5'x75' roll was 750$. You probably only need 60-65 feet for a sedan but I bought the big roll cuz it wasn't much more and my first time trying to wrap anything. I dont have much left over, if that says anything ;)

Thanks for the info! I’ve only wrapped small pieces so I’ll likely order a big roll too haha


Sent from my Casio using Tapatalk

[deejayh]

Update:
It has been a grueling couple of weeks battling the car. Driver and Passenger side tie rods looked way too different in how they seated into the spindle after I first installed. The driver side was showing about 1/2" more threads through the spindle. I knew something was wrong.


I grabbed the tie rod assemblies I had tossed into the garbage and I found the metal insert for the spindle stuck on the driver's side tie rod



Pulled off the brand new tie rod I just installed to inspect the boot, as I suspected I damaged it without the insert in the spindle... and yes. I ripped the boot. Lovely.
13$ uro tie rod end - no big deal.

Of course, the metal insert doesn't just slide back into the spindle. it's a tight fit, so I put the metal insert in the freezer while waiting for the tie rod to show up.

That Milwaukee hammer was invaluable yet again (see above appreciation post), just a few blows from the bottom side and the frozen insert was back in the spindle, new tie rod installed, and everything is tight, although the toe is probably off by 10-15 degrees.... alignment guy will have fun with this one.

Next Episode:
"Let's do the easy part and put the new brakes on the car"

At this point, my car has been on jack stands without wheels or brakes on the car for ~ 1.5 months. After the 3-week mark, I realized my colossal mistake of not disconnecting my battery. I knew it was going to be a problem whenever I wrapped up my car (pun intended), but figured I could connect my super powerful battery powered jumper to the connections under the hood and run the e-brake parking commands via VCDS without issue.

WRONG

I went to open up the rear parking brake in VCDS and my car totally freaked out. I had low-voltage warnings and I heard the e-brake motor running for an extremely long period of time- much much much longer than you'd normally hear them run while opening/closing. Remind you, the rotors are OFF the car at this point. There are no pads in the calipers, but the calipers are bolted on the car. I held my head in my hands for a few moments after realizing my amateur mistake, swung my feet out of the car and walked to the rear corners to find my pistons fully extended out of the caliper... good grief!!!

I hooked my battery up to a trickle charger and waited for 2 days. Battery wouldn't take anything, so I punted and bought a new battery, installed and tried to re-run the e-brake commands in VCDS to see if I could retract the pistons.
VCDS gave me nothing but errors. I couldn't run any e-brake command and the codes were not clearing. I figured I had 2 options.
1.) source 2 rear calipers with e-brake motor and start over.
2.) Investigate how to recover the pistons/e-brake positions back to home

So I ordered calipers off ebay for a whopping 120$ shipped (couldn't do that on the rs5!)

While I waited for the fool-proof solution (assuming I wouldn't screw it up again), I investigated some eastern russian youtubers that apparently figured out how to manually retract the e-brake.. Seemed safe to try with 2 new calipers on the way.

Piston fully pushed out by e-brake LOL


I removed the e-brake motor from the caliper, then using a triple square socket, turning clockwise by hand, I turned the ebrake portion of the piston all the way until it stopped. Then I took the piston on from the front like you normally would, and turned it back into the caliper.



After getting the calipers squared away, and back to "home" position, I put them back on the car. With the new battery and a charger, I plugged in VCDS to re-attempt the parking brake close command. When I got into VCDS the errors were still showing. I thought damn just wasted all that time... but then I had the thought, maybe I just need to pull the e-brake lever in the car.... which worked. No e-brake faults, no codes... back in business...!

Then I tried to bleed the brakes....

rear passenger - no big deal - fluid came out almost right away, a couple small air pockets.
rear driver - BONE DRY. pedal super firm. no fluid.
passenger front - no big deal -fluid spewing everywhere - no bubbles
driver front - no biggie

I tried to trace the dry line back from the caliper - disconnected brake line - no fluid out of the line itself, ok - so it's not the caliper... disconnected softline from hard line... hard line BONE dry. cracked the hard line off the abs module for driver rear - also bone dry.

bought a pressure bleeder, ran bleed procedure per manual - still no fluid. Luckily I had ordered a used ABS module as a working hypothesis was a stuck solenoid inside the valve body of the ABS module.


Swapped that out last night (what a mess BTW) and got fluid (finally) out of the driver rear caliper. Heading to the alignment shop this week to get her squared away.

Wheels came last week, they're going to look great.


Painted the ignition conduit for a little accent in the engine bay



Heat exchanger is installed.



Installed deval front lip and front grill badge



Put the peelers back on since I'll need to drive to the wheel/tire/alignment shop for mount balance and alignment. Perfect ride height - super happy with the H&R sport choice.

Say hi to Mona (German shep x malamute x golden retriever x dalmatian) she'll be 14 in May. Still going strong!


Just need to wrap the roof, and sharkfin antenna - then go get these AWE tips fit to my AWE exhaust (sad) and I'll be good!

[19birel]

If things went smoothly, that would be too easy! Glad to see you got it all worked out though, it'll feel that much sweeter when you're driving her down the road!

[deejayh]

Update: roof wrapped - went super smooth, almost effortless. The only painful part was tucking the vinyl behind the upper windshield seal..... old seal. I think the windshield is original factory - got a quote for a pilkington replacement for 250$. If they can guarantee they wont F-up my vinyl, I'm going to do it.

The way I tackled the sunroof was slick... I watched CK Wrap on youtube mask off the edge of the glass on the sunroof, then cut about 1/2" away from the roof on the masking tape. Peel the vinyl back off the masking tape to give the sunroof room to pop upwards... pop sunroof, and tuck.

Worked like a charm - looks perfect.




working on the windshield seal.... this was the only "hard" part.







next up: shark fin antenna wrap; finish up the interior trim pieces: center console and passenger dash; interior detail; mount + balance wheels; alignment; exhaust mod/tip install

[deejayh]

Going to get alignment + Mount balance today

Took her for a spin last night ~5 miles. I still have a bit of a soft brake pedal, but that could just be an adjustment issue coming from the carbon ceramic brakes on the rs5. Most sensitive braking/bite I've ever experienced. It's insane. Might need a couple more bleed x drive x bleed x drive cycles.

[deejayh]

Update: Super happy how it turned out. Alignment guy wussed out on passenger rear camber and toe adjustment bolts. said the bolts were about to break from the corrosion and needed me to take them out at home, put new bolts in and bring it back. When I got home and looked at these bolts I laughed - I guess I wouldn't want to risk breaking a bolt at 4:30pm on a Friday, but they weren't going to break.

Exhaust tips turned out to be a bigger ordeal than I thought. Remember AWE sent me tips that were too large for the pipes coming off my AWE mufflers.....
350$ at the exhaust shop to have them drop the mufflers, modify the hangers, and tac weld the tips on.
750$ all-in for new exhaust tips. Ugh.

Rear shot looks great though.







I am now working on a master cylinder replacement - had an issue with ABS module seizing up in the valve body - couldn't get any fluid to driver rear caliper. I guess pushing on the brake pedal over and over and over wasn't a good idea. Fairly certain my soft brake pedal is due to the master cylinder internal seals. Really hope it's not the booster, as I do not want to mess with taking the brake pedal off. Here's pics of the plenum chamber bulkhead and tower brace pulled to provide clearance to pull master cylinder from the booster...




Master cylinder OEM part arrives Tuesday - planning to drive it to work on wednesday morning.

[deejayh]

more photos: I wrapped the little caliper plate with storm gray and then stuck these custom yellow S4 decals on top. Turned out pretty nice.

[Bikel]

more photos: I wrapped the little caliper plate with storm gray and then stuck these custom yellow S4 decals on top. Turned out pretty nice.

Love your whip! You might want to consider some caliper plates for the rears?

https://www.audizine.com/forum/showt...-brake-caliper

[deejayh]

Love your whip! You might want to consider some caliper plates for the rears?

https://www.audizine.com/forum/showt...-brake-caliper

great idea - will pursue