New Owner of a 2006 M45 Sport

[combsatl]

Hello all,

About a month ago I posted saying I was interested in these cars and I just wanted to say thank you to everyone who helped point me in the best direction possible. I'll try to make this quick: My journey began at a local dealership where I was interested in a 2008 M35. This place, graciously, said they would give me $4,300 for my well maintained, very good condition 2004 Audi S4, to which I gave them a very firm "No Thank You". They tried to tell me that KBB was only $5,300 retail on my S4, at which point I asked them to show me a functional, well maintained S4 for that price and that I'd come back after I sell my S4, myself, for twice what they were offering.

At any rate, I'd had my eye on a 2006 M45 with about 100k for a few weeks now and my S4 sold Saturday. I made arrangements, test drove and picked up the M45 on Sunday.

I have to say - I am absolutely loving this car. It's the perfect mix of performance, luxury and comfort. It's Obsidian Black with the Stone leather interior, sport package, with every option (that I care about). The car appears to have been pretty well cared for but, as any car with 100k, it does have some rock chips and what not. I've read that Dr. Colorchip is an excellent way to go, so I think I'll pick that up, at some point.

I'll have more pics to post, soon, but I didn't have a ton of time to finish cleaning her up, yesterday.

[Ziggy1621]

Noyce! And welcome to Nico!

[jiggersplat]

Welcome... and good job not trading in your car.

[combsatl]

LOL! Yeah.. when they gave me that horrible offer I told them, "I'll sell it for $10k and come back to tell you" and then they laughed at me. I didn't get the full 10k but I got $9500 which wasn't a bad deal (fair to both me and the buyer). I hate dealerships

[pedsemdoc]

Nice choice on the M45!, you'll appreciate the added power and torque, although the VQ is no slouch either.

I've used Dr. Colorchip on my car, not too bad considering it's just: put a small blob on the chipped area, swipe with your finger and then finish off with the removal solution.
Thinking about having my front bumper repainted since it's got a ton of rock chips.

DeanM45 has refinished his own bumper and it looks really good. I think he's taken it off, wet sanded, repainted, then clear coated - so obviously a lot more work but still doable if you have the time/inclination/tools/right paint to do the job.

Whaddya have planned for the ride? Any mods?

btw, Welcome to NICO

Craig

[combsatl]

Thanks, Craig! Great to hear about Dr. ColorChip. I haven't bought mine yet but I will and report back. I'm OK if it's not 'perfect', just as long as it's better than seeing the little chips here and there. I've already got my PDR guy on standby to come out and take out any little dings.

As for mods, I'm not really a big modder so I'll mostly just get the car cleaned up and looking nice. The wheels are beat to hell so I need to look at getting them refinished or buy new ones. It really doesn't seem to need anything except for brakes/rotors and, within the next 10k, tires. Control arm bushings, diff bushings, etc all seem solid - there aren't any noises or anything at all when driving. If I was to mod, what would you suggest?

Thanks again - can't wait to be part of the community!

Eric

[jiggersplat]

If I was to mod, what would you suggest?

Window tint.

[combsatl]

If I was to mod, what would you suggest?

Window tint.

LOL, yeah. Didn't really consider that a mod, per se, but that's definitely on my list. I'll probably do 35% or 40%, I don't want to go too dark.

I was able to restore one headlight using the 3M Headlight Restoration system but ran out of time - I'll finish the other tomorrow. I buffed/waxed it yesterday, as soon as I got it home. Really made the paint pop. I'll probably hit it again with Meguiar's Ultra Cut Compound and follow it up with Showroom Glaze, and really take my time. Maybe I'll do that after Dr ColorChip.

Let's see, I do want to add an OEM style trunk spoiler (lip). I love what it adds to the rear end.

[pedsemdoc]

Mods:
1. for brakes, lots of folks have had pretty good luck with the Brakemotive kit from Ebay.
2. definitely use "Search" to look at what tires guys are recommending, tramlining with certain tires can be a big prob
3. LEDs for the interior and exterior
4. metallic radio knobs from Ebay
5. Definite trunk spoiler, maybe even rear window spoiler

[NascentHorizons]

Huge congrats to you on this purchase! Great looking M45!!!

I shared the same excitement on my 1st M purchase about a year ago (3 days before Xmas). Yes, it was mind blowing. Especially after the really terrible experience I had at another dealership...but, that's a post for another day.

[Six_Legs]

Welcome to NICO and congrats on your new ride! Great info/knowledge and people on this forum.

I HIGHLY recommend the Brakemotive kit. $170ish gets you 4 drilled/slotted rotors, 8 pads and hardware. Much better than OEM and they look GREAT!

I also recommend interior LED conversion. The look is awesome and its a quick/easy/cheap UPGRADE.

If you're like me and spend time on these forums, you'll be inspired to tweak your ride!

[svard75]

Seeing as you are coming from an S4 I would recommend a nice custom exhaust with 2.5" from second cat back and an uprev tune. Give it a bit more on the top end.

Also keep a close eye on your engine oil levels. Start with flush with something like seafoam.

[combsatl]

Thanks, guys

@ Peds: I've got Eagle RSA's on there now and they seem to be pretty good, so I may just replace them in pairs and go with that. I'll definitely check out the threads about tires - I want a nice, smooth ride so tramlining is not an option. I'll look into the other stuff, for sure.

I've already got an OE style trunk lip/spoiler on my watch list on eBay.

@ Peds & Six: I checked eBay for the BrakeMotive kit but all I could find were sets of brake pads - no rotors. Before I sold my S4 I put PowerSport (ebay) Drilled/Slotted rotors and ceramic pads and they worked fantastic. If I can't get BrakeMotive I may try my luck with those. LED lights sound awesome, I'll add that to the list

@ Svard: I had a Magnaflow cat-back on my S4 and really enjoyed it. I might consider doing an exhaust but, to be honest, I like how quiet these cars are. I'll definitely consider it.

So last night and this AM I worked on restoring my headlights. I used the 3M kit (pretty par for the course). The results were just awesome.

Before:


After:


Before:


After:


I'm very pleased! Thanks to everyone!

[svard75]

Wow those are pretty wild results. I bought the kit but was skeptical because I wonder if there is a clearcoat that needs to be continually applied post application. Is that the case or is this a one time restoration without maintenance? With the kit containing sand paper I assume you are removing a small amount of plastic each time this is performed. If it has to be performed once per 6 months or so I'm worried I'll have to replace my lights every few years.

[combsatl]

Wow those are pretty wild results. I bought the kit but was skeptical because I wonder if there is a clearcoat that needs to be continually applied post application. Is that the case or is this a one time restoration without maintenance? With the kit containing sand paper I assume you are removing a small amount of plastic each time this is performed. If it has to be performed once per 6 months or so I'm worried I'll have to replace my lights every few years.

You know, that's a good question. I work from home and this car will be garaged probably 90% of the time so I'm really hoping that it lasts a good while. The 3M kit does come with protective sealant (really just wax) and I figure I'll just take a swipe over the headlights with some Turtle Wax when I wash the car and that will be enough. I guess it doesn't take a lot to keep them protected.

When researching the best way to refinish headlights (the conclusion of which was the 3M kit), I saw several people who said it's been a year, year and a half, two, since they restored their headlights and they still look like new. I used the DIY here as a basis and it was spot on.

The 500 grit (gold) sand paper takes a thick layer of headlight plastic off, removing any oxidation or imperfections. I probably made 3-5 passes over each headlamp and changed the sand paper half way through. Take a clean cloth and wipe the lens off. The 800 grit merely smooths out the swirls made by the 500 grit. I think I made 3-5 passes again, until you can't see the larger marks left by the 500g. Next, you use a wet-sanding technique with a special pad included in the kit. Just take a spray bottle with water, spray the pad and begin buffing. You'll develop a white slurry on the lens - you know it's working then. I made probably 5-6 passes and you can tell a pretty big difference from the 800grit to this pad. The second to last step is to attach the buffing pad and use the included rubbing/polishing compound. I went over the headlight probably 7-10 times. The final step was to wax the headlight, adding protection. Like I said, I just used Turtle Wax on it and the popped.

I guess time will tell but, man, do they look good. No more oxidation or haze - they're clear and look terrific.

[combsatl]

So, while at the Dealership, on Wednesday, they told me I had a few burned out light bulbs on the car so I took your guys' advice and went with LED's. I replaced both side marker bulbs and the two license plate bulbs - both look just terrific and make the car really pop. I've got a to-do list for the car and one of the items is convert the rest to LED.

Spent more time polishing and buffing the car. Got a lot of the more noticeable imperfections taken care of but I'll be visiting Harbor Freight one of these days's here to pick up a pneumatic 3" buffer/polisher. I figure that's my best bet if I want to remove the appearance of some of the deeper, but not all the way through the clear-coat, scratches.

I've got my PDR guy scheduled for the 29th. This guy is straight up amazing. He took every single little ding out of my Mini Cooper S (and that's saying something because those cars are a gigantic pain in the a** to do PDR on) and has worked wonders for me before. There aren't many dings on this car but he'll make it look as it deserves to.

Picked up an oil filter and oil - will do the change this weekend. Checked over all the fluids and everything looks excellent. I'm about to order a set of the PowerSport Rotors and Pads off eBay http://www.ebay.com/itm/271508621637?_t ... EBIDX%3AIT because it looks like BrakeMotive doesn't have any in stock at the moment. I'm hoping my power bleeder will fit this car's brake fluid reservoir or I'll be doing it the old way, I guess.

Here's a few more pics after getting her cleaned up, the other day:

[seldomseen]

LOL! Yeah.. when they gave me that horrible offer I told them, "I'll sell it for $10k and come back to tell you" and then they laughed at me. I didn't get the full 10k but I got $9500 which wasn't a bad deal (fair to both me and the buyer). I hate dealerships

Not all dealerships are very bad. Trade in value and retail value (private/dealer) are two completely different animals. Dealerships are in the business of selling cars for profit. If they purchased your car for $9,500 or $10,000 they would be stuck with a dud that they wouldn't be able to sell for any profit, and would've ended up taking a major loss on your Audi.

Nonetheless, you were smart for being willing to take the time to sell your Audi privately for a significantly better price. Post some interior pics of the M45 too!

[combsatl]

LOL! Yeah.. when they gave me that horrible offer I told them, "I'll sell it for $10k and come back to tell you" and then they laughed at me. I didn't get the full 10k but I got $9500 which wasn't a bad deal (fair to both me and the buyer). I hate dealerships

Not all dealerships are very bad. Trade in value and retail value (private/dealer) are two completely different animals. Dealerships are in the business of selling cars for profit. If they purchased your car for $9,500 or $10,000 they would be stuck with a dud that they wouldn't be able to sell for any profit, and would've ended up taking a major loss on your Audi.

Nonetheless, you were smart for being willing to take the time to sell your Audi privately for a significantly better price. Post some interior pics of the M45 too!

No, I know not all are, and I wasn't expecting $10k trade, but their offer and rationale behind it was just ridiculous. I was patient and it worked out well.

The wife and I have been on vacation this week but got back today to find a few parts waiting for me! I was able to replace my broken gas pedal since the old one had snapped at the base making it kind of difficult to drive:



Here's a pic of the new one:


While on vacation I found a local guy selling a set of all-weather rubber mats so I picked up the set. This was before cleaning them - they came out looking like new (will try to get post cleaning pics later).



Here are a few interior pics - I just love the way these cars look. Everything flows so nicely and and is so comfortable.

[MOWellsinVA]

Nice job on the headlights! That was the first thing I had fixed on my 2007 M45 Sport when I bought it 4 years ago. To fix the stone chips on the front of the car, I used the Dr. Colorchip kit . The results are not perfect by any means, they do significantly reduce the appearance of the chips. I'll need to order a new kit to refresh everything next spring. A good quality window tint install will help with looks and with keeping the car cooler in the summer. I agree that you should not go too dark on the tint. I recommend getting a power dual-action buffer to use with the Meguiar's products that you mentioned. It will really help get that obsidian paint to clear up.

[combsatl]

Nice job on the headlights! That was the first thing I had fixed on my 2007 M45 Sport when I bought it 4 years ago. To fix the stone chips on the front of the car, I used the Dr. Colorchip kit . The results are not perfect by any means, they do significantly reduce the appearance of the chips. I'll need to order a new kit to refresh everything next spring. A good quality window tint install will help with looks and with keeping the car cooler in the summer. I agree that you should not go too dark on the tint. I recommend getting a power dual-action buffer to use with the Meguiar's products that you mentioned. It will really help get that obsidian paint to clear up.

Thanks, man! I may redo the headlights again as I'm noticing a little scuffing on a few places where I didn't spend enough time fine sanding. They're still much better than they were.

So let me ask you this, about Dr. Colorchip: is the quality better, the same or worse than using a touchup pen? I don't expect perfect - the car isn't perfect, but I like my things to look as nice as they can.

I do have a DA Buffer - a Porter Cable something or other. It's one that everyone uses in the DIYs for buffing and polishing. I'm going to find a way to make it out to Harbor Freight this week - they have a 2,000 RPM pneumatic polisher to take out a few of the rougher spots (scratches and what not). From what I can tell, the clear coat is pretty thick on these cars, right? I'll be very careful not to cut through it when using the polisher but I'm really looking forward to making this car look as good as I can.

My wife has gifted me a very generous 'car allowance' but I do need to pace myself. I think window tint will probably wait until the spring, as the weather warms up a bit. I've been working right through the list of things I need to get done. Did an oil change before I left for vacation and everything looked perfect. About 5.5 quarts came out which I figure is about right with the filter and what not. Next is BrakeMotive Pads and Rotors - thinking about their rear remanufactured/upgraded calipers as well. Does anyone know if they ever do front calipers? Any negatives about going with them? Then the OE style spoiler, paint correction of some sort (either Dr. ColorChip, touchup paint or wet sanding/painting) and fixing the wheels.

I found a guy who will 'refinish' wheels for $100 per wheel. Sounds like he'll take the rash out (sanding), primer, then black base with a hyper silver top, then clear. That's what most places do, right? They don't have any bends, just chewed up but I'm very careful and won't hit anything.

Has anyone used the Motive Brake Bleeder with these cars? I've got the aluminum adapter added to my Amazon cart and I'll do a full flush when I do the pads/rotors/maybe calipers.

Does the 4.5L V8 have any issues with carbon deposits or buildup? There's a shop in town that does BG 44K treatments which I've seen work wonders with carbon buildup. Would you think these engines would benefit from such a 'treatment'? I just ran a can of Seafoam through the gas and will do another after I'm through this tank.

[MOWellsinVA]

Dr. Color chip is vastly better and easier than using regular touch-up paint. Using the leveler you avoid the "blobs" of paint from trying to fill in the chips. Takes a little practice to level them without removing too much paint, but if you mess it up, just use more leveler to remove what you put on and start over, if necessary. It's a good product. I have the Porter-Cable as well, and using it and Meguiar's Ultimate Compund has helped a great deal in restoring the black paint. The clear coat is quite hard on these cars, but you do need to be careful if you are going to use the more powerful buffer, especially if it is single-action. I was able to take out a long, fairly deep scratch in my hood by carefully wet-sanding the scratch. I was sure that I was going to end up removing all of the clear coat, but happily there must have been enough depth of coat to avoid this. In fact, I can't even tell where the old scratch was.

[Larz]

Congrats on your new M !
You will see, if you take proper care outside and inside, these cars never show their age or mileage. My 07 M35 had nearly 100,000 miles at the time it was totaled. Still, people did not believe me when I told them the age or the mileage. They expected it to be maybe 2-3 years old based on appearance instead of 8 years old.
I now have an 09 M35 with under 30,000 miles and soon as I mend a bit more from the accident, I will be doing some of the same mods I did to my 07.
I can't wait to to play around with it and see what ideas I come up with !
Enjoy, mate !

[combsatl]

@ Larz: Aww man, that sucks about your 07 . Were you injured? How are you liking the 09? How's the new transmission?

@ Mo: Good to hear about Dr ColorChip. I'm sure I can work with it enough to make things look nicer. I'll not waste my money on touch-up paint and just get that. When I bought this car I could see very light oxidation on the clear coat so I knew it had been in the sun for a while. That said, I also knew the clear on these cars was pretty hard and I could put in time and get it restored to looking pretty good. The results I got from my PorterCable weren't as dramatic as I was hoping for. It did remove the oxidation but really didn't do a very good job on the light scratches. Maybe I didn't spend enough time on it, but I was using a Chemical Bro's Orange (medium-heavy cut) pad and Meguiars Ultra Cut compound with the PC DA Buffer.

My PDR guy came out today, spent three hours removing little hail dings from the hood, trunk lid, quarters, a few door dings and it looks amazing. There was a pretty significant shopping cart dent or something in the front fender and he got it looking almost perfect. If anyone in the Atlanta area looking for a good PDR guy, let me know and I'll pass along his info - he does simply terrific work.

My rotary buffer arrived this morning, just a cheap one from Amazon. I decided to just see how it worked on the trunk lid with a Chemical Bros White (light/medium polishing) pad and Meguiars Ultra Cut and the results were terrific. It either completely removed or drastically reduced some of the more noticeable scratches and didn't cut through the clear once, not even close. I kept going and worked on a few on the rear quarter and I must say, these are the results I was looking for - wow. I'm going to dedicate one day this weekend to properly going over everything with the rotary (maybe a slightly more aggressive pad), then the DA with Meguiars Showroom Glaze and the Chemical Bros Black finishing pad , then by hand with Carnauba to seal things off. It was really gloomy here today (poor PDR guy had to work in the cramped garage) so I wasn't able to get any pictures but I will definitely, this weekend, and post them. I'm very happy with how nicely this car is coming out. Exactly what I was hoping for :-)

[MOWellsinVA]

Glad to hear that your new buffer is working so well. I have been using an orange Lake Country pad with Meguiar's Ultimate Compound on my DA, and you really have to work it hard to get significant scratch removal. You sound like you know what you are doing, and are careful not to blast off your clear coat. Once you are done with your paint correction, take some good photos to post here!

[combsatl]

Well, it got quite cold today in Atlanta (mid 49's) so I took the car up to my dad's garage and we worked on it. While I'm very pleased with the results, I'm a little disappointed in the hood which appears to have seen a good amount of acid rain or something. Short of wetsanding or repainting, I don't think buffing/polishing will fix it. For that reason I'm not going to post any pics, lol. The body panels came out great, the rotary cut through many scratches and really reduced their appearance. They wouldn't show up well in pictures to begin with so, again, no pics... Worthless run-on paragraph, sorry.

In other news, my spoiler will arrive Monday so I'll post pics once that's been installed. Any tricks to lining it up properly? I have a few pics from a buddie's and plan on marking n outline with window chalk. If there's another/better way I'd love to hear. Obviously, I'll clean the surface thoroughly with rubbing alcohol before installing.

[combsatl]

Spoiler arrived yesterday and I wasted no time in installing it. Man, does it add a lot to the back-end! I'm thrilled with the quality, paint and materials, etc. I bought it off eBay for around $120, shipped.

I've also scheduled Window Tint installation for Saturday AM. I'm going with Llumar Ceramic @ 30% light transmission. That should improve the look quite a bit.

Before:


After:




Here are a few pics from the work this weekend, buffing, polishing and waxing the car

[MOWellsinVA]

Looks great! Good work!