I was gonna wait to post pics til I got her washed, claybar'd, waxed, detailed, tire shined etc and shots with a better camera, but its been a couple weeks now since I finished these and I'm tired of waiting to share, so you'll just have to live with lousy cell phone quality pics and a dirty car :P

http://www.audiforums.com/forum/picture.php?albumid=465&pictureid=6760
"Work in progress." The side by side 'before-and-after' shot. Sorry I didn't document detailed shots of all the work put into the prep, just shots of the wheels here and then how they look on the car.

http://www.audiforums.com/forum/picture.php?albumid=465&pictureid=6762
A closeup of the front driver's side rim/caliper. Nevermind the reddish tint on the spokes, that was from a box that was behind me in the garage and it reflected onto the rim when I took the shot. And yes, I need some tireshine desperately lol.

http://www.audiforums.com/forum/picture.php?albumid=465&pictureid=6763
This was the day after everything had cured for about 36+ hours and I had just got my ECU back from speedtuning so I was rolling out of the garage for the first time and snapped a quick shot.

http://www.audiforums.com/forum/picture.php?albumid=465&pictureid=6761
Different angle of catching some sun. I think the red behind the metallic graphite looks great :) I'm very happy with it.

Lemme know what you think :)

I'll hopefully be getting some shots with a better camera soon, gotta get me a new sig made, I have 4 of the 5 things in my current "soon to come list" so I really need to update that.

I like!

You did a great job painting those and the wheels are one of my favorite OEM wheels. :)

You just need a little lowering and you'll be set.

I wanted to do that to my car when I had those rims. I like it. Looks good.

Thanks guys :)

Yea, I know I need to get out of the ionosphere a little, but alas, school comes first, cant afford springs just now :( If I ever happen by an extra 250-300 bucks for just some race springs, I'll probably get em, but I'd really prefer a coilover set, vmaxx to be exact, but the 600 or so dollars is very far fetched right now, I can barely afford to eat lol. Plus, I'm trying to avoid putting TOOO much money into the B5 modwise so that I can save up for a B7 2.0t and mod the hell out of that instead. Little things here and there like aesthetic upgrades to the interior/exterior are justified, but big purchases like coilovers, GIAC, JHM shortshifter etc are things I'd rather put into a car with much more mod potential than the 2.8.

Arguably, I shouldn't have let macypro's set of used Koni's slip since he only asked 250 for the springs/struts and that would have been a killer deal, but the deal was gone before I could even look at my bank account and consider thinking about taking them off his hands lol

i havent sold them yet bro lol

haha im interested in the konis if cragman has placed the money elsewhere

very nice paint jobs man. daym you and red calipers, the bandwagon just keeps getting longer. how's the chip, it's great isn't it? trust me you'll get bored of it in 2 months lol. you'll want more....

Looks very good on your car bud, I really like the look of it. Nice call on graphite rather than black. Thumbs up on the new look and the quality of the job you did:)

very nice paint jobs man. daym you and red calipers, the bandwagon just keeps getting longer. how's the chip, it's great isn't it? trust me you'll get bored of it in 2 months lol. you'll want more....

Thanks man. Lol yea, I went with red cuz I thought it would contrast nicely behind the graphite. If I ever get bored with the color of these rims and decide to paint them again, I would probably go with satin black rims and yellow calipers, but I'm satisfied with these for now :) The chip is great indeed, and if I get bored with the sub-par power levels, at least I've still got the better gas mileage I'm getting out of it :)

Looks very good on your car bud, I really like the look of it. Nice call on graphite rather than black. Thumbs up on the new look and the quality of the job you did:)

Thanks dude, I am way happy with it. Can't wait to finish the rest of my aesthetic upgrades, it'll be nice.

O and macpyro, cool to hear you've still got them, but unfortunately I couldn't snag any financial aid for this semester so all my tuition is going on a credit card so I have to gear as much money as possible towards paying that off quickly to avoid being raped by interest :(

what color paint did u use? just gray or what?

I forget the exact name of it, dont have the can handy, but it was a dark charcoal-ish graphite metallic something or other. Sorta resembles the meteor grey pearl Audi OEM color of the newer models in person.

Well where did u get the can from? Audi or wal mart or autozone or what?

Picked it up from Autozone

ok ill just check it out... loooks good though.... did u tape off the wheels or paint thme without tires on

http://forum.cusportcar.com/viewtopic.php?t=230

I didnt bother with taping the tire, tape doesnt stick to rubber very well and also takes a lot of tape per wheel, so I taped the valve stem and wedged index cards into the bead to apply the paint. A stack of index cards is about 2 bucks and can be reused, the amount of tape to be able to mask off 4 wheels successfully will be about 8 bucks for all the tape. I also sanded them down a lot more than The Russian did in that DIY, he just scotch-brite'd the surface, which probably is sufficient, but I had a lot of curb and road rash so I knocked down the clearcoat with some 320 wet sand paper, then 420 wet sand, then 600 wet sand. By the time I got to the 600, I had the original primer showing in places lol. Sure took care of the road rash though, very worth it. After that, I scrubbed them down with some denatured alcohol and let dry, inserted the index cards and did 3 coats primer, 3 coats paint, 3 coats clear coat. Easy peasy job, outside of taking about 5 hours on all the sanding and prep. And calipers are a lot more tedious than I expected, took me 3 hours to get the paint on all those. I am a perfectionist though, so maybe it doesn't take other people quite as long.

u own a house or something im guessing? or do u have extra rims for ur car? we arent even allowed to jack our car up here at my place.. so even only 3 hours isnt feesable.. ill have to find a place to do them before i buy the shit first lol

Nah, I just have generous friends with unused garages :) While I couldn't drive the car anyway for lack of ECU while it was getting chipped, I parked it in my friend's garage for the weekend and threw it up on some jack stands to do the necessary work. Be prepared to wait a lot longer than three hours though, the calipers have to cure for at least 24 hours before being driven. The rims are advised for the same, and the paint itself will be at least an hour per wheel unless you get them all prepped first and ready to go and then just do them all at once. I did mine one at a time for lack of large area to paint so it took a while. Like I said, 3 coats primer, 3 paint, 3 clear. The time factor sets in with having to wait about 5-10 minutes between coats, but with proper time management, enough room to do all 4 at once and perhaps a friend to do two while you do two, painting will take less time, but you still will want to wait at least a day before driving with the fresh paint.

well here is my failed attempt at cool rims lol.. it started off fine... then a breeze happened in the middle of it... got some over spray on the tires... dont know if u can tell from the pic.. but its there lol.. anyways her it is lol

http://i129.photobucket.com/albums/p238/krazyfil/IMG00305-20090904-1502.jpg

bleggh... looking at that pic i really need to get lower haha i HATE wheel gap... anyways i finished the other 2.. ran out of the gun metal though lol.. so i jsut went a lil over board with the clear coat hhaha hopefully it works.. either way urs looks a lot better than mine.. butit only took me like an hour to do mine as opposed to the 5 it took u... i kinda rushed it as it was 106 out today lol

Dont worry about getting it on the tires... remember your getting new ones

well the front tires are still almost new... only like 1000 miles on them.... thats what im buggin on lol

Still looks good for being a rush job though, congrats :) I don't blame you for rushing though, 106 is some pretty good motivation IMO lol

lol... 106 isnt including the humidity either... we dont have much here but there is still some and it sux but thanks :)