I just bought this 02' TT coupe Monday. It's in excellent mechanical shape with 57,000 miles. Unfortunately it had a little dent in the driver's front fender. I had a dent-pro guy out and for $150 he made it PERFECT! Luckily the paint wasn't damaged at all so I was glad to spend the money to get that dent out. The other problem was the paint was messed up due to sitting out in San Francisco for two years. I couldn't get the very fine crap off the paint. I tried washing it, bug and tar remover, paint thinner and Meguires Paint Cleaner with no luck. Then I found out about the Clay bar stuff. I had never heard of it, but it's amazing. It takes several hours to do the whole car but I got 99% of the "bonded contaminants" (pollution) off. Tomorrow I'll start polishing and finally wax, although it looks pretty good right now. So I'm very happy and getting more and more excited about this car.

 

good deal.

and yes clay bar rules.

 

excellent, now, before your car gets a chance to ruin your day, start thinking about replacing the timing belt and water pump. They're notorious for failing at any point after about 60K miles, and a timing belt failure will destroy the cylinder head/valves/pistons.

 

check the cv boots as well.. all mine are torn lol

 

my front divers side had a tear when i did the clutch... now it pops when i turn so i should prob replace it lol!!!

 

I would be scare $41tless to try paint thinner on my car!

 

I was a basket case right before I bought this car. I went on line the night before and happened to pull up all the Edmunds reviews telling about all the problems people had had with their TT's and Audi dealers. I had second thoughts about maintenance costs, etc. The next morning my best friend who just bought a new R8 as well as a new S6 for the wife, as well as a RS4 for whatever! (obviously a severe Audi nut) spent an hour convincing me that all was well. This car had a great CarFax, all maintenance done at the dealer. It was a Certified Audi Used car at 40,000 miles. The second owner had the timing belt replaced as well as the transmission rebuilt (synchro arms replaced?) at the dealer. My friend got the service manager on the phone with me to discuss, I guess Audi warranties the engine if they did the belt to 105,000 miles? My friend bought me a 3 year extended warranty for it, a good friend. Any way as soon as I drove it home (he brought me down in the R8, talk about attention grabbing car) I was relieved and thrilled.

 

I know what you mean about screwing up the paint, last year I was messing around painting my guitar with both nitrocellulose lacquer and two part urethane car paint. Paint thinner (mineral spirits) is pretty mild stuff, certainly for a modern car paint. Naptha also works well, I used it to wipe the lacquer before respraying, is just a bit thinner.