This may not be everyone's taste, but in my opinion, the pre 99.5 wood trim (the matte finish) was cheap and cheesy looking, unlike the treatment the S4 and the later B5 A4s got. I didn't like mine, so I decided to break out the wrenches and remove it to refinish it. I decided to paint it silver to match the silver exterior of the car, and it came out really nicely. It's a sleeker update to the look, and in my eyes, much better than the wood trim that was there. If I had the high-gloss wood trim that later cars got, I'd have been happy with it, but this fake looking stuff had to go. In person, the finished product actually is pretty close to what you'd have if you had the aluminum trim that came on a lot of the 1.8T cars, and did the brushed aluminum rework to it. It's definitely richer and brigher than the aluminum trim as it comes from Audi.

Overall, if anyone is contemplating redoing or swapping out their trim, go for it - there's a tech article that outlines what you have to do to get all the trim out, and the pics make it look intimidating, but it's not bad at all. I think it took about 30-40 minutes to remove everything from the dash. The door panels are a piece of cake, about 3 minutes each.

The only thing I'd say is, I used 600 grit sandpaper to prep the pieces, and I think 400 would be a better choice - it won't require so much work to really get the trim ready for paint. Anyhow, this is how it looks now. Sorry about the glare - it's overcast here but my camera still picks up a lot of glare.

 

Looks good, I think. Pics suck, but props on the good work!

 

Thanks man. I agree that the pics suck - I need a new camera (mine's about 4.5 years old and doesn't have the tricks that the newer ones do). Gonna get better pics though and I'll edit the post. It is a damnsight better than what it was though

 

Yeah, from those pictures it doesn't look that great. Maybe if you take some new ones or at least fix the contrast on those it'll look better.

 

Fromwhat I can tell, its a huge improvement. Nice. Post better quality pics if you can!

 

when i picture ur interior in my mind with the silver, i think it looks awesome. alot better than that wood i saw in person lol. wut about doing the shift **** and ebrake handle too? and how did the vag com go?

 

Ew [:'(]

 

Here's a few others - in order, it's DS rear door, PS rear door, PS front door, PS dash, center cluster, and passenger side of the car. Several of these came out a lot better and give more of a real look at how it looks now. Hiwords, we have to meet up again sometime soon, and if you have a better camera, please bring it!!

 

Shifter and e-brake handle will probably get done before too long. We'll see though - the e-brake is no problem, since I've seen several that I like. For the shifter though, the only ones I like are around $300 or so (Hamann, and others like that). Not much of a fan of the Momos that I've seen, but maybe there's one out there that I will like and haven't found yet. Ditto on the pedals - I test-fit the pedals from my 300ZX, but they aren't going to work, and again, the only pedal sets that I like out there are around $300 a set. Too much for something like that, in my opinion. VagCom got postponed to this week, but the inspection situation is "resolved"

 

haha, u sure have an eye for expensive stuff. well the camera i use is ma phone. the pix in ma gallery were all taken by it. check out the quality and let me kno if u want better pix. it's a sony ericsson phone with a 2.0 megapixel camera