I have to reiterate this. I took the air duct off to get to the passenger side headlight this weekend and that pre-filter was FULL of junk--grass clippings, leaf chuncks, even looked like maybe the body of a bee. I knocked it out really good and put it back since I'm taking the car for its 55k mile service tomorrow anyway.

I, too, couldn't believe the car could even breathe like that.

 

Car got a nice bath today, and I worked on some of the swirl/light scratches. If the weather is this nice again next week, I will probably way. However, I need a new center ring for one of my wheels (see attachment). I'm looking to get 4 new ones. One of the wheels center ring is just plain ol messed up (coating came off in some places)

 

I need new ones too. What used to be silver (your "A") is all yellowish white now where all the silver has flaked off. At $76 each, though, I'm not ready to pull the trigger.

Back when I researched this a few months ago, I think they used to be sold separately, but now it looks like it's one piece and nearly twice the price. 8E0 601 165 M SRA was the part number I had.

Home Page > Search > 8e0601165msra > ES#251115 Center Cap - Priced Each - 8E0601165MSRA

 

Yeah, unfortunately I found the same thing. So, I'm going to look at the spare in the trunk (full size 10 spoke, who would have thought?). If there is one on the spare, I'm just going to use that.

I saw a set of 4 on the bay, but I'm trying to stay away from the bay right now (bad habits and all that)....

 

I might get brave and try to paint mine. The center part with the Audi logo is still fine--it's the outer ring that's a problem for me and it's all 4.

 

It was so nice out today that my wife let me rake the backyard! SMH. Everyone in the neighborhood was washing their cars, and I was raking up a winter's worth of yellow lab and mutt mix ****. Yay me! At least the back yard is ready for cookouts a month earlier than usual....

 

I noticed the paint on the center caps is not very robust. Seems that rim cleaner really softens that silver paint on the outer ring. I was using Eagle One rim cleaner.

Nothing going on with the car right now. Just keeping it clean. Coming up on the 75k soon, and I'm going to have the timing belt done then.

After the 75k, I'm planning on the test pipe/stage 2 from APR. Still on course for Septemberish.

Lately I've been thinking about bigger rims/lowering, but that would be contrary to me keeping my "sleeper" plans.

 

You know you don't HAVE to do the timing belt yet, right? Audi moved the service interval back (I think to 115k miles). I'm going to do mine around 100k. But, maybe you just want to do it early.

 

Yes, I know. I want to do it early ahead of the tune.

 

So, I have a few things of note to mention today.

First, my cousin Phil worked in autobody for 16 years before he decided to do something different. He still does jobs on the side, recons, harley painting, so on and so forth. So one day he gives me this stuff in a spray bottle and tells me to "go clean your wheels, they're friggen filthy". Stuff is purple, and he can't remember the name of it.

I spray the stuff on, rinse the wheels off after about 30 seconds, and the wheels are ridiculously shiny. So the other day I ask him "what the hell was that stuff?" He says he can't remember the name of it, but he got it at Pine Motors the last time he needed wheel cleaner. So we went down there and picked some of that purple stuff up.

This stuff is the cat poop
This stuff is the absolute goods. Spray of, rinse off. Make sure you dilute it as specified.

The second thing: I purchased a test pipe, installation kit and O2 sensor spacer. Got everything from Europarts.com.

So I'm not sure I had mentioned it before, but I'm somewhat of a vintage RC nut. Specifically RC10 stuff. So I had some RC10 builds that I had finished up and sold, giving me a little coin in my paypal account. This morning, sitting at my desk I thought, "wow, this would be a good time to get the stuff you need to prep for the stage 2 you want to do in September."

So, in the spirit of staying on my time schedule, I ordered the stuff. Phil (my cousin from earlier in this rambling post of nonsense that nobody will read, except for maybe KingWulfgar) has a garage and all the tools needed for the swap out, so I had the parts shipped direct to him. I'm going to have him do some touch up work on the paint as weel, and might have him de-badge the car while he's at it.