Dents, filling and painting

PART FOUR: Our A4 has decent bodywork for a 15-year-old, but there was a nasty dent and a couple of minor bits of corrosion. Andrew Everett books it into a bodyshop to get it sorted.

One of the things I was dreading on our A4 was the spectre of rust – not unreasonable when you see the state of some. The main bodyshell is generally fine because they were galvanised. It’s the front wings that are a common casualty on most older VAG group cars – and the A4 is no exception. Like the Golf MKIV and V, Audi fit a chunk of shaped foam in between the wing and the arch liner and we have yet to work out what it actually does apart from trap moisture and rust the wing out.

On our car there was no sign of the terminal wing rot, but there were signs of a blow-in on the front section of the passenger front arch. Cleaning it back to bright metal didn’t reveal anything nasty, although the inner arch lip was a bit rusty and needed bare metalling. We did remove both arch liners and bin the foam as well as cleaning out the arches.

The dent on the rear arch is pretty self-explanatory – it was caught on something sharp that dug into it and needed pulling straight before it could be skimmed with filler. Getting the rear light unit out demonstrated that even Audi show signs of occasional design madness – a lot of dismantling and swearing just to replace a bulb! If only they had used quick-release plastic knobs. The A4 owners’ handbook states that ‘bulbs should be changed by a qualified mechanic’ – most helpful.

Finally, the boot lid was showing some strange corrosion on the horizontal rear seam; it seems that Audi made the bootlid from a mixture of steel and alloy, with the lower half skin being aluminium. Luckily we were able to grind the corrosion out and refill the seam without having to repaint the whole panel, doing a localised repair instead. That involved removing the ‘1.8T’ boot script; and because these badges are too thin to refit with doublesided tape, we’ll have to see how much new ones are before replacing it.

We took our car to Body Motor Works in Clay Cross near Chesterfield (01246 864803). Proprietor Matt Summerfield founded the business in 2012 after 15 years working at a BMW main dealer bodyshop. If you think back far enough, one of his first jobs working with us was some body repairs to our dark green project BMW 320d E46 Touring all those years ago (CM, May 2013).