Bitten the bullet....

[Mog]

Went to see the Nogaro RS4 last night, signed on the dotted line this morning. I will pick it up in a couple of weeks as the TT has to go back to AMD before the dealer will PX it, One question though one of the wheels has been kerbed (been told they are the harder ones) so I asked for it to be replaced which was agreed, the salesman has told me now that it will be refurbished, I was under the impression that this could not be done. Anyone shed some light please...

Mog [img]images/graemlins/s4anogaro.gif[/img]

[Bushy]

The refurbishment of the standard wheels is a hard process because of the pant finish

I do believe there is actually a company who can now match the finish, but i believe it isnt always a good job, so be wary

Cheers

[Alan]

There are a couple of companies in this country that are perfectly capable of doing a 100% job.

Just be sure to have a good look at it after it's done!

[Golich]

There's nothing wrong with refurbishing a wheel so long as the paint is the same colour as all the others. I've done a few in my time. [img]images/graemlins/beerchug.gif[/img]

[paul_j_murray]

There are a couple of companies in this country that are perfectly capable of doing a 100% job.

After hitting a v.hard immovable object in the weekend (ouch!) - I now need one of my front wheels refurbed. Can you please post details of these companies?

[dog]

pjm,
hard or soft rims? What happened? What speed?

[paul_j_murray]

I rounded a tight corner on a narrow backroad (aren't they all in England) to find a on-coming car over the central line. Managed to miss the car but not the concrete curb. I must of only be doing 50mph when I scrapped the wheel, but with soft alloys... well the damage to the rim was significant.

However the good news is that after contacting Audi about a replacement wheel they subsequently informed me about their RS4 soft-wheel replacement policy. If my understanding is correct - they will replace all my soft wheels for hard wheels free of charge. Result!! (but strange that Audi did not tell me anything about this when I bought the car from them 2 months ago.)

The only other damage was a cut to the side-wall of my front Goodyear. I am thinking I should replace this, as have a tire blow-out at speed could be very unhealthy!

[Golich]

PJM,

When I said there was nothing wrong with refurbishing wheels. What I should have said was this applies to cosmetic damage eg. scratches, corrosion, low impact dents, gouges from say parking speed kerb incidents.

However, as all you RS4 owners know it doesn't take that high a speed to deform a wheel. The problem is once you've hit anything at speed a cast allow wheel may not always show the effects immediately, eg a crack!

If the impact was sufficient enough to tear/bulge the tyre, you've got to call in to question the integrity of the alloy. Especially when it's on a high speed high performance car.

Personally I would never feel confident driving with a wheel/tyre I know has taken a decent impact. What constitutes a decent impact is a matter of opinion. Unless you know what the material properties of the alloy are and what it was designed to withstand.

Which incidently can be impressively high - I've heard of Mercedes testing their suspension/wheels etc to take full kerb impacts at 70mph. [img]images/graemlins/shocked.gif[/img] Aye, this was to stay intact enough to steer. I dare say the tracking needed some adjustment after that! [img]images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]

[paul_j_murray]

Personally I would never feel confident driving with a wheel/tyre I know has taken a decent impact.

I couldn't agree more. One of the 'Police Camera Action' type TV programmes recently showed a pursuit vehicle doing a 1080 degree spin at 120mph (through traffic!) after a tire blow-out. It looked absolutely terrifying - the car was spinning so fast that it appeared the driver was more or less irrelevant.

[FatBoy]

I saw that one too.
The Police officer who was driving the vehicle at the time, later suggested that he managed to "steer" the car to avoid other vehicles. Utter B***ks, the car was totally out of his control, and where it ended up was completely in the lap of the gods.
Earlier in the same program, the same police oficer over took a lorry on his blind side at 120mph during a pursuit and was surprised when the lorry pulled out. The poor lorry driver didn't stand a chance, the police car was completely out of his field of vision until it was too late. The result was relatively minor damage to the car. However, IMO, the police driver was at clear fault and not the lorry driver. At no point in the proceeding could the police camera see the lorry's rear-view mirrors, therefore, clearly the lorry driver couldn't see the patrol car. I suspect that 90% of the drivers on here would have avoided the accident. So much for the superior standards of police driving [img]images/graemlins/smirk.gif[/img]
Cheers
Paul

[dog]

While we are at it: continous tyre pressure monitoring is a must on any decent car. There you are, I said it again.