Audi S2 Coupe Project-Shooting Some Pearl Paint

And a little mini update. The heat here lately (shop gets to 95F by about 2PM…100F by 5PM…back down to 95F by 9PM and done into the 80’s by midnight) has been brutal. Went from the mildest summer last year to one of the hottest on record. My reducer is for kicking paint in the 70’s, so I have to get up and do it early before work if I want to try and get it to lay right.

I first tried using some Rustoleum brand bare metal primer on the areas I was working on. Then I got some brushable seam sealer from NAPA to give it the ‘factory ‘we’re in a rush’ messy brush strokes’. The problem was that the primer was incompatible with the sealer (fully cured) and would not kick past being really tacky.

After some web searching, I found it to be a problem with Rustoleum primer. Live and learn. So I used to Krylon auto primer and that seems to be working fine. I would like to find a better ‘go-to’ primer to use with the higher end auto paints. I think that is the weak link in my chain at the moment. Anyway, I wire wheeled the sealer off and then re-did all of it. Followed by more primer, base, pearl, and clear. I’m stoked to work in the single stage Alpine on the urq after all this.

Anyway, enough with the small talk…Pics!

A little prep on the mirrors…it will be nice to get rid of the crackled black paint on these…

PS tower…

DS tower…

I could have gone for a smoothed out look, but I was going for the factory S2 look, which is somewhat, um, liberal in the brushed application of seam sealer. Not to mention the factory paint drips in the bay. If the whole bay was cleaned up/shaved, it would be a different story. The other issue is the pearl in the engine bay is far from the original color due to the thermal and chemical exposure its been through in the past 20+ years. With everything back together, it should look pretty decent, though. I would like to paint the entire car, but that will have to wait for a new owner, and I’d hate to have to pick a color anyway.

The mirrors turned out pretty good. I’m getting better at painting, but these little parts with surfaces in all orientations and nooks and crannies can be challenging.

And here is a comparison against the factory paint on the DS door. Hard to tell, but the match is decent.

We’ll see how close I can get the front fender this time around. The bumpers aren’t so critical as they are visually separated by their form, which helps when paint doesn’t match perfectly. Side by side panels in the same orientation are the true test.

Well, it’s getting to be official. I’m not quite ready to move it yet, but needed to start getting the word out.

Here is roughly what I’m thinking for the listing…It will need to be updated with the current work being done, but is a good starting point.

I figure not many here will be interested because most everyone here can build their own just like it, but looking for a little feedback or the chance someone may know someone that would be interested. I plan on listing it all over, but want to wait until it is ready for that. So for now, it’s just for you guys…