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From YourSITE.com Technical Features Body kits can be a double-edged sword. From the enthusiast standpoint, they can make a car look much more aggressive and really set it apart from the crowd. From the non-enthusiast side, they can make a car more difficult to park around curbs and equally difficult to resell when you're ready to move on to a new car. I’ve always been fond of a more subtle look on cars, explained as the OEMplus design philosophy (OEMplus was a recent focus in my 'From the Armchair column on VWvortex.com. With subtlety preferred but the black trimmed bumpers of our 2002 A4 Avant staring me in the face, it seemed to me that going with the OEM S4 body kit was the way to go.
Deciding to install an S4 body kit on your A4 is easier said than done. Most dealership parts counter guys will look at you oddly when you ask for the parts. One could look down on them for it, but honestly it’s outside the typical tasks they’re normally called upon to perform, and with the bazillions of parts on their computers for the countless models they cover, I don’t begrudge them one bit when they look at me oddly. Another problem is that with a body kit, you’re dealing with parts that are costly and may or may not fit, and you'll likely not know if they do fit until you try them, possibly damaging them so that the parts counter won’t want to take them back. See what I mean? Have patience with your parts counter guy... Fortunately for goofball owners like me, we now have the Internet. Searching online forums and Google I eventually found a photo of a car on which the owner had performed the conversion. I dropped the guy an email and quickly received a very helpful answer to my inquiry, listing part numbers and some advice, such as the fact that the standard A4 fog lamps wouldn’t work with the S4 kit, necessitating their replacement. Finding this sort of information is the digital equivalent to striking gold in a process like this, and I thanked him profusely.
With my research done completely, I returned to the Audi dealer who, I decided, would also do the paintwork. It’s important to choose a shop that you know and trust and after that, spell out exactly what you want and check in regularly so costly mistakes are not made. Long processes like this can and do lead to mistakes, either through the fault of the shop or your own failure to spell out exactly what you want, so the more detail the better for both parties. Again, patience is necessary as we’re all human and most body shops don’t do even a fraction of their business on installs such as this, instead focusing on collision repair. Having had excellent experience in the past with Autohaus Lancaster - an Audi, Porsche and Volkswagen dealership in Lancaster, PA - I decided it was worth a return. Autohaus is about two hours away from where I now reside, but their paint quality has proven to be impeccable, the guys in the body shop I’ve dealt with Scott and Matt are very patient and helpful and their parts manager Seppo has never cast a hairy eyeball at me over years of crazy requests. They were certainly not my cheapest estimate, but you get what you pay for and I knew the quality I’d receive. Even with all of this homework performed and care in choice of shop done, these sorts of experiences almost never come off without a hitch, so be prepared and be patient and attentive. I made my first trip north to Autohaus Lancaster to place the order for parts and walk through the process with Scott and Matt in the body shop. Seppo, the parts manager, wasn’t available when I stopped in unannounced, so I left the list of required parts attained online with the guys in the body shop. Snag #1 was about to happen.
An honest mistake - the parts guys work on model year. Probably handed off to one of the guys on the counter to verify before ordering, someone plugged in 2002 S4 Avant and realized my part numbers didn’t match and assumed my European sourced numbers were incorrect for my North American A4. Now, criticize all you want, but only an Audi uber geek would know the 2002 A4 Avant was a B6 and the 2002 S4 was a B5. They quickly learned when the parts arrived and held them up to a B6 on the lot. A call was made to me that something was wrong. We clarified the situation and Autohaus re-ordered the parts graciously. Several days later I dropped off the Avant at Autohaus. In addition to the S4 parts that had been ordered, we also planned to install the Votex rear upper spoiler for the B6 sourced in North America through Audi Accessories and available through any Audi dealer like Autohaus Lancaster. As the S4 has one-piece bumpers, installation of the S4 kit requires the full removal of the front and rear bumpers. Once the new parts are sprayed, it’s basically a bolt on procedure with no modification required to install. Like the fog lamps, we found the rear trim piece along the bottom of the trunk is not re-usable. Matt with Autohaus’ body shop was kind enough to check and see if an S4 black package trim piece from Europe was available through their parts counter, though it was unfortunately not available for North American distribution. I didn’t really care about the rear trim piece, but Matt’s idea of the black package was a good one. Our 1.8T Avant came with black window trim and black anodized roof bars unlike the S4, which has polished aluminum instead. The new S4 front bumper has a larger lower grille, meaning I’d have to replace this piece as well. I’d heard rumors that PG Performance was selling black package grilles for the S4, and since my 1.8T already had some elements of the package, I figured the look would be very clean. A quick call to PG Performance confirmed they were available. It cost a bit more to replace the grilles top and bottom, but the look is one you don’t see much… even at car shows.
To note, while we did not check for fitment, we held the PG-sourced lower grille up to an UltraSport A4 on Autohaus’ lot. The grille appeared dimensionally identical to that of the UltraSport, suggesting that someone doing this sort of conversion could simply buy the lower piece from the UltraSport if they wanted to keep the black grille/chrome frame look. Or, contrarily, an UltraSport owner could probably fit the S4 or S4 black package grilles to their cars, the S4 grille being a different crosshatch design and the center segment being more of a graphite gray color. Noting the S4 and A4 grilles both had removable, snap-together frames, we tried swapping the upper grille frames as an experiment, making a black frame around our A4’s black grille. The look was trick and it worked, so we assume the swap would work with an UltraSport lower grille and S4 lower grille as well. We pondered an all-black grille setup on the A4, but buying yet one more grille, the lower piece from an A4 UltraSport, to complete the look seemed like too much money for too little effect. We mention it though, as someone out there might want to give it a try. Back to the A4, we headed up to Autohaus to take some photos of the car with the bumpers off and the paint drying on our new parts. While at the dealership, we noticed that the sideskirts were still on the car. Snag #2. I never specified that the sideskirts be painted. It turns out the S4’s sideskirt is the same as the A4, though ours had never been painted and had a healthy amount of time in less than ideal conditions to add to the difficulty in making paint adhere. Talking it over with Matt, he expressed concern for painting it on the skirt that had sat unexposed in the elements since the car had been put into service. However, the cost of new identical parts seemed a bit unnecessary, and Matt was extremely helpful, eventually adding a new flex agent he’d found that is specifically for this sort of work.
In the end, we went to pick up the A4 at Autohaus Lancaster and were, not surprisingly, highly impressed with what we found. This shop, that regularly works on Porsches and Audis of all types is one of the best in the region as far as we're concerned. Looking over the car closely, we were at first were concerned with what appeared to be a slightly different shade of silver on the new parts, specifically where the bumpers met the quarter panels. Snag #3. Matt quickly layed our fears to rest though. It’s nearly impossible to get a specific match in bright sun like that, he explained. It’s not the color of the paint, rather it’s the direction of the metal flake in the paint. New cars have the same issue, and he pointed out a silver S4 Cabriolet on the lot with an identical difference from bumper to fender. They even come from the factory like that. Matt asked what he should do with our old bumpers, still in perfectly good shape. I considered folding the seat of the A4 and shoving them in. He noted that they were dirty and offered to hold them until I could come back with a truck or something I was more willing to damage or get dirty. I agreed, though calling back two weeks later to schedule a pick-up (you knew there had to be a Snag #4, didn’t you?). Snag #4. One of the body shop workers had thrown the used bumpers away during cleanup. It would have been nice to retain them, but that opportunity was missed. Body shops don’t keep used parts like this around. It was an honest mistake, and we don’t really have a need for those bumpers anyway, unless we wanted to install an aftermarket body kit on the more commonly used A4 bumper. Matt was very apologetic, and that was appreciated. Lesson learned. Never leave your used parts at the shop. In the hussle of daily business, it's easy for used parts such as this to disappear. Always take them with you if you want to retain them. It's sound advice, wherever you have your work done.
Looking over the car on the day of our pickup, Scott from the Autohaus body shop asked if we were going to de-badge the car now that it had the S4 look. We’d thought about that very thing, but decided against it. I love the look of the S4 bumpers, but de-badging now looks just too “wanna be S4” for me, like I’m trying to deceive. Rather, I just like the look. In the end, we’re extremely happy with the look of the car. It gets many more second glances on the street, though it’s subtle enough that it doesn’t really stick out much at more over-the-top enthusiast shows. It’s got an aggressive look, though I doubt the appearance will hurt it on resale and the quality of Autohaus' paintwork is impeccable, with factory-like quality. The total cost was well more than I’d like to report, and that has probably gone up since we had the install performed about a year ago. Our install came in just shy of $4,000 when all was performed. Body kit installs with paintwork can and are a relatively expensive process, so be forewarned if you're considering such a move. However, they're also one of the most visually rewarding modifications you might do to your car other than wheels, and our A4 has been completely transformed. Parts Installed: 8EO-807-103-T-GRU -- Cover 8EO-807-787-A – Frame 8EO-807-788-A – Frame 8EO-807-977-GRU – Trim 8EO-807-681-B-01C – Grill 8EO-807-682-B-01C – Grill 8EO-941-699-A – Foglamp 8EO-941-700-A – Foglamp 8E9-807-301-T-GRU – Cover 8EO-853-969-A-7DL – Cover 8EO-853-970-A-7DL – Cover 8EO-853-959-A-7DL – Cover 8EO-853-960-A-7DL – Cover 8EO-898-193-A – Mount Kit 8EO-955-275-B-GRU – Cap 8EO-955-276-B-GRU – Cap 8E9-807-443-B-2ZZ – Molding 8EO-853-985-B-7DL – Coverstrip 8EO-853-986-B-7DL – Coverstrip 8E9-867-299 – Clip 8EO-853-651-H-5PV – Black Package Upper Grille for S4 from PG Performance 8E0-807-647-F-5PV – Black Package Lower Grille for S4 from PG Performance 8E9-071-640-9AX B6/B7 Rear Upper Spoiler from Audi Accessories Related Links Project A4 Avant 1.8T Main Page Autohaus Lancaster PG Performance Audi Accessories
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