Oktoberfest

28 Sep Oktoberfest

We’ve got a bevy of German cars in the garage for various jobs, so let’s start October a little early, have a couple beers and take a look.

Yes, we are in fact a garage that specializes in German cars, but some weeks we’re stocked more with cars not from the Vaterland. This week, though, we’ve been almost all German, sans one undercover Impala courtesy of the Plainfield Police Department. Naturally, we snapped pictures along the way of the most interesting things rolling through the shop. We’ll start off with the nicest car to pay us a visit. A business contemporary came to visit earlier this week, rolling up in a Porsche 997 GT3 RS 3.8. It’s still sporting the OEM livery, along with that hugely awesome (and just plain huge) rear wing, and it’s stuck to the ground via a set of Michelin Pilot Sport Cups (the OE tires for this car). It’s in a shade of blue that you couldn’t miss if you tried, and….well, we could just go on for hours about how nice this car is, so let’s just get to the couple quick pictures we snapped while it rested in the parking lot.

Moving from Stuttgart to Munich, we’ve just released this E90 3-series from the paint shop. Originally, it had arrived in the shop covered in a multitude of scratches across a variety of panels. After some discussions with the insurance company, they gave us the go-ahead to respray practically the entire vehicle. After a generous amount of surface preparation, painting and buffing took slightly longer than expected, but now it’s ready to hit the road and it looks fantastic. Black’s an awful color when it’s dirty or done poorly, but when it’s done right it’s deep and lovely to look at. We’d like to think this one strays towards the latter description.

With one E9x out of paint and body, another one rolled in on its coat tails. This E92 328i had something serious happen to its rear end, but it’s sort of a mystery. Just from looking at the car itself, whatever happened was enough to cause most of the bumper’s top paint to peel, and there were some deep gouges and tears down the bumper, as well. However, the overall shape of the bumper is completely intact — no giant dents, dings, etc. On top of that, whatever happened was also enough to dent one exhaust tip, that you can see below in the first picture. So this mysterious force is strong enough to bend steel, but not to deform plastic. Perhaps it just caught the errant end of a garage door, we’re not too sure. Either way, it’s our job to fix it, so we deconstructed the rear end and began prepping both it and the driver side quarter panel for a respray.

It’s in the booth right now, and we’re excited to see how it’ll look once it’s done. For now, though, it’s up to the fourth dimension (that’s time) to finish the drying process, after which we’ll be able to clean it up and send it on its way.

Over in service, we move back from BMW to the VAG with this B7 Audi A4. It’s come into the shop for a bit of an optical refresh. After driving his car for a while, the owner’s grown tired of the stock halogen headlight setup, and has opted to upgrade to the A4’s optional Xenon lights. Not only will this project more light onto the road in a more concentrated manner, but it comes with a better looking integrated eyelid and a cleaner look in general. As with most German cars, there’s going to be a bit of wiring involved, but it’s nothing we haven’t encountered in both our training and our subsequent work experience.

That about sums up all the interesting German jobs taking place around the shop at the moment. We’ve got other things taking place, as well, but those are designated for future blog posts down the line. So fret not, we’ve got plenty of content coming up on the blog for you to enjoy. In the meantime, there’s something you might not realize about the Kawasaki Vulcan in our shop at the moment — it’s heavy. Like, awfully heavy, even for a cruiser. For our next step in the project (which is about 2 or 3 episodes down in the HOTW pipeline), we have to pop ‘er back up on jackstands. In order to do that, we need six guys. One to secure the wheel in the back, four to lift the front, and one to apply the jackstands themselves. Once you see where Tom’s head is, you’ll realize why we put as many guys on the front end as possible. That head’s no good to Tom if it’s detached.

Have a great weekend!