It's Spray Time !!!

It's summertime - sun, blue skies and... the gentle aroma of thinners wafting around the garden, yes, it's respray season again.

Lotty's paint was now getting on for 15 years old and although she polished up nicely it was rapidly becoming a 10 foot paint job. Time to get the spray gun out of retirement.

This time around there were only a few areas in need of attention, some cracks around the usual stress points but the worst was a front corner repair which dated back to before our ownership and I've repeatedly tried (and failed) over the years to eradicate.

So this time around it was a serious attempt at sorting that out and I ended up cutting back to find exactly how and where the section had been grafted in place.

Perhaps not surprisingly I found nice straight edges, aluminium pop rivets and assorted scrap below bodyfiller and very little glass fibre.

It would appear that it was mostly held on with bodyfiller and there's no excuse for me not realising this 35 years earlier, but at least it explains why the cracks kept returning to haunt me over the years.

Fingers crossed this time around !

The only other major attention was the doors, which on this S3 just won't align at the rear edges and exhibit the usual deformed door syndrome.

I ended up taking about 1/2" out of the rear edges to get something like a panel fit but even so it's not perfect. Better than it was for sure, but nothing like a concours winning panel fit.

There's a limit to how much you can do this way before the outer skin hits the chrome window frame. To go beyond this point calls for serious re-working of the mounting points which I think is beyond my skills level.