Front Bumper Color Issue
06-12-2002, 04:41 PM
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Front Bumper Color Issue
Good news is I spent 20 hours in my 2.7 over the last 5 days driving back from a beautiful vacation in Bar Harbor...
Bad news is that I managed to find a huge pot hole disguised as your average puddle. My front bumper (passenger underside) hit the ground as the wheel pulled into the hole. Mind you this is a parking spot so I was going all of 3 MPH at the time. Following a large thump, I backed the car out of the hole only to find that the paint had cracked where the bumper flexed. This is mildly strange because I was not moving quickly, and those bumpers are usually built with some amount of flex.
The stranger part is that the paint chip exposed a forest green metallic paint color beneath my factory black exterior. This does not appear to be primer, it looks like factory ship paint. The reason this is an issue is primarily because I have only seen paint chip in that fashion when too much paint has been applied, or there is no secure bonding for the paint (no primer, difficult surface). This leads to the $600-1000 repair I was quoted.
My problem is that I believe my original bumper (I purchased this car new) was re-painted by the factory and that the paint job has created a defect. I did some digging and found out there are quite a few people having this same problem. I was wondering if anyone here had this issue and worked through it with Audi. If not check your front bumper for road stone chips... I found those exposed additional forest green paint in my case... I would be interested to find out if a number of us have bumpers that shipped as a different color from their original coat (Consider owning a white car with a red bumper underneath, that wouldn't be pretty).
Thanks for taking the time. I love the car but expect these types of things to not be an issue for the premium Audi demands. I am hoping the factory will correct the problem at no charge.
Patrick
Bad news is that I managed to find a huge pot hole disguised as your average puddle. My front bumper (passenger underside) hit the ground as the wheel pulled into the hole. Mind you this is a parking spot so I was going all of 3 MPH at the time. Following a large thump, I backed the car out of the hole only to find that the paint had cracked where the bumper flexed. This is mildly strange because I was not moving quickly, and those bumpers are usually built with some amount of flex.
The stranger part is that the paint chip exposed a forest green metallic paint color beneath my factory black exterior. This does not appear to be primer, it looks like factory ship paint. The reason this is an issue is primarily because I have only seen paint chip in that fashion when too much paint has been applied, or there is no secure bonding for the paint (no primer, difficult surface). This leads to the $600-1000 repair I was quoted.
My problem is that I believe my original bumper (I purchased this car new) was re-painted by the factory and that the paint job has created a defect. I did some digging and found out there are quite a few people having this same problem. I was wondering if anyone here had this issue and worked through it with Audi. If not check your front bumper for road stone chips... I found those exposed additional forest green paint in my case... I would be interested to find out if a number of us have bumpers that shipped as a different color from their original coat (Consider owning a white car with a red bumper underneath, that wouldn't be pretty).
Thanks for taking the time. I love the car but expect these types of things to not be an issue for the premium Audi demands. I am hoping the factory will correct the problem at no charge.
Patrick
06-12-2002, 10:16 PM
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Yup! e-mail me! bottom line, factory rep claimed that repainted parts came from the factory
I told him it was BS, and they replaced the whole front skin. Have the same thing with the back skin
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06-13-2002, 07:17 AM
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And most of the rest is Andorra :-)
After all the problems you've had, I'd be real curious about what happened between the factrory and the dealer. Sounds like the car wasn't tied down in transit!
06-13-2002, 12:18 PM
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Re: Hey - everything is fixed, kind of. I think I have the driveshaft shake,
"Everything is fixed, kind of..."
Is that to say that Audi did replace or repair your bumper? If they did can you please explain what you had to do to have them take that action. I want to make sure that I follow the right process.
Is that to say that Audi did replace or repair your bumper? If they did can you please explain what you had to do to have them take that action. I want to make sure that I follow the right process.