Well I got a 3 inch dent in my hood. My little brother in his CRV backed into me while we were installing a HID kit. I didn't notice the dent until a week later. I will post a picture soon.
If you know of anyone that has a Santorin Blue Hood whether its for a S4 or A4 let me know.
Send a message here.
Update: Search goes on...
I still have not found a hood. Which is really odd. I figured there would be one in a junk yard around Seattle and nothing. I may have to see if I can go the PDR (paintless dent repair) route.
I know I live in the Seattle area. We don't get much snow normally. This year we have the high chance of having the coldest winter in 50 years. So what does that mean? Maybe 12 inches or more of snow for the winter season. I know it's not a lot. The problem is when a storm hits, pretty much the entire western side of the state shuts down. We don't have enough snow plows nor enough money to really operate them. That being said and having a 1 year old in a one car family, I would say it is important that we are able to get to the place we need to get to no matter the conditions. Plus it is just fun driving around in the snow.... as long as the rest of the state stays off the roads. People around here don't prepare for snow and don't have a clue how to drive in it. Anyways I got these tires off of
TireRack.com for about $162 per tire (including shipping). I order them on 11/16 and got them on 11/18... and that was with the cheapest shipping option. I was impressed.
Once we get a storm I will let you know what I think of them. The only think I've notice as of right now is the tires feel very light vs my all-seasons Falken Ziex ZE 912. My thoughts are the side walls are likely not going to be as stiff but that's ok. As long as I don't crack any more rims like I did two years ago when we had a bad storm.
Update: Well we just got our first snow storm this season last night (11/22/2010). I have to say these tires are very good in compact snow and ice. Great grip for braking. I took the S4 out for some fun last night in a parking lot and I have to say that this tires kind of take out the fun in drifting because the grip so well. We did not get enough snow to see how they handle in deep power but I'm sure that they will do well. Anyway, I highly recommend them.
I wanted to do this over a year ago and just never got around to it. I had ordered the fog bulbs (H7) a long time ago when I upgrade my headlights to the
55w DDM Slim Ballast kit but found out the hard way my stock HID ballast would not work with the bulbs that I had ordered. So I order the
Apexcone Raptor HID Kit from DDMTuning, which are about twice the width of the Slim ballast kit. I wish I had gotten the Slim Ballast kit because finding a area to put the ballast and not block air flow to the intercooler was not easy. I finally settled on placing them under the intercooler ducting and the inside lower part of the bumper. Kind of hard to explain. Either way they are out of sight and should stay pretty dry. The fog lamp housing requires a little modifications to get the HID bulb and wiring to working. I'll try to post some pictures to show you what I did. After some quick wiring I got everything fired up. I was surprised to find out that the beam pattern is pretty sharp for the fog lamps. Almost comparable to a projected headlamp (
meaning: using optical lens). I re-adjusted the fog lamps levels to make sure they were not pointed to high. With 55w HID headlamps (
compared to stock 35w kit) and 35w HID fogs, the last thing I want to do is blind people and or get pulled over by the local authorities. So they have a 10-15 degrees downward angle similar to the headlamps.
I took it for a test drive and living around Seattle, WA it was raining hard. The conditions were perfect since 3000K is a true yellow color so it helps illuminate the road better then other color ranges in wet or foggy conditions. At first, I was a little disappointed that they weren't brighter but then realized that this ballast kit aren't as quick to warm up vs. my the Slim Ballast kit. I would say they take 30-45 seconds vs the 5-10 seconds for my headlamps. The color starts off as a warm white color and then gradually turns to a true rally car like yellow. Once they are fully warmed up they work perfectly with the headlamps. The 4500k kit in the headlight is great at distance while the 3000k in the fog really brings out the road 20-30 feet from the front of the car.
In summary, I'm really happy with the overall setup. If you live in a wet or foggy area I would highly recommend this setup. I hope to have pictures up in the next week. If you have any questions feel free to post a comment below.
Pictures of the Install
The picture above show a unmodified fog lamp on the left and a modified one on the right. Notice the difference at the top. Basically you cut off the top connector so that you can route the HID wires out the back.
This picture is indirectly show where I placed the ballast. If you click on the picture to view the larger size you will see toward the bottom center right area two horizontal cuts in the intercooler ducting. That is where I places the ballast. I place the other one on the other side of the car in the same location. A simple zip tie is holding it in place. The down side of putting the ballasts here is if you are lowered and you bumper hits drive ways often you run the risk of damaging the ballast. This is why I recommend getting the Slim kit from DDM Tuning if you do decide to do this upgrade. With the Slim kit you can install the Ballast directly behind or above the fog lamp. If you are wondering, yes I did put lamin-x film on my fog lamps. I went with the smoked color. During the day time the film really help blend the fog lights into the surrounding lower bump.
Here is a front of what the 3000K HID fogs look like. A nice clean yellow just as I wanted it. And yes I did the independent fog light modification.
And here is my 55watt 4500k HID's headlights with the 35watt 3000K HID's.
I'm sorry this took so long to get up. I know a lot of you have been asking for this video and I wanted to make sure it wasn't crap. I also wanted to make sure the exhaust was fully broken in. I do have to say that Audi did a great job keeping engine and exhaust noise out of the cabin because it wasn't until I make this video did I really notice what this exhaust system sounded like. I how you guys in enjoy the video!
