Hello guys and gals,

After 12 months of being banned, i have had a fair amount of time to choose a new car. My old vehicle was a renault clio sport 172 which was my pride and joy. After careful consideration i decided it was time to leave the hatchback scene and enter the saloon consumer market. I finally narrowed the search down to either a Audi a4 190 s line, or the is200 sport. After weighing up the costs and taking into account the insurance difference the is200 sport won hands down. For a similar age a4 i was looking at another 2k in expenditure. But really the idea of a straight six and rear wheel drive really did it for me.

Now after a few chats with mates in the car trade, i was informed the things to look out for were:

Corrosion on alloys
Cd player mechanism
Uneven tyre wear
Bad swirling on the paintwork

With this in mind i hit autotrader/ebay/pistonheads. Living down in plymouth there was f*** all in my area reasonably priced, a kwik fone call to a mate up in wimbledon london, and i arranged to stay up there for a weekend. I looked at 4 in total. 3 is200 sports and 1 se. I wanted a 2000 or 1999 coz i didnt want to be hit in tax next year due to emissions. I decided to go for a black is200 sport which i found from uk gti's based in bromley. It was up for 5495, year 2000, 80000 miles, 3 months warranty, 12 months mot, 6 months tax. After closer inspection, the alloys did need a refurb, a small visit from dent doctor for a trolley ding, plus the dreaded err on the old cd player. General paintwork condition was spot on. The vehicle had been p/x and mercedes two weeks prior. I managed to knock him down to £5100 for the faults described.

Here she is:







I am now doing the refurb on the alloys myself, starting tonight, if anyone has got some tips on original colour, i would grateful to hear from you.

Hi & Welcome 2 LOC

We love pics n uv got a nice Lex there

Welcome mate,

Glad you found the right car.

Stav

welcome to loc, nice looking lex,as for the wheels just find a colour you like

Welcome to the LOC matey nice lex you have there

Hello & welcome matey.

Welcome Jim, tidy looking sport you have. I'm on the look-out for one myself.

hi and welcome jim looks great in black m8

Refurb complete, after many long hours scrubbing, sanding dremelling and spraying. My refurb is now complete. It was my first refurb and in total i would say i spent a minimum of 2 hours on each wheel. I am happy with the results, i few minor blemishes which i have learnt from. But here are some pictures of the first one i did, not the best one. But hey.

Ok so after taking off the wheels one by one, i first gave them a good clean with tesco alloy wheel cleaner (very similar to autoglym stuff but a 1/3 of the price). As you can see from the close ups the wheels were in a bad state.







Then i sanded them down using wet dry 240 slowly making my way up to 1200, using my bad boy dremmel for some bad corrossion areas, then came the masking of the tyres, i read somewhere that alot of people deflate the tyre, but due to the position of the tyre on the rim i didnt need to do this. I simply slotted folded a4 paper in the gap and masked. And yes, i did say it was my first time, i forgot to cover the valves. After a good clean with soapy water i then primed using zinc primer from halfrauds.



A couple layers of primer, then my chosen paint colour and then laquer. The finished product.




Next project, anti swirl of the paint and sort some tunes for my 13902, as im fed up with the radio!

That looks a nice tidy job you've done matey

Looks like a very good job done mate

Welcome to the club.

Good job for the first try, well done
Masking tape for the valves next time ehh

looks a good job

Welcome to LOC, hope you enjoy the car.

Good job on the wheels, Wanna do my wheels?

Nice job on those wheels

Now if you spend as much time on the paintwork as the wheels it will look like this if not better: