Wax On, Wax Off

Mr. Miyagi was a wise man. I got a nice shoulder and core workout in this weekend. I washed, polished, and waxed both steeds in the barn. I got handy with a drill and dremmel and took off some big rust spots on the old Corolla I'd let go for too long, and then primed, glossed, and clear coated them. The rust was mostly along the top of the windshield. I ground it down to bare metal as best I could, masked it off, then repainted. In a fit of lack of observational power, I didn't bother to notice until I was done that the Corolla is black metallic paint rather than just black, so the patches I put on stands out from the rest of the car a little. Oops. I hit a ton of little touch-up spots on both cars as well with the tiny brushes. The first owner of the S4 blacked it out, painting the chrome load bars, side mirrors, badges and grill. I like the look, but they didn't do such a great job, and the paint sometimes peels off in large strips. I'd touched up every last little chip and peel on the car, polished and glazed her, then was in the middle of waxing when my finger hit the edge of a loose paint strip on one of the load bars and took off about a two inch square section. D'oh! Oh well, the imperfection will give her character until the next touch-up session.

The stock 2001 S4 is rated at 250hp from the 2.7L six cylinder and twin K03 turbos. She has lots of get-up-and-go already, but I'm toying with the idea of fiddling with her and putting in some modifications. I don't think I'm up for the expense of upgrading the turbos (yet?), but it wouldn't be too painful to put in a new chip and cat-back exhaust. I've read that one can pretty easily top 300hp with just those simple modifications. On the other hand, it'd be nice to start with suspension and brake upgrades to increase driving fun in the curves since lack of power really isn't an issue. The problem is, you see, I've been reading several websites recently dedicated to modifying the very-modifiable stock S4, and they've gotten my blood going. However, I have lots of self-educating to do and lots of budgeting to do before I decide to become a true Audi enthusiast and start tinkering.

Over the weekend, I also ordered a Pella replacement window from Lowes. It'll arrive in about three weeks, and if we like it, we'll order a few more and replace windows in some of the colder sections of the house. The purchase of replacement windows may be one of the many things that keep me from playing with the Audi. Luxury car parts versus windows to keep us warm... hmmm... decisions, decisions. Oh well. Better to be nice and snug in the winter than to have extra horsepower that you can't really use on the highway anyway.

Speaking of wax, by the way, it turns out that the little larvae pictured in my bee report from a while back were probably wax moths, which infest honeybee hives. The bigger larvae I saw, and whose photographs I did not include in the blog, were the baby bees. Not terribly important, but I didn't want to spread misinformation about honeybees.