OK, I have to vent.

I mean, I wanted to retrofit the S4 Avant rear doors with sunblinds, and the stupid ass factory accessory for it has this huge roller sticking out on top of the door panels.

Now, props to Gavin at Sunset, he was able to look into this further and found that parts needed for recessed sunblind door panels.

And now, the never ending parktronic episode.

Since our Avant came without the parktronic (this is what happens when you only want a yellow Avant in stickshift in 08, and you have to buy a low mile used one because there was no yellow one to be found), we looked into retrofitting it.

Bought the bumper with the precut holes, that was fine.

Bought the parktronic sensor kit, that was fine.

Had it painted at a bodyshop that I know uses the right industry stuff (I used to be in the biz).

Except the Audi accessory parktronic kit has this ghetto ass buzzer as the audio alarm instead of being able to tap into the speakers.

Oh, and you have to splice wires and shit to get this accessory kit to work, because it uses the reverse light wiring to power itself.

So now poor Gavin has to really dig into what is required to get it factory style with no wire cutting and splicing. And yes, I understand that I might have to buy new harness(es).

With BMW, all this can be found within a matter of minutes in their ETK. But I have called a bunch of dealers after running into the parktronic wiring splicing issue (and no, I have not installed the kit yet, because I don't want to cut anything), and no one seems to know.

The best answers I could get out of a few dealers service department was, "I have to have my foreman look at it."

Why? Don't you dealers have ETK for you to figure this out like BMW? I mean, I can look up all kinds of crazy European only parts in BMW ETK, and call and order the parts at a dealer, and be done.

I can't believe sunshade and parktronic retrofit is turning out to be such a huge pain in the ass.

It shouldn't be. Why is it so hard to look things up in Audi?