Horsepower in blue, torque in red, and air fuel in black.

At the last Audi Club event I won a dyno gift certificate; with all this supercharger hate going on I decided to made a quick trip up to 034Motorsport to get some numbers on an independent dyno. In addition to being local, one of the perks of having 034 dyno the car is that they've tuned a large majority of the Audis in the area. Many of the parts I have on my car have been been run on the dyno so we can make reasonable comparisions between modifications and cars.

034 uses a relatively conservative Land and Sea dyno.

My run plotted against a B5 S4.

After the recent product launch, I had the first weekend to myself for a long time.  I found a weigh scale near my house that's open 24 hours that I could actually get my car onto. I talked my roommate into coming out with me and got some offical numbers.

With a full tank of gas the car weighs in at 3,920lbs, almost two tons of Audi. I thought that seemed a little high considering most of the parts I've installed have been lightweight. Thinking backwards I was able to come up with a list of potential weight additions.

• full tank of gas: ~160lbs+
• supercharger, intercooler, hardware: ~75lbs
• roll cage, harnesses, and hardware: ~75lbs+
• subwoofer, enclosure, and amp: ~60-70lbs
• coolant for supercharger: ~12lbs+

That's almost 380-90lbs of static weight that I've added. Taking that into consideration I'm more than happy with the ~3,540-50lbs before the extra parts!

Each gauge displays two sensors worth of information, the gauges themselves are made by VEI Systems. The left gauge displays boost pressure and the air/fuel ratio using Innovate Motorsport's (Bosch's) wideband sensor. To the right I have my oil temperature and pressure.

On March 18th and 19th I had the opportunity to attend Audi Club Golden Gate's "Quattro de Seca" at Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca. An interesting and unfortunate fact about Laguna is that it has a 92dB sound limit which is measured on the passenger side coming out of turn 5, going up the hill. If you break that limit and are identified you'll receive a black flag...three black flags and you're done for the day. That being said, I wasn't sure my car would pass sound.

I called up the guys at One Stop Race Shop and rented a Spec Miata for the the event in case the S4 didn't pass sound check. Three laps around Laguna yielded 89.5dB the second session of the day. Perfect. After my sound check, I parked the S4 and spent most of of the event in the Miata.

The handful of sessions that I took the S4 out, I was very impressed with the power delivery. The car is able to get up to speed quickly and it continues to deliver predictable power throughout the powerband. With ESP off, the car would easily break traction coming out of a corner. The only issue I had with the car was the brake pad selection, the STaSIS supplied Carbotech Bobcats are definately a street pad; a few high speed stops quickly cooked the pads. The general consensus has been to use either the Ferodo 2500 or 3000s.

This was my first time at Laguna in a car and wow, this track is fun, but I still think I like Thunderhill more. There's something unnerving about cement walls, angry rumble strips, and uneven run off.

Spec Miata Montage

Early session in the the S4

Ring GT shells are made with Kevlar and are FIA approved; the shells are wrapped in black Alcantara and each seat weighs in at just a tad over 12lbs.

Our first step was to remove the OEM intake manifold, this is a good time to do your valve cover gaskets if yours are leaking. This process is straight forward. If there's enough room under the hood when everything is said and done, I am still very interested in adding JHM intake spacers (which were removed for the blower installation).

Typically, if you have a later build S4 you can simply put the vehicle in service position to install the new VF tensioner and idler pulleys; unfortunately, I had literally the first run of S4 motors which lacks some mounting points, and as a result we had to remove the entire front end in order to drill and tap the block.

After we drilled and tapped the block we were able to attach the additional pulleys.

Each VF comes with a liquid intercooler and a new, more compact power steering cooler. Note the location of the intercooler: below the front bumper support; the PES intercooler sits behind the bumper support. By replacing the power steering cooler we'll need to bleed the system when we're done; this is a good time to clean the filter in the power steering reservoir. VF supplies one use time clamps for the new power steering hoses.

And finally, a quick video!

A buddy of mine brought this to my attention the other day! It seems the February Eurotuner has a few paragraphs on the car.