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2004 Audi A4 2.0l Manual Swap Project...Car life documentation (LOTS OF PICS)

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-vinny-:
When I purchased her, it was February 16, 2004. I had no intentions of taking it where I currently have it. I guess the mod bug bit hard.


First mod I did to my car was clear corners the headlights!! Did it probably April along with my ghetto silver grille.  What beats a free mod? 

4/13/04 - Also installed my first 3m clear bra that paint protected my hood, bumper, fender, mirrors.   

4/13/04 - Shortly after I decided to chip my A4 and went with APR 93 and stock program. This livened up my car so much, and what I thought was super fast, but I was in for a rude awakening…
No pics.. ;D

Somewhere in between - I installed european S4 bixenon ecode headlights. This eliminated the amber corners, along with providing a bixenon projector and gray housings instead of the stock chrome.  I also got a set of OEM 15 inch wheels for the winter in fear of messing up my OEM Ultrasport wheels. And wow, they look hideous...


3/8/2006
Opted for some functional piaa yellow fogs, and high beam bulbs, along with the Front S4 grille.


11/12/2006
Decided upon a suspension upgrade, mainly for aesthetic reasons. H&R sports with Bilstein adjustable sport shocks, this effectively lowered the ride height about 1.25 inches, and stiffened the ride quite a bit.


7/29/2006
Ended up getting a new set of wheels. They were called Flik wheels sized at 18x8.5 running 235/40/18 Toyo Proxes 4's. Possible the worst all season tire I've driven with. Very loud, horrible tread wear, and had mediocre grip at best in all seasons…I guess thats what I get for getting an "all" season tire.

Also had the windows tinted 20% all around.


9/18/2006
3.5 inch add on exhaust tips to my stock exhaust for looks. Also bought the LED tail lights from fellow member needforsleep. 





Winter setup was a set of OZ Superturismo fitted with Dunlop M3s. 



2/23/07
APR 1+, decided to add TT225 injectors to the mix, and the difference is noticeable, however not amazing.

Photoshoot 4/2/07




Had to detinted front windows due to huge hassle with cops.



05/04/2008 - Owned by coilpacks…the infamous audi 1.8t issue. ALWAY keep some in your trunk as spares. 


Cracked the Fliks arctics…:( 


Went back to my OEM ultrasports for a while, in the meantime something for fun...Getting reclear bra'd...so i had to protect the front in the mean time...


Also got a inpro clip / parrott bluetooth installed and working again. AWE boost gauge as well.


Retinted the front and windshield as well..



And a photoshoot by a friend Jeffahn (www.figure8thestates.com)







Then I decided to get a set of BBS CH's from a friend of mine.











10/18/2008 - Then I proceeded to add my own little ghetto asian touch.  My lip mod made from home depot garage liner…That was a bad idea…





11/7/08 - Decided on getting some S4 recurs for my car. As the stock a4 seats were far from being supportive. So I called up Jeff, and off on a road trip we went!

700 mile drive...from Michigan  --> Pittsburgh.

Arive and see some cool buildings!







Dealing on the streets yo!


Loaded


Stopped by Cabelas and saw the biggest gunsafe...wtf


11 hour total driving time and lots of cursing, leads me hear now...


And now i'm stuck because I don't have the appropriate 20 point torx bit to take the front seats out. [headbang]  Guess to be continue.


Finally done.  Wasn't as difficult as I thought.  Thanks to Steph's (Avanteix) step by step removal guide. It helped alot.  Pics.







Next up GTRS.

12/2/08 - So after not having the car for two weeks, I'm finally going to get it back on Friday.  Went to the shop to do some work, and it finally starts.  Now the main problem is, the fitment of the USP bumper with the ER sport FMIC.  Whoever said that it was a direct bolt on needs to recheck how they installed this thing.  Me and my mechanic hacked the bumper, and the lower grille to death in order to finally get it to fit. 

On to the main reason why it took so long for me to get the car back.  Let me first say, Shawn (a4ringedONE8t) from 1552 has given me awesome support to me and my mechanic.  He answered our questions promptly, and the customer service was great.  However, what ended up taking me this long was the overall fitment of this kit.  There were many things I / Stefan (my mechanic) really thought would cause some issues in the long run.  As this car is my daily driver, I wanted to insure that EVERYTHING works out perfectly.  Here is a list of the things that has caused the delays, and I feel needs to be addressed with the GTRS.

1. Turbo to test pipe gasket, is NOT included in the kit.  If you plan on ordering this kit, please source this first.

2. Neuspeed turbo inlet pipe is the Samco pipe that really doesn't fit all that great behind the fan.  It will rub onto the AC condenser line, and your headlight mount bracket.  I'm afraid in time, it will rub through after miles of vibration.

3. Evolution Racewerks Sport FMIC does not fit behind the ultrasport bumper easily.  Lots of modification and cutting was needed behind the grilles, and parts of the foglight brackets to clear the intercooler and the piping itself.

4. In terms of plumbing, there were numerous hoses that we felt had to be trimmed, extended, or all together have a different hose / clamps. Some T-bolt clamps were too small, such as the inlet pipe ones, and some hoses were too short.  Or a coupler was missing from the power steering cooler.  I'll get into the specifics when I actually take the pictures of them.

5. ATP manifold, which seems to be a common problem amongst the eliminator crowd.  Tightening this manifold require excessive cursing, lots of alcohol, and a decent amount of time.  They really should make a custom wrench, or bit for this manifold, as that would save people a lot of time.

So far thats all I can think about.  Everything else was pretty straight forward.  Ryan's BT turbo on a4mods certainly helped a lot on my end.  You may think all of these problems are small and insignificant, but I am personally anal about things, and I believe if you are paying a large sum of money, it better be done right the first time. 

Now onto the pics.

The GTRS.


The GTRS in!


FMIC on, without the power steering cooler.


What it looks like as of tonight at 7 p.m.


I'll give a more precise review of this with the tiptronic transmission, along with videos and dyno's on the B6.  Few more mods, coming.  i'll keep updating just this thread, rather then starting a different ones.  I'm out, a little buzzed and the gf needs my attention. [:D]

The car is now home.  Operational, no CEL, no leaks, and feels pretty interesting?  I can't say I can phrase it properly, but the car is definetely a lot faster, however, it doesn't feel faster due to the lack of torque spike that I'm use to from the little K03.  I actually haven't gotten on it yet.  I've stayed below 15psi, on boost 7 and timing 5 (Sent by Shawn that way). And not entirely sure how long I should baby it.  I asked several people and they say take it easy for at least 500 miles. hmmm... I need to figure out how to start logging to make sure it is running properly as well.  But as of right now, all is good.

Exhaust is louder as well.  There is more drone in the cabin, but nothing unbearable.  I'll be taking videos most likely tonight, or this weekend after I get a few more miles on it.

Does anyone know more specifics about the break in period as well as logging, and what channels are required?  Thanks.

Here are some pics.









Here is the list that has been done in terms of performance.  GTRS Turbo / ER Testpipe / 550cc Injectors with adapters / ER Sport FMIC / ATP Manifold / Magnaflow Exhaust / Neuspeed,Samco Turbo Inlet Pipe / K&N Cone filter with Blinktek Heat Shield / Software is REVO's 440 Injector file.

Finally my conquest of misfire issues has disappeared.  I swapped out the spark plugs from IK22's to BKR7E's since I couldn't source any other ones immediately.  And voila!  No misfires on full boost!  But taking a look from the IK 22's, they didn't seem bad at all imo, here are the pictures of the four plugs.

Plug 1


Plug 2


Plug 3


Plug 4


To me they seem to be pretty healthy, maybe a tad worn on some, but healthy light brown. Which hopefully means my tune is nice and good as of now.  Obviously the vag com cable isn't here yet, to verify.  But this was a good relief to me.

So the grille is put back in, I retrofitted the lower S4 bottom to the USP bottom to match the top grille.



Car is filthy in this Michigan crap.


Picture of whats to come when summer comes back.


Now the question becomes, this.  When I do full boost, and gun it. My traction control light just stays on...  Interesting?  Wonder if its because the TCU has no idea where all this power is coming from, so it disengages the traction control?  We'll have to figure that one out.

Video of car at 80% throttle in one second after it uploads.  This one is for you Kirk, I'll take an outside one later. Its too cold.

Finally a video.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jfHeORT-7Rk

1/18/09 - New wheels again! OEM RS4 wheels 19x9 ET29.






3/13/2009 - New wheels again! 19x8.5 BBS RSGT!




5/30/09 - I contracted Vast performance for a tiptronic chip.  It went in…and I was partially satisfied as it fixed part of my throttle downshift issues.  Other then that, the shifts seemed more crisp but it was a marginal improvement.  Guess you can't expect much from the good ole tiptronic transmission.

8/9/2009 -I changed into a different intercooler as my IAT's were very high after a few pulls.  I was feeling pretty confident about just throwing my new ASP intercooler in there.  Figured starting at 11:00 pm, worst case scenario, I wont get to bed till like 2:00 am?

Well all was well in the world when I started, taking off the front bumper, taking the the ER sport off, and the piping.  Here is some pictures to see how they compare side by side.





As you can see, the ER core is thicker then the ASP, but the ASP nearly has twice the height.  Which one is better?!?! [confused]



So even installing it wasn't so bad... with all the piping, map sensor etc etc. HOWEVER, here is where I started to spend the most time.  Trying to throw the bumper back onto the car.  The cold side piping basically sits right where the USP foglight/holder is at (Taking the Foglights won't even cure this problem).  Therefore some extensive hacking will be needed in order to have it fit correctly under the USP bumper. 



Well after battling with all the clamps, couplers, trying to readjust it a million times to see if i can force it in somehow....Nope.  By then it was already about 2-3am...Well i figured fine, I'll pull a Dan for now.  And run no bumper until I can get it resolved with since I was tired.  So I proceeded to put in my headlights and just call it a night. Passenger side, no problem, driver side?  Ha! The F'ing MAP sensor piping is too large, and basically blocks my ecode from being pushed in all the way. 







At this moment, I'm pretty Fed up, because I expected this to be a 3-4 hour job, turned into a 7 hour job.  At 5 am, i just called it a night, left it, so now i'm a F'ing pirate looking B6 with no bumper...Logs to come to see if this is a improvement over the ER sport.  Anyone have any ideas on what to do to make it fit, beside trying to find different piping?!

2/11/10 - Put on a DTH lip spoiler custom made for our USP fronts.


Pressure washed the car...and voila!

-vinny-:
More to come when I compile more...

How do we get the pics to auto resize? Or do I have to resize them all myself...haha

Castle:
that poor car has been through a lot!   ;D  cant wait to read about the swap

I post pics from my photobucket account, it automatically resizes them

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