Im having my RS4 carbon cleaned in a few weeks and I wondered what else I should be doing while the manifold etc. are off and apart. I know some have done the intake spacers (JHM), any benefit to having these installed? What about changing out the PCV system? (black box that sits above/near the oil filter). I hear the PCV eventually fails, so chnaging it now would make sense.
Thoughts?
I’d definitely get intake spacers. I just came back from the dragstrip and my car just got hotter and hotter and hotter as the day wore on. Times got worse for the most part.
When I would go with my B7 S4 this wasn’t the case. Even on a summer night, the car resisted heatsoak. I think anything you can do to improve the car makes sense, and the intake spacers, while hard to justify with hp or dyno BS, certainly do help. It’s not a mistake that race teams use them pretty much everywhere, and it’s also not a mistake that all of the fastest S4 and RS4 guys have them.
When you consider the cost…being about $200 and some gaskets, they’re definitely worth doing. I really miss mine now that I’m in a bone stock RS4.
Not sure about the PCV. Hopefully yours is doing fine. I don’t think I’d randomly change it unless you were pushing 70-80k miles. The PCV valve on some of these cars is what seems to give up after a while, but I have to say it’s not exactly common. On my S4 right before I sold it I planned to change the PCV valve and the coolant reservoir since the reservoirs tend to develop cracks, which produce slow coolant leaks that creep up on you. Not that this is ‘manifold-off’ dependant, but hey if you’re paying someone to be in there, I bet the labour to get that little job added wouldn’t be too bad.
i don’t know how RS4’s are with the IM getting heatsoaked but when I went to the strip with my S4 and no intake spacers, the car got slower and slower as the day went on. Definitely worth if if you’re having a carbon cleaning done and the IM is off the car.
What saki said about race teams using them is one of the things that’s great about JHM. JHM is literally a bunch of domestic-roots guys so all of the NA mods we get actually WORK. because they are proven to work in the domestic world, and we all know they have NA tuning down to a science.
Thanks for the feedback gents. I was debating on the intake spacers, so many people are telling me to do them while the IM is off during the CC, and that it’s a mod well worth doing. I think I am going to go ahead and pick a set up from JHM.
07…it’s just a weird one. You just have to trust it.
When I was getting my S4 modified last year I was getting piggies + catback + JHM tune + LWCP…and 3-4 other S4 guys I knew kept harping about these spacers and how I should definitely get them done at the same time since JHM was doing the work on my car. I think it’s a good thing that I listened because as I said my car was solid at dragstrip days. In the spring or fall, I would be within 0.5 MPH trap speeds all day. In the summer the car would fade as the night wore on, but again, not nearly as bad as other S4s without them.
It’s one of those little pieces you do…like lightweight crank pulley…and like buying light tires…and keeping your maintenance up. People will be so complacent with all these little pieces because ‘it won’t show up on a dyno’ but hey, that’s fine. Let them be slow.