Audi S6 V10 actual performance?

[Woxxman]

Hi guys and thanks for a great forum/community! I’ve been lurking here for almost 2 years after I got my 2008 S6 V10 but only recently started to get involved with posting as well.

If you guys want to have a look at my S6 avant you can see it presented before and after restoration in this videos (Swedish language).

V10-kombi makeover - Del 2 *SOM NY! MEN SKADAD IGEN...*

Whats been done to the car?

• Full Maxton kit (front spoiler, side skirts, rear side splitters)
• Re-painted front and new door
• Polished lights all over
• Plastidipped (black) rear spoiler
• RS6 C6 20inch wheels
• Custom 3,5" exhaust tips on a stock S6 exhaust

As the title of the post says I’m currently digging deeper in the actual performance of these cars for a new YT-video for our channel. My S6 is doing rather poorly in acceleration 0-100, especially after comparing with the actual manufacturer estimates. But at the same time everything is honestly rather messy… Here is the break down.

1. US/UK reviews from back in the day says the S6 Sedan was specced for 5,2s 0-60mph. At the same time Swedish reviews says the spec of 5,2/5,2s (sedan/avant) is for 0-100km/h… One of those statements is clearly wrong, I just can’t seem to find which. Thats the first big issue and question - do you guys know what the actual Audi accelaration estimate is supposed to be?
   And bonus question! Do you know if Audi put down actual 0-60 numbers or are these specs with 1ft roll out withdrawn?
2. On top os this it seems like the acceleration numbers from actual reviews differ quite a lot. Edmunds wrote that they got a 5,7s 0-60mph (14s 1/4 mile) with the sedan. While Road and track got a 5,1s 0-60mph and a 13,5 1/4 mile.
   
   
   
   Is the acceleration results equally all over the place when in the hands of car owners like people in this group? Do have any reliable 0-60 or 0-62,1mph recordings of you stock/tuned cars that you can share here for reference?
3. My “performance issues”! Now to my own situation. I’m currently starting a “make the V10 great again” project on our YT channel and doing some dragy testing the best I get on 0-100 is a measly 6,39s with Swedish 98 octane (pretty lousy fuel apparently) and around 6,2s with 10% E85 in the tank. I don’t have any 1/4 mile results yet but the 1/8 time is around 9,3s which seems a bit more comparable and might again point towards lack in low RPM torque?
   
   
   
   
   
   
   My question is: do you think this is what to expect from my car atm?

Specifications of the car:

• 2008 S6 Avant
• Carbon cleaned approx 30000 km ago (187 000km total)
• Gutted IM with open flaps
• 20inch RS6 C6 wheels and 275/30 Pilot Sport S tires
• Stock exhaust (might be partially gutted by earlier owner but very little difference from stock sound)
• No engine error codes but a rather rough cold start on bad days

I believe @justincredible wrote something about a gutted IM adding 0,2-0,4s in the sprint and that could be the culprit right there but would be awesome to get some more thoughts on my own measurements and some of your own for reference.

On another topic; I haven’t found much high quality S6 C6 content on YT to be honest. Would it be interesting for you guys to see some more english videos on our channel as well? Subtitles or actual english speaking videos. The S6 community is rather small/nonexistent in Sweden so might as well go english on some videos…

Last but not least, thanks to everyone for the wealth of knowledge here in the forums - its priceless! As a mechanical noob I hope I can contribute with some nice and interesting video content instead!

[justincredible]

There are probably 40+ threads on here about ACTUAL performance.

almost nobody does 1/8th mile and 0-60 isn’t a very good indicator for overall. So the bulk of everything is 1/4 mile.

Almost all without many exceptions. Have the S6 and S8 5.2 doing a 14.+ second 1/4 mile times stock some 15second 1/4 mile times stock depending on conditions. . This has been repeated over and over 14+ second 1/4 mile times stock… Almost no cars have actually done what Audi claims they’ve done or been capable of. I don’t know that any of the 13 second stock claims from media are accurate.

Your car is a pig because you have a gutted intake manifold. so having a damaged intake manifold your going to see reduced performance. The only possible offset for this is the JHM tune as you can see lots of guys have… And for good reason.

There have been a few guys to have APR tune and the APR Tune was not much better than stock. Almost no performance seen in all kinds of testing. 3 people so far have switched from APR To JHM and noticed an incredible performance jump.

Then a few guys had custom tunes. HUGE waste of money. A few guys with “CUSTOM” tunes were actually slower than stock… On these cars it’s easy to get scammed if you don’t stick to the working formula.

JHM has had several development cars and is actively working to support the community even still today. On average most JHM tuned cars pick up over a second in the 1/4 mile. The bulk of JHM Tuned cars are in the 12s. Especially with the JHM TCU Tune.

Here is one of many -

Audi S6 5.2 V10 WORLD RECORD.

Here is some fun stuff -

Audi 5.2 S6 S8 V10 Catless exhaust headers

All members on here.

[Woxxman]

Thanks for the in depth reply Justin! Should have figured that this topic had been up quite a few times. Please feel free to link to any perticular threads that might be of interest!
And as you say it seems like very few cars can/have meet Audis claims, not 100% sure if the claimed speeds are for 0-60mph or 0-100kmh though ^^

I will for sure make some 1/4 mile testing though and see how my car stands up. It’s just a bit harder to be that illegal here on country roads…

I honestly was a bit surprised by the fact that a gutted IM could make such a big difference as you say. Then again I’ve seen people saying it doesn’t really matter while some has opted to buy a working IM cause they couldn’t stand the stock performance with a gutted IM… But IF my lousy 0-100 times is mainly because of the gutted IM I’m seriously interested in buying a fresh one. At the same time I’m intrigued by the fact that the JHM tune could help the situation and if I can reach similar numbers like Kim I would be more than happy!

I was actually going for a custom tune at first, mostly to be able to do video content on the process as well, but it’s starting to more and more look like JHM is the way to go for sure. Wish they had a EU shop!

I’ve seen the videos you posted and honestly I actually didn’t really believe the fact that the white S6 would be able to pick up that amount of hp and torque from “just a tune”. But after going deeper and seeing all the small different changes made it starts to make sense, still crazy increases for an NA engine without mostly tune and bolt-ons.

[justincredible]

Yeah the intake manifold has been shown to rob you of UP TO 40whp / 40wtq DOWN low where you really need it. It’s a very big deal. Your talking about 3 feet of runner length Vs a gutted intake with almost none.

A lot of people don’t or never had a good working intake so they don’t really know what their missing power wise. Think about it. If your intake is already broken and you gut it. You’re probably not going to feel you lost much power wise.

The JHM tune as many have shown and you have seen are the real deal. Again custom tunes are a huge waste of money in this and many cases. Why are you going to pay for some shop who isn’t incredibly knowledgeable about your car to try and figure out what the car will take. JHM’s been doing this on the 5.2 for YEARS and have had in house development cars with thousands of miles and testing miles on them. That experience alone is worth what your getting.

I tend to see people skeptical about gains like that but generally those people fill two sections. 1 they generally don’t know about JHM and their LONG history of making NA cars the fastest in almost every category from the 4.2 V8s all the record setting cars. The 3.0 Na motor to all those record setting cars to the 5.2.
and then 2. people not really knowing a lot about just how de tuned the S6 and S8 were. Even the Audi study guide said there was power to be had by having a collector header Vs what they did. They mentioned they did the headers the way they did for emissions. For max performance look at the lambo 5.2 exhaust. It’s a collector style.
Still you can see the average gains by just removing the cats on the OEM manifolds. you see gains from 30 to 50+hp there ALONE before a tune before a cat back and before the other supporting mods.

This last part is just my .02. If you want to make vids of the car. Thats always fun and great but you need to keep in mind. This is an almost 14 year old car now. With limited numbers produced. I wouldn’t expect to WOW the internet with the expectation of millions of views. Now saying it can’t happen just saying I wouldn’t bank on a huge youtube star status on this car alone.

[Kimovitzh]

I was going to go the custom tune way, but the guys here convicted me to try out JHM.
I got a little taste tune, and was just hooked! It was night and day, and that initial tune was just a short trim to make it respond more to the pedal.

But Anton, I’ll be home in Copenhagen in two weeks, and if you are up for it we could meet up so you can feel the difference. I’m sure you would be equally hooked then!

[Woxxman]

Thats a big difference for sure! At between what RPMs is the flaps useful? I’ve been told its about 800-2500 rpm and after that they don’t really matter?

I’m one of those people, bought the car with a gutted IM so I have no frame of reference at all unfortunately. I think custom tunes has a place but I agree with you here that JHM has so much experience in this field and also seem to still be pushing updates to the platform, which almost seems to good to be true.

And I have no problem with admitting that I had neither the knowledge about JHM nor that much inside knowledge of the detuning of these cars. I had however read quite a bit on the header setup and that made sense. It wast just that the “pure software” gains just sounded too good to be true. But I’m more than happy to have my pessimistic presumptions be turned over to joy and optimism!
Unfortunately we need cats here in Sweden for regulations so I’m still figuring out the best way forward with exhaust. But atm I’m just super interested in seeing the impact of the ECU and TCU tunes!

And thanks about the honest feedback about the limited YT traction these old cars get. I’m fully aware of that but our YT channel is primarily for fun and to share experiences with cool and unique cars and not about gaining the most amount of followers/views. We have a main business in tech and this is just a fun side project for us as all of us are car geeks as well.
With that said I hope we can instead increase awareness and interest in the old V10 cars that deserves more attention that the get.
And the S6 C6 project is just one of many things we’ll feature, I’m doing ride alongs in newer cars and eventually will move on or add other cars to the garage.

Your story has really got me extra hooked @Kimovitzh! As I saw you were also on the fence about going for a custom tune and then getting insane results with the JHM recipe instead! Your still on the stage 1 tune I gather with a gutted IM? Cant see how it could be improved even more!?

That is an invitation I will not miss! I’m in Malmö close by so lets keep in contact and make sure to meet up this summer. Would be awesome to feature your car on the channel before/during my own project starts.

[justincredible]

All good…

The intake manifold runs on the long runner till about 4500rpm so it’s way more than off idle to 2500rpm. The V10 has a good grunt down low but if you have the TQ flaps the TQ jumps by a huge margin.

[Rick106]

Hi Woxxman

I can concur that the JHM ECU and TCU tune do transform the S6. I previously had a tune by Celtic Tuning and I felt a little pick up from Stock. My 0-62mph time was in the 5.7s. Then I got the JHM ECU and TCU tune and my 0-62mph time dropped to 4.9s. It also makes the car feel a lot more lively and throttle sensitivity increases due to the torque increase.

I do have other mods, but the tune was the only change between those two reference points.

As you’ve got a gutted intake, you’ll have different results to mine, but its likely that the JHM tune could make an even greater relative difference to your acceleration time, as it will fill that 0-4,000 rpm torque curve where you’re probably suffering the most.

Welcome to the club, and it’ll be great to see your journey.

Enjoy the V10 mate

[dzow]

I get the idea mine was already properly tuned…
I’ve had an accident with it before i had the chance to put the JHM tune in but my performance didn’t match what i read here!

I had a stock exhaust with the rear resonators deleted and JHM spacers and i ran with cars that you would never be able to follow with a 5.7 0-60…
I’ve ran an e60 M5 50-170 (kph) and kept up pretty well he was a little faster but not much…
F80 m3 120-250 (kph) nothing in it i was just on it’s tail…
F13 650i xdrive was a bit faster but more thanks to the gearbox that was faster…

Never timed my 0-60 (0-100) but i’m possitive that is was 5 seconds or lower

[dzow]

double

[Blackwidow]

I want to join as well🤗 @Kimovitzh

[Kimovitzh]

@Blackwidow Well I don’t think @Woxxman has anything against that, we should all meet.
Sad that @kimenemark lives in the other end of Denmark, he to should experience the JHM cure too

[kimenemark]

I wouldn’t miss out… will plan a trip to “devil island” soon

[Kimovitzh]

@kimenemark awwww that would be great fun!

[Woxxman]

Hey guys and sorry for the long radio silence! Who thought being on parental leave would be a lot more time consuming than working…

During summer vacation I’ve had time to think a lot about the car projects and more or less made up my mind to do a Youtube series on making my S6 wagon great again. The kick off will be a video where I’m testing the cars 0-100 time and noting my/the cars current status. And tbh its not looking very good at all as you have seen…
But before starting to make any major modifications I also wanted to get some kind of understanding of the acceleration behaviour of my car and trying to find possible culprits for the lousy 0-100 time. And the best way of doing that is a direct S6 comparison and as it happens we have another 2007 S6 in our fleet here in Sweden. Its bone stock and have had quite a major engine rebuild 1 year ago. Can’t say for sure that its 100% perfect engine wise but rather recently it was carbon cleaned and has fully intact intake manifold.

Unfortunately its in a different part of Sweden but I managed to do some quick runs with that car during the vacation and I’ve compiled the results comparing them to my own S6 and @Kimovitzh JHM tuned car.

NOTE: The 0% line in the chart is the 6.67s time from the stock S6 and the three colored lines is how much faster/slower my own S6 and Kims S6 is in comparison.

The actual 0-100 time is not what I’m most interested in, its the way towards that 100 km/h that I find interesting. Breaking up the acceleration time in 10 km/h sections its quite clear that my S6 (with gutted IM) accelerates differently than our second S6 (with an intact IM). I’m loosing ground from 20km/h towards 40km/h (torque loss from gutted IM?) where I once again starts to regain ground.

This is far from an ideal comparison, the stock S6 has all season tires, full tank of gas and a heavy spare tire in the trunk. But still there is a clear difference in acceleration behavior and its consistent between runs (I’ve added two of my runs in the chart).
In the end I get a slightly faster 0-100km/h time, probably cause of lower weight and better tires (almost empty tank, no spare tire and Pilot Sport 4s tires).

I’m putting this in my 0-100km/h video and this will be the start of a quest for sub 5sec 0-100 time. But I wanted to give you guys a sneak peak of the findings and here your thoughts. You think there is some interesting data here or is it to many loose variabels to make any decent judgments?

[justincredible]

I think your kinda proving the point that the gutted intake is what we’ve all seen and that it’s worse than a fully functional intake. Your definitely down on power we all know that. It’s been shown over and over and over.

Here is just one more example.

If you look at the data here is how this brakes down.
A full tank of gas = 21 gallons at about 7lbs a gallon. that is 150lbs in fuel weight. But lets assume you had about 5 gallons of fuel that would make just the fuel difference alone 115lbs then add in the spare tire weight of 60lbs.

So total if for nothing more than those two things. there is about a 180lb weight difference and that is a very very big difference here. Still
When you look at the acceleration. You clearly left harder than the other car. It almost looks like you came up on the TQ converter and the other car left off the dead throttle… as the 0-10 shows and G force data shows that at the very least you tried to launch harder… So after the launch you start to get owned a bit especially when you can see how much harder you tried to launch than the other car… at one point your a tenth behind acceleration wise 0-40 and then after the shift your almost a tenth down again 0-70 all this with less weight a harder launch and a better slope advantage.

I think the apples to apples thing to look at is your car Vs the tuned gutted intake car.

In the end. We all know intake gutted cars can do well but a full intake car is always king.

[Woxxman]

Thanks for the input Justin it mirrors my thoughts and thats what I wanted, to prove the point, and even though there could be other differences that affects the acceleration times in a similar way it feels quite clear that the gutted IM make’s a noticeable difference on the lower end - as it should. Even though many have told me it would, some have said otherwise and still I wanted to try and get some data on this myself.

As noted, there is quite a big weight difference and removing that we should be able to shave some time for sure.

Regarding leaving harder I tried to do a similar start that I even know @Kimovitzh is using, slight gas and then full throttle/leave brake at the same time. Not sure why it looks like my car leaves harder even than Kims much more capable car. Comparing my S6 with our other stock one I would problable say it has more to do with the tires. 275cm wide Pilot Sport 4S on mine should eat those all season tires for breakfast… Not sure what tires Kim is running though but if I’m not misstaken that run was with a bit of rain on the road which might explain it as well.

But yeah after the leave the “gutted intake”-pattern is pretty clear. And that was the reason I wanted to compare with the stock S6. I wasnt interested in an apples to apples but to get proof of the gutted vs. intact IM before pressing the “buy” button.

But I’m veery interested in seeing how much an intact IM will make with the JHM tune as the tune makes even gutted cars to real monsters!

My goal now is to first get it below Audis own numbers and then go for “Swedens fastest S6 V10 NA wagon”

[Kimovitzh]

@Woxxman The time that you uses was recorded 10th of January this year, so it was on the stage 1 tune performance 2 ECU tune and the basic TCU tune. I had show tires on in size 235, no snow but moist and outdoor temps were 2C.

The fastest time is still my 4.69, same snow tires and was done on the 6th of march can’t remember the road condition.

ATM we are on TCU tune 2 with launch control, but a new trim is in progress.
ECU wise I can’t remember what number we are up on, but the final goal is getting closer.
Right now I have a MAF issue but once it gets sorted we are looking for the final dialing.

Yesterday while going for a drive to get food with some friends I accidentally short-shifted from 1st to 2nd at 6700-6800 RPM instead of the 7200 (new tuned redline) and it lost traction for a split second.
Full tank, bad MAF sensor reading and four grown men in the car

[Kimovitzh]

If we look aside the bad 0-100 (traffic happened) and just look at the G meter this is probably my highest G off the line.

[Woxxman]

Haha thats insane Kim!
So you’re telling me that these times are done on snow tires… damn impressive! And to loose traction like that with a fully loaded car. It almost sounds unreal. I’m honestly starting to get a bit afraid that I’ll have to high expectations on the performance increases. But seriously, when going flat out in a S6 C7 (stock @4,7-4,8s 0-100km/h) that car just feels like another level fast compared to my current S6.
Your car is actually performing better than that C7 atm. It just feels insane that I might be able to reach similar levels of performance without buying a new car
Can’t wait for the stage 2 tune results from your car! But can you run with gutted cats in DK and still get the car legal on the road? Don’t think thats possible here in Sweden.

I’m going to contact JHM soon and ask if they would be interested in joining this project. Would be awesome to do their performance mods justice with some great video content as well!