Good, no complaints, no issues. Puts a smile on my face whenever I push the go pedal and pulls all the way to redline now instead of dropping off at like 5500 which is where the stock tune begins to fall on itself.
My motor mounts are shot so I need to get around to doing that. Already purchased 034 Street density mounts.
Put in the 034 engine mounts today. Seemed to tighten everything right up. Good mod, especially when my stock units were failing.
I have also been wanting to put an intake on the car or mod the stock airbox like many of the b6/7 S4 guys do. I wanted to try to increase performance mainly by increasing cold air intake and flow to the filter. I spoke with Count Vohn and Dru@JHM and we collectively decided upon cutting the stock airbox in such a way that it would take in cold air coming through the vent by the front fog light. Here are some pics for the curious:
http://tapatalk.imageshack.com/v2/14/10/19/d42973336bbf325aa083d00fe4b1dc35.jpg
http://tapatalk.imageshack.com/v2/14/10/19/06ce806f6634e63265663ac043a50831.jpg
http://tapatalk.imageshack.com/v2/14/10/19/d65241b498eeb71ab73918071c4d4ebb.jpg
Driving it around the block/out for a quick spin, the intake makes cool noises now but more importantly boost seems to come on a bit quicker as well as hold higher pressure. This mod combined with the colder weather we’re having here on the East coast should provide for some good times.
http://tapatalk.imageshack.com/v2/14/12/06/96a4108bde9b1d93c9c82122b859c2fb.jpg
FedEx guy stopped by. Stage 1 flywheel/clutch/pressure plate. More to come on this beaut.
How did I miss this. Air box mod for the win. I heard how fast dru and his A4 is. I would say if he has that same set up there really isn’t much need to spend money on a aftermarket intake.
The clutch is a great mod. Get that heavy flywheel out and put in the lightweight one. The car really likes that weight removed. That small 2.0 should really like it. The v8 cars love it
Well its been a while since my last update.
Car survived the winter very well, definitely put quattro to the test a few times(and my ground clearance). The clutch is still awesome, the tune has no issues. Everything seemed really really solid.
However, I noticed that my on center steering was loose feeling. Figured it was just my 034 spherical bearings wearing out or something. Boy, was I wrong. Last Friday, I was got off the highway and noticed my P/S was making some noise. Not 5 minutes later was there smoke coming out of the hood. Got it towed to my mechanic… rack needs to be replaced 
Not exactly where I wanted to put my money right as the temperature got warm, but oh well.
Don’t really have any plans for the summer. At the point where any more mods(power) would be increasingly larger sums of money, so it shouldn’t change much in that respect.
That’s sucks about the power steering but that’s great about the winter. Amy time you can make it out of a winter without pothole breaks or issues is nice
So true. Steering is nice now, but definitely something I couldn’t feel that was going wrong because it was so gradual.
Mechanic also located my front suspension noise: the pin for the 034 adjustable upper control arms is moving (1/4 inch he says!) in the spindle. Has anyone had this issue with these before? I bought them new and they’ve only been on the car for a little over a year.
I do think this has been an issue with some of the s4 guys. Do you have a picture of the issue
Not sure what you mean by the pin moving in the spindle. The pinch bolt should prevent it from moving at all. I had no issues with my 034 adjustable UCAs.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p6ze68ccUJ8
It got worse. I have a video of the play now but I haven’t uploaded it to youtube yet. Soon.
To fix the problem, I scooped up basically the entire front suspension off some guy online for $80 both sides. My mechanic swapped on both spindles and OEM upper control arms. Quite frankly, the 034 units were shit and have a shit design. My issues with them were that my old mechanic(also shit, notice the trend?) didn’t tighten the nut enough on the 034 units so the nut ended up backing off towards the ball joint side. The nut, through the travel of the suspension, contacted the spindle and at some point stretched the pinch bolt and wedged it in there. BOTH forward and rearward control arm pins ended up not having the proper torque on them and BOTH were not seated properly. Sure, this is my problem. However, what is even more interesting is that on the other spindle with two properly seated pins and secured bolts has similar smearing/contact between the spindle and the securing nut on the control arms. Basically, the smaller you adjust the control arms, the more contact there will be and the more likely something similar to this situation could happen to you.
Outside of this, the control arms were noisy and wore out in 2 winters. I wouldn’t recommend these for anyone in a snow state. They’d probably be fine for california :
but not everybody is graced with good roads and no precipitation.
That sucks but good update to help others stay away
I’ve had a sunroof rattle for a LOOOOONG time after a friend of mine thought it would be funny to retract the glass the full way into the roof. Well, when he did that, something snapped inside and rattles ever since. Finally got around to removing the sunroof glass and peering around inside to see what was what. Basically, the plastic piece that holds the metal splash guard broke allowing the dowel from the splash shield to rattle around on the sunroof tracks. My fix was to velcro the U-shaped channel where the dowel resides and zip-tie them together so they won’t fall apart again. Also took the time to grease the majority of the slides up there.
http://i.imgur.com/BQx6s2e.jpg
My 034 arms wore out in about 2 winters also. I did get 40k miles out of them in that time though. I ended up rebuilding them and selling them. I’m rocking a set of fixed length arms from FCP now.
Good job finding the fix. Not exactly your everyday issue.
Well, after a lengthy discussion with my mechanic, it seems as though my cam adjuster has failed. There is a lot of noise at idle, more when warm. While I’m in there, I will be doing the chain and tensioner. I’m going to attempt to do it by the book and remove the polydrive on the exhaust cam. Many people online have suggested removing the head or removing the cams and girdle. If anyone has any tips or tricks to doing this job, I’d be all ears. It seems the 05.5 model year 2.0t is more prone to this failure. I’m hoping that this will also be the fix to a noise not that I am experiencing at load from 4-5k or so when WOT. It sounds almost like pre-detonation, but I’ve worked with JHM and it is not that. Its a crick/snap or kindof a slapping sound.
I’ll be documenting the condition of the adjuster to see if there are similar wear patterns with the 4.2 adjusters that JHM has made aftermarket components for.
I would love to see some photos of your adjuster opened up!
When I did my tensioner, we took off the adjuster by removing the poly drive bolt. No removing of the head needed!
I have something in the works with Dru, I’m sure you’ll see the adjuster taken apart.
Be careful. I tried to remove the adjuster by taking the poly drive out on a junk cam just to see if I could. I had the cam in a vice and a large breaker bar with poly drive socket. That thing wouldn’t budge. I repositioned it so I could pull down to try to loosen it and then hung on the damn thing practically. Then, POP! I smashed my hand into the work bench, which hurt like a sumbitch, because the teeth in the bolt head for the poly drive just let go and broke off. Because that bolt is hardened, it doesn’t strip like a normal bolt. It holds until it doesn’t, then whamo. That adjuster and cam are now serving as a shop towel holder in my garage.
Stripping it is what I’m afraid of. I voiced these concerns to my mechanic and he said he has only stripped a few in all his years at the dealership. Just gotta get a longer bar if it won’t budge haha.
longer bars and a big hammer fix alot on these cars.
I would also like to see this and the removal of the parts your talking about. thanks for posting and keeping us up to date