I think we have stumbled on something big here. This is really what the RS4 guys need. Someone that will wake them up and say. Yes if you have an older or high mileage motor you need to make sure the car is right before you add a tune.
Its about time rs4 owners realize that maintenance is a big deal and if not kept in check this can and will happen.
Reset fault codes in VAGCOM. As for the TB, just disconnect the battery for 2 minutes, or do it through VAGCOM as well.
The JHM tuner told me personally that if I ever have to put 91 in the car, that it’s ok as long as I don’t rev it too high/race with it and when I put 94 back in, to reset everything in VAGCOM. I usually get one or two misfires whenever I’m forced to put 91 in (which luckily isn’t very often).
this is true with all cars not just the RS4. You know how many people I have seen mod 1.8T’s with more than 100k miles on them and then complain that the tune caused something to break or go bad on their 10 year old cars that are already know to have problems.
He mentioned above that the 94 gas was actually 87 gas.
I don’t understand that still…but that would cause a lot of issues if you’re tuned for 93 and running 87.
It’s certainly worthwhile to ensure that maintenance is up to date etc.
LOL - yes, a tune up isn’t going to help with a tank of bad gas.
I completely agree with the sentiment that our 5-7 y/o cars would benefit from being in top form prior to performance enhancements. I’m greatly enjoying this thread.
While I hate to generalize, my thoughts…
Manufacturer’s stock tune takes into account many different variables to provide an overall robust product: global gas quality, environment conditions, parts tolerance variation, ageing parts, failure modes, etc., etc. A performance tune often removes the built-in “slack” from the manufacturer to get more out of the engine. Leaner AFR, timing advance, rpm thresholds, etc., etc. Some (bad) tunes even disable/desensitize engine safety devices.
The older the platform, the higher the probability that parts will require maintenance. The very nature of the performance tune is that it has the potential to expose weak links sooner than the stock tune. While the kiddies in the 10 year old WRX may not feel it in the pocket book so much when they break a ringland and need a new shortblock (few thousand $), those of us with a semi-exotic RS4 engine are subjected to sticker shock!
I’m thinking the Ben Franklin quote, “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure” is highly relevant when tuning the RS4.
^^^very much data
Ya I had an economics professor that told me a long time ago that sometimes gas gets switched up and you have 91 in the 87 tank and 87 in the 91 tank. My friend owns a gas station and I asked if it happens to him. He said that gas station owners would never try to cheat people and put lower octane gas in the higher octane pumps. The repercussions would be huge if a gas station owner gets caught doing that. But, truck drivers do fuck up all the time and switch the hoses and put 87 octane in the 89 or 91 tanks/pumps. Ive always been scared of this myself since it gets stupid hot here and 115 degrees mixed with 87 octane on a performance tune is just asking for trouble.
X2
The thing we saw here also was maintenance. The rs4 is a great csr but its far from a car that dosent require maintenance. The rs4 guys that are not seasoned enthusasts dont realoze that you cant go 10k without an oil chamge or that y9u should change ur filters amd plugs before 100k…even tho the oem car says you can go that long before chamging them dosent mean thaf there is a derierated performance loss by not keeping them fresh…
well lets all not jump our guns here, after finishing installation i took the car for a boot around the shop, no issues came up, left her running as i locked up the place, this is when i quickly posted saying the car is running great, on the drive from there home i noticed the ping come back but not as bad, again figured it was the tune still adjusting, over the last what 3-5 days i think it is, heres what i have noticed so far, and personally i think it could be 3 things.
brief understanding of the ping, start the car in the morning, usually when i have my morning puff and coffee and let her warm up a bit, I baby the car around until the MFD takes away the 7000rpm limiter, and even then i barely get into her until she’s fully unto temperature, but no pings will take place in this time, car runs great, car will continue to run great until she’s up to operating temperature, mind you i don’t really get into the throttle at all so this could be the main reason why.
When she is fully up to temp and i do decide to let her breathe a little, i find that if i put my foot all the way to the floor i get a brief ping ping ping then the car pulls hard, ill continue to keep my foot into it and rev her out(no audible pinging can be heard), and go to grab next gear, same thing happens ping ping ping, then the car pulls hard, again with the next shift and the one after that, although with that being said its more prevalent in the first 3-4 gears then in 5-6.
Now if i only get into the throttle about 20-25% the car pings like crazy! back out of the throttle, then floor it, again same thing happens, ping ping ping then the car pulls hard. I’ve also found that if i rev her unto 3-3500 rpm, then finally floor it its hit and miss on whether she will ping or not.
I have since reluctantly drove her aggressively, not beat on it, but drove her hard while she was still warming up, it is hit and miss with the ping in that time frame as well, it sometimes happens sometimes doesn’t.
Personally i think its 1 of these 3 things. 1) clogged cats? 2)carbon build up? 3)clogged injector?
i dont think its a clogged cat because she should throw if it was one, but i have heard people say that these can cause issues.
seems like a very probable culprit for the issue, to much carbon build up, restricts air flow and also causes the air be disrupted before flowing into the intake. causing the car to lean out and ping.
my fuel filter when i changed it was brown when i poured the excess fuel out of it, so I’m thinking its probable that i have a clogged/partially clogged injector, which would make sense on why the ping only seems to happen in the first 20-25% of the throttle, when the car would be requesting fuel and is not able to keep up with what requested? although I’m not sure on this.
finally does anyone have any info on what i should log? and what numbers they are? im not that tech savy with the vagcom, my tech is amazing, but wants to see if you guys have any insight before we head out this saturday to do some logging and testing, anything i can log to check the injectors?
This is driving me absolutely crazy! but i want to figure out what is causing this problem! mostly because the car is amazing with the tune, everything about it is just so much better, I’m really hoping this thread can hopefully help anybody else out there, as i do plan to keep updating as i progress through the maintenance and just general maintenance and upkeep for a car of this mileage.
i also do want to state, that i change my oil every 3-5000km’s depending on how i have been driving her, and am anal retentive with my maintenance, I know from how this threads turned out so far, that it may seem that I’m not, but my plan was as soon as the car clicked over 80,xxxkms i would be doing a complete refresh of the car, wasnt planning on leaving anything untouched. ( control arms fr and rr, coil overs, motor mounts, trans mount etc etc ) i just clicked over that point now so i hopefully will have some photos of some goodies to post soon!
I apologize in advance for the massive post! but i work 2 jobs, and work/paint cars on the weekends so i dont have alot of free time. lol
Your on to something. First off I can say we have the investigation thread there is lots of good collected data in that and this thread can help gain ,more.
A few things I’m getting from my research.
Logging a car with carbon will have 4points more on knock. STOCK. I will report more on this later. but what this means is if you have carbon your already experiencing higher knock.
What we have seen is that people that have higher carbon will have ping issues. The issue is the motor is moving slower threw the rev range so you don’t hear it as much.
The top 3 things I would look at.
plugs. This seems to have been an easy fix for a few stock people that were having issues the same as you.
injector, fuel system.
carbon
then look at the exhaust.
^ hit the nail on the head, actually should have posted that in my above post my plan of attack now is to tackle the carbon build up and see if the problem persists after doing this, basically just going to cost me my time and a few gaskets to do this, rather then shelling out for injectors.
I’m going to give JHM a call tomorrow see if i can get a set of there intake spacers shipped up over night so i can do can get it done this weekend, anyone have any thoughts on these? i know i live in Canada, but i dont think it really gets cold enough here to cause issues with the bypass kit installed, any thoughts?
Is it just me or are you running stock catback and all four cats?
Are we really confused about what is bottling heat up and causing problems with a tuned car?
You’re a handy guy. Gut your precats. Today.
^ completely stock car, I have an exhaust coming already, didn’t really want to hack up the stock system just cause I want keep all stock pieces in case I do ever decide to convert back to stock.
yeah, I’m not sure why we’re not talking about it more, but I will buy you a case of Coke if your pinging isn’t a result of rocking a stock, fully catted exhaust. If you go piggies and still ping I’ll be shocked.
By doing piggies you’re not really hacking up the stock system. You are deleting the pre-cats (leaving the main cats in tact). With some o2 sensor spacer magic, you won’t get a code should you flash back to stock and sell the car.
Saki is right pulling the pre cats should take it away…keep in mind the pre cats on the b6 and b7 s4 cause warped cylinders and are the leading cause of cylinder scored walls.
You mentioned this
3) my fuel filter when i changed it was brown when i poured the excess fuel out of it,
Im thinking if your fuel system was in tbis kinda shape you might really wamt to get into what other maintnence stuff needs to be done…plugs seem to alao be a big part of a few of the conversations.
I’ll hold you to that! I’ll gut the pre-cats this weekend, and I hope to prove you wrong for that key of Coke… I mean case of Coke 
Don’t every plan on selling the car, she will be with me for life, I just like to have all the stock parts, I’ve done the same thing with my mkv.
I will also be doing the carbon clean but I’m going to do that next weekend, as the JHM intake spacer won’t make it up here till next week. Then we can see if the gutted pre-cats will solve the problem or the carbon.
Fuel filter, air filter, cabin filter, and sparkplugs were all just recently replaced, only thing on the fueling side that hasn’t been touched are the injectors, but would rather just spend my time to try and fix this rather then paying for more parts when as saki stated might be something very simple, as the pre-cats needing to gutted.
I tbink the pre cats g9ne will fix it as well… the pre cats are a big issue…im very excited abkut this thread I think ita great this happened fo you as your clerly smart enough to actually fix the issie. We see such a small group of these cars that ping both in stock and othsr forms. It will be nice ro be ablw to get more to the bottom of the issue
Well gentleman I still haven’t found the problem, with that being said I jacked the front of the car up went to remove the downpipes and saw how much a bitch it was gonna be and said screw it I’ll wait for the exhaust I’m not gonna waste 4-5hrs, only to have to do the whole procedure over again once the exhaust arrives.
Now I have seen alot of JHM hate on almost every board, and it’s really starting to bug me! The company bends over backwards and yet it seems that RS4 owners are whiney little bitches(couldn’t think of a better way to put it)
What I was thinking about doing was posting my thread from the beginning on Audizine, and slowly work my way through, as i have done here with you guys, because i would really like to see how they would solve this problem. I agree with Saki, and Chris and a few others that have said it’s the precats, i believe the exhaust will solve the problem, along with a CC. But just for shits and giggles I want to see how it would be handled and hopefully have the regular hate crew come in and blame JHM, and then be able to prove it was not the tune and that the car was pinging stock (which it was because I put it back to stock, still pinged but was almost unaudible unless you had your head out the Window straining to listen for it.)
I do know that people cross post, and do read other threads/forums, so I’m sure many have already seen this thread, but was actually going to ask those people to stay out of the thread to hopefully be able to benefit the RS4 platform more and not just certain companies.
With this being said if it is found that the tune is causing the problems then i will investigation further, and use the same forward thinking and scrutiny on it, just as i have with every other product I have purchased.
But i did want to get your thoughts on this? I feel like this could be very knowledgeable for everyone involved soo I’m kind of excited, I plan to have that post up on audizine tonight and see what happens!
It’s honestly pretty one-sided over there, my bet is that FlyingTomatoes and BenSti are two of the first 5 posters. They will muddy the waters so much that it won’t help anyone IMHO, but if you want to try it out…go ahead, and I’ll also promise not to clog up the thread…lol
I think the best course of action would be to get your CC done and full exhaust or piggies, whatever your plan is, then post a link to this thread on AZ and discuss how up to par maintenance is really a key to not having issues.
Like we constantly talk about, when you add a tune your asking your engine to make more power, perform better, but how can it do that when fuel filters are clogged, plugs are old and possibly fouled etc. JHM’s tune will probably pull more timing than the stock tune because it’s honestly safer than the stock tune.
Az posting js the worst idea of them all. All the smart guys from az are here. The hate is 4 or 5 guys and they just hate that they have been called out by other members for bullshit or lies or jist bad desisions… Some of those members that call the haters out are strong jhm supporters orhters are just smart.
To help a few things out…you said you went back to stock and it still was pinging correct…its going to be quieter due to the motor moving slowwr in the rpm…
I have several ideas on what it could be. Lets take one at a time. Once again when you went back to stock it still pinged right…
I say avain stay away from az. You have no messy posts here and lots of guys that are actually smart that are here to help.