Great writeup on the brakes. JHM installed all 4 discs on my car as well, I’m excited to see the overall difference once I get it back.
Hole shit, 250lbs worth of tire and wheel?!? Hopefully we can come up with a tire/wheel setup that shaves a lot of that weight off and doesn’t cost a fortune.
Thanks, I need it. Dropping the weight from the brakes makes the car feel lighter on its feet and you’re rewarded with better acceleration. Being able to drop more weight from the rims and tires would continue that trend even more. It’s just hard to find good looking 20inch lightweight rims and tires.
Getting further along in the Performance build of project V10 5.2. The next biggest step is the exhaust.
The big thing with exhausts is that you can do it wrong lose power and still sound ok. Many people have been scammed by just buying an expensive sounding stock sized Catback exhaust. Not all exhausts are created equal. The size of the exhaust can make or break the improvement factor of the exhaust. I’ve read many fancy exhaust shops and companies post about how building an exhaust isn’t some black magic. The reality of that statement is that those companies or people who don’t know how to get more power and quality out of an exhaust system don’t know how much they’re losing. In other words, some companies and or people just don’t know what they don’t know.
When it comes to exhaust systems for the Audi 5.2 V10 most of the past offerings have been a complete rip-off. The S6 5.2 exhausts have been an adapted A6 4.2 exhaust system. The Aftermarket 5.2 V10 exhaust sizes have been a complete joke and frankly have been taking advantage of people’s lack of knowledge about their cars.
There was a company that offered an X pipe for the S8 V10. Frist off the size was too small for real performance but let’s forget about that for a second. The biggest scam here is, that the S8 V10 5.2 exhaust system already has an X pipe. What a rip off that was.
So, the next question is other than sound do we really want an exhaust system for our cars? Well, we bought V10 cars for fun and performance. A real performance exhaust doesn’t have to be loud and obnoxious. My exhaust system is 3" and I’ll put up video of the in cabin noise, you hear more road noise than exhaust tone. You’d almost not know there’s an exhaust. The truth be told 2.75" is perfect for these cars, it adds that euro tone and makes in cabin noise more controllable. It’s also good for about 200hp over what the stock exhaust system flows.
One last thing to think about before I get too far into my post. Adding things like air filters help the motor breath better on the intake side. It allows easy flow of the outside air into the intake manifold. We all know that the motor pulls in outside air when the piston is on the intake stroke where it pulls in air by creating a void. But did you know that the headers and Catback actually pull in and act in pulling in more air than the motor itself?
Now onto the actual post. Knowing how much hp can be gained I decided to do some testing and take it one step at a time to see just how much more power I would be able to pull out of the V10 by just messing with the exhaust.
Note- the S8 exhaust is where the bulk of the power gain is over the S6. The S6 will actually gain more power than the S8 as the S8 exhaust isn’t as restrictive. While the S8 exhaust is still restrictive the S6 exhaust is just terrible stock.
We have a thread dedicated to this but if you haven’t seen it before. The S6 exhaust is on the bottom. Look at how the piping isn’t smooth and its all crushed.
http://audirevolution.net/addons/albums/images/619428370.jpg
The other thing you’ll notice is that the S8 has a valved exhaust where you can have both tips flowing air vs just one.
http://audirevolution.net/addons/albums/images/146726730.jpg
So, for testing, I did what we all would have done.
http://audirevolution.net/addons/albums/images/984732047.jpg
I welded the exhaust valve open.
I did notice a little more noise but it was only in the higher rpm’s. A little more noise at idle but not enough to consider this a mod. Start up was obviously a little louder as the motor goes through its rev range warm up cycle.
After that modification didn’t do much I just said the heck with it. lets just take off the old system and build a new one.
Here is what the old system looked like on the car.
So, it went from this.
http://audirevolution.net/addons/albums/images/438409113.jpg
To this.
http://audirevolution.net/addons/albums/images/567260061.jpg
http://audirevolution.net/addons/albums/images/716982204.jpg
http://audirevolution.net/addons/albums/images/140817017.jpg
The difference was tremendous. Sound, performance, and throttle response all came into play and all worked much better with each other. These cars react really well to a proper exhaust as I mentioned the S6 will react even more so, While I did feel a gain it was clearer now that the ECU was now working overtime to hold back even more power.
These cars are De-tuned from the factory to hold back a lot of the V10 power. That became clearer after adding the exhaust. I kinda felt it each time I added something new to the car like rotors or intake spacers but adding the exhaust put the car over the top. I could now really tell the Audi De-tuned computers were working overtime.
Thankfully, the next modification was the best for last. The JHM tune. Stay tuned that’s coming up next.
Very nice! But… no video?!?
A video would help right? Sorry, here it is.
http://audirevolution.net/videos/173/s8-v10-s6-v10-performance-exhaust
I have some in car video if anyone is interested.
Oh and before I forget. The fact that there has never been an actual performance exhaust for the 5.2 V10 Audi’s has been a big let down. This is what lead me to start making exhaust systems for the S6 and S8
But there is some good news. As of recent, JHM has been getting lots of V10 orders for things like intake spacers, tune up kits, intake manifolds, Lightweight rotors and crank pulleys. The more we all order from JHM, the more involved they get into the V10 5.2 market. So take that into consideration when you need something for your car. The more we support JHM the more they build and support us.
Case in point- This just happened. JHM S6 5.2 2.75" performance exhaust.
http://audirevolution.net/addons/albums/images/709158183.jpg
http://audirevolution.net/addons/albums/images/703947415.jpg
JHM is making a few beta 2.75" exhaust systems I believe to test the market and see if people really want bigger performance out of their cars. I would imagine it will cost less than the stock sized milltek offering.
If you’re interested try giving them an email At V10@jhmotorsports.com That will help let them know how many people want a real exhaust choice for these cars. It will most likely get you a system quickly or at least get you on the list.
Oh man I would love to get on that list but I’m tapped out for the time being. But at least I’ve been doing my part to keep JHM busy working on the 5.2 V10 
Maybe I can sell my Miltek and put it towards the JHM offering. I almost feel bad pawning the miltek off on another V10 owner though. Still maybe someone would take it for $800 or something, I’d be sure to let them know they’re really only buying the sound and not much else, so I can sleep at night. I’ll think about it… for the time being I think I’ll just enjoy my car the way it is for a few months after I get it back from JHM
PS, that sounds really clean, great work. The biggest reason I’ve been hesitant to replace my Miltek is that it honestly does sound really good, regardless of the lack of actual performance gain. But so many other V10’s I’ve heard sound raspy and quite awful, like a straight-pipe subaru or something. Yours does not sound like those other ones at all, it sounds very very clean and crisp, nice and subdued at low RPM and ferocious at full throttle, just the way it should be.
Loving the look of that, cant watch the video yet as my internet is terrible here.
Will you be doing any dyno work to show the gains over standard?
ooooh, now that would make me get rid of the milltek to fit that, i must drop JHM a mail to express my interest 
that sounds insane under throttle
That car looks familiar. In for some video clips as well! Looks pretty naughty. Any pictures directly underneath, assume it’s all smooth and doesn’t neck down too much to the mufflers?
Also What are the specs on the the muffler and resonators?
Thats a great way to decribe it. Clean and very crisp. In the one video thread we have on here for S6 vids a lot of the videos are of loud loose sounding exhausts that probably cost the car power. When you can hear the pop and gurrble on down rev that just says not good even flow.
Selling the milltek sounds like a great idea. That is what lots of the S4 guys did after there were real solutions for there exhaust systems. Milltek jumps to market with whatever crap they can push for an outragious rate to people eairly on. Like you said they sound nice but thats about where it ends.
Sounds fantastic, how’s it sound from the inside? Any drone? Would be great to get some specs on the parts used as JHM is too far away for me…
Just thought I’d drop this here.
Enjoy-
http://audirevolution.net/videos/184/worlds-fastest-na-s8-v10
Oh, and yes, that’s a 4000+lb car spinning the tires briefly off the line. My S8 never did that before the JHM tune.
WOW thats a hole lot of awesome right there.
I finally got to watch this video and it is awesome!
VERY awesome! Gets me really excited to get my car back, since it just had the almost the same mod list installed
CV, how long are you going to tease us before you post the timesheet?!? ;D ;D ;D
Exactly. we are ready… The good thing is CV seems to make posts on the weekend and this is a long weekend for most of us so I would expect to see these results.
I’m really curious what the capabilities of the S6 vs the S8 are. While the S8 is (according to Audi) 100 pounds heavier than the S6, it has slightly different intake, exhaust, and cooling systems that likely make up the difference, and possibly more. Aside from my mediocre Milltek vs. CV’s badass JHM exhaust, our mods are nearly identical, so it should give us a good baseline of comparison between the 2 models once the factory de-tunes in both cars are taken out of the equation.