Project from the grave. Everything you need to know, if you’re a new B6 B7 S4 owner or if you’re a current owner looking for some direction. This is a super long read. I would like to think if you own or are excited about your B6 or B7 S4, this will be a good read.
The idea here was to get a high mileage S4 that had never been touched. Buy the car and show everything that has broken or been worn-out over time. Lots of owners are in the almost over 100,000 mile range or over. Even more owners have these cars and might not know what is truly needed and what is just a waste of money. The project is for us, the excited people about their B6 and B7 S4 cars. It’s like the peoples project car. I thought this would be fun and helpful. This is the first in a long line of threads getting to the bottom of the B6 and B7 S4. Showing what works what doesn’t and helping to dispel myths and create excitement about a great car.
So, who am I? Why would you listen to me and take the time to read this? I’ll try to explain that below.
Many of you know me, some of you might not. I’ve been lucky enough to be involved with a few things and over the years, I’ve seen what works and what’s just talk. While, my day job is working in Ford’s specialty performance division in calibration I spend just as much time working with lots of companies outside that performance scope. Doing so, helps get me involved in first-hand experience outside the domestic scene. First-hand experience was so helpful in breaking down speculation and just plain opinions placed as facts. Now with age of the car and a new turnover in owners you’re seeing more and more arguments. That’s because of history, lots of the guys here have also seen what’s worked and what’s not. Here is a good quote “Those who don’t know history are doomed to repeat it.” ― Edmund Burke. Let’s get the facts out as facts and stop the possible backward movements due to new owners not knowing history.
History, sure you’re doomed to repeat it, but not necessarily with the same great results as the prior generation. As a matter of fact, what happens in some car couture is, that people keep repeating only the failures, dismissing the successes. All in an attempt to try and get better results with cheaper parts. Good parts cost good money no matter how new or old a car is. That will never change. The thing that saves you money is knowing what works and what doesn’t. Sure the cars might be older and they might cost less but if you want continued development and quality parts that comes at a cost.
I have been very involved with the B6/7 S4 and have been so since almost the very beginning. 8 years ago and even less than that, people have been saying the B6/7 can’t do things performance wise, only to have them continuously been proven wrong. The B6/7 S4 is a great car if you know what parts to use and what companies to get them from. One of the companies I’ve worked with that is and continues to be a standout company is JH Motorsports or (JHM) The B6/7 S4 is now 10 years old and JHM is still making parts. Why is this important? It’s important to make sure you support the companies that are still supporting the car you own and want to keep.
Back to me and my project. I strongly believe in the B6/7 S4 and its performance potential, along with it being one of the best S4s yet. How do I think I can prove that and also prove what you should be doing with your S4? I put my money where my mouth is. I bought another B6 S4. I owned one in the past, and I put tons of performance modifications on it, but I feel its a good sign of how strongly I believe and enjoy this car to now do it again.
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My posts are about helping the community see what’s snake oil and what really works. To help show people what they need and what they should stay away from. These cars are older now and lots of people don’t know what to expect. Without a clear direction or better understanding of the cars you have people doing things to the cars that make no sense and then you have groups of guys who just hope these parts will fix or help make power. I see so many people struggling to understand what’s real and what’s some random guys hope for what’s real.
As a new owner you want to stay away from junk parts and junk companies. There is always going to be some company trying to make money from the consumers ignorance. There hasn’t been a shortage of companies trying to sell snake oil in the S4 market and it is going to continue, Just look at the china crap parts on eBay. They’re junk and cheap for a reason. The formula is really easy. Follow the companies that are making parts, testing parts and breaking records. If you see people trying to convince you to buy some cheap junk part on eBay that’s made in China, know they’re the ones that represent everything that’s wrong with the community. As I said like it or not good parts take good money to make. If you want a junk car put junk parts on it. Just know that if you’re looking for parts that last and work they’re going to cost money. This isn’t to say that the most expensive part is the best. It isn’t also to say that people should get gouged. It’s easy to see what you should buy part wise. Just listen to the fast successful guys and the shops that have been doing it for so long.
History, knowing it helps make all the difference. There will never be a shortage of people looking to sucker you out of money. In the very beginning of the B6/7 history, there were no shortage of companies looking to sell you an open element intake kit. The only bad part of that story is that after actually testing the parts people found out that the stock air box outperformed open element intakes in every category. The stock Audi air it box is pressurized and has a stock ram air effect. That didn’t stop fake Dyno results from companies looking to push them and people getting scammed by them.
To help give a little history, you need to talk about history and how it’s affected the current. So many years ago when I first started reading and getting involved in the B6/7 S4 and its issues, I remember tons of people saying what could and what couldn’t be done. None of it was from first-hand experience. So, I thought it was time to get involved in some first-hand experience.
The first lie was that the S4 couldn’t be tuned to make power and it would never get into the 12 second range on just simple bolt on modifications. In the beginning, it was and looked to be true. In the beginning, most tunes didn’t make any power at all. Then enter, the JHM tune. Constantly people getting huge results with just the JHM tune. Add a full exhaust system (that people had said made no more power) and you get close to 50/50 whp and wtq. This was unheard of for the first few years of the S4. Many didn’t believe it until records started to get broken by JHM and customers started to back up their results. Here is one independent test result that was done many years later.
http://audirevolution.net/videos/124/b7-s4-before-and-after-dyno
Not too long after that came the blower craze. The M90 kits and the roots style blower for the S4 have been a failure and a big part of conversations since they first came out and the results fell short of anything acceptable. For the past 6 years, you could read a thread about just how bad it ended for these guys who tried the M90 kits. I’m sure it can be tough when you see a thread where a guy says he bought a brand X (mainly you see old PES supercharger kit but, any of the roots style kit is a disaster) for his S4 and he is going to make it a great kit. What that guy doesn’t possibly know is, that countless guys before him already proved that kit didn’t work and they did it over and over and over again. Each guy doing the same thing. Saying how they are different and how they are going to “figure it out” each victim thinking it was just more money or time that needed to be invested to get better results. Not even taking into consideration that the concept itself was flawed.
You get the seasoned guys that have been around for years trying to talk sense to the guys but, in the end the victim just doesn’t know the past of the blower history and what made all of them fail and still makes them fail, no matter how smart they think they are. It all ends the same and it will, no matter how badly anyone wants to tell themselves they can “figure it out.” The testing was done already and every roots style kit car gets sold almost as soon as it’s done for the same reasons. The only thing the victims “figure out” is that putting a standard roots blower on the S4 isn’t ideal.
What do I know, you ask? It started with first-hand experience in the roots style superchargers first at Ford and then again working on my own private project with the 4.2 A6.
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That project and some of my other work got the attention of the first company to make a supercharger for the B6/7 S4. You might have heard of that company, but you probably didn’t know they developed a supercharger kit. That company was APR. Shortly after development of a roots style supercharger for the S4, APR ran into all the problems you’re going to run into. The difference is APR didn’t ignore them. APR brought me on board to help find solutions to many of the issues associated with these types of blowers. In the end, after all, the testing and proof, APR took the data and realized the project was best left alone.
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I later had other conversations with the two other companies that attempted something similar. They decided against the advice given and said they put in too much money to just let the project die. So they (VF and PES) put out roots style kits. The results were as expected for any company just putting out a product to just try and get money, unhappy customers, long lists of underachieving cars and a black eye for anyone that overspent on something that under delivered. Those of you who haven’t seen the countless threads of complaints broken motors poorly running cars and frustration might not understand when people try so hard to warn them. The one standout kit comes from jhm it was cheaper better made and best of all was upgradable. The jhm kit put the first B6/7 S4s into the 11s and that same kit has been putting down consistent ~130mph trap speeds in further development. Yes, there is still a company pushing the limits. Jhm has been testing the stage 2 kits for the S4 for several years now.
Next and probably most relevant to today is headers. Lots of conversations about this. Talk about people getting scammed. History, take some time and look at all the headers created for the Audi and look at their results… A company made headers for the RS4 after the test results, the gains were zero. Look at the RS5 a company wanted to capitalize on getting the early market on that car. After months of build up, the total results of those very complex headers was again, zero hp. There wasn’t a shortage of excitement over the idea, but the practice of it all ended up with it being exposed that the new Audi manifold designs were very good.
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Now look at the B6/7 S4. When you look and know the manifold design you can already tell that the manifold isn’t too bad. It’s build with a nice collector and the total design is great for top end RPM. Since the B6/7 S4 already runs close to the upper 90% in motor VE. besting that would be no small feet. The first set of JHM headers was built trying to keep in the idea of production. The first test results of those headers actually showed the car lost hp. Yes, they lost hp. If you go do your homework you will see that expanding the primary exhaust tubes will help make tq down-low but at the cost of hp up top. So, another set needed to be made. The second set of JHM test headers was now an closer to equal length than the first set. Making the tubes closer to true equal length created more Tq down low but still left a big hp loss up top. So, now on to the third set of JHM test headers. The third set of headers now took into consideration the need for a merge collector rather than just dumping the pipes into the same collection spot. Looking at the OEM manifolds you will see that there is a stagger of exhaust collection leading into the collector. Taking this into account and looking deeper into collector angles the third set of JHM headers was just starting to come close to besting the OEM manifolds. The fourth test set of headers made the primary pipes the length they needed to be. Further testing the collector design helped gain that much-needed RPM range that was missed. On to the fifth set of JHM test headers, the collectors were further lengthened and now the approach angles and merge area was changed to help bring in power along the entire rev range. We found that cylinder placement of the tubes in the collector helped wake the upper range up. We found out that you need a few of the pipes to be just sized right to hit the window you need to get the pulse collection right. Not happy with that the sixth version tried to enhance some of the changes for more hp. After the dust settled the fifth set was the magic number. The formula was just right to help the motor get what it needed where it needed it. The only issue was, building them took specific requirements to get the power out of them. Mainstream production wasn’t going to be possible. The time needed to get all the bends right, to get the length perfect, to get the collector built right. It all had to be built by hand. It all took time and precision.
Now to current day. It’s so sad to see people getting scammed. Sure, a few years back some talentless hack tried to rip off the JHM headers sending them to China. As you would imagine anything that’s made in China, is notorious for lack of quality and construction. Well, as you can imagine most people were educated enough to know its China junk and it’s a sad attempt to knock off the JHM headers that have worked so well. Right away, you could tell the China headers were junk. So, nobody bought them. After years of selling zero china headers the sorry suckers who tried to knock off the JHM headers had to start giving them away. First the price for the China headers was $1400 and it was an attempt to scam and take advantage of the uneducated. Nobody fell for it so the price dropped to under $400 shipped. At that price point, you got a few people who thought “Why not try them for that cheap.” As expected, the China headers not only didn’t fit but, they would break if you did modify them to fit. The welds would crack and the materials used were so cheap that they didn’t hold in any heat and would start to rust after not too long. That wasn’t even the bad part. They weren’t even close to the JHM headers in terms of the needed components to make the headers outperform the stock manifolds and catless Dps. A few people tested them and found that they actually LOST POWER. Quietly trying to get rid of the headers these people took the junk china headers off and sold them as quickly as possible. The China headers are one more example of someone trying to catch a sucker or an uneducated individual. Most guys don’t know any better. They see a bunch of pipes and think oh, well that kinda looks close to the same thing. Well, it’s not. The JHM headers don’t have all that detail to them just for fun. The bends and merge collecting sections alone add 20 hours to the project. It would be much quicker to build the headers without doing all that. But, if you want the headers to outperform the stock manifolds you need to do more then just have some longer primary tubes that end up a few feet back. Anyone that says or even bought this china junk is what’s wrong with the community. When you see people like that just know they spend money to buy junk parts that actually make sell hp than their stock manifolds and a set of catless downpipes.
After the headers were all sorted out and the Vortech blower kits were making great power. The next chapter started. The big test was, what could better get the S4 into the holy grail of performance? Was the Vortech unit beatable? With over 1000CFM and it could be expanded to do more it was going to be hard to find anything better. The debate started with a twin turbo kit and if it could work. At the time, everyone said it was impossible so I think part of me was just about doing it to show everyone that it could be done. The Vortech unit is essentially a gear driven turbo that you can tailor the boost curve as you so wish so, this was going to be hard to find a turbo that could handle the job.
The kit was made, tested and in the end.
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The big winner. The JHM Vortech supercharger kit
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The facts stacked up against the turbo kit. From just about every angle, the JHM Vortech kit outshined the turbo kit. I know turbo lovers won’t like to hear that, but that is the way it turned out. The Vortech kit can be pushed way beyond what the stock motor can handle. Not only that but with the Vortech, you can have the boost whenever you want at whatever RPM you wish. When it comes to the JHM built motors the Vortech unit can be turned up to seriously make power on demand at almost every point in the RPM range.
After all the work and all the projects on the S4 I moved on to do testing elsewhere. I sold my first S4 and missed it ever since. So, now I’m back to help try to give back and to tell those truly interested in the platform how to get the most out of it, from my perspective
Long-time Ford nut here.