Project: S5 (Title)

[npater01]

So here we go.....

so back in February I woke up one day and started texting my friend. The subject was of my recent desire to start looking at new cars. My Focus st was 5 years old and I had done most everything I could do without starting to be a little silly. It was front wheel drive after all. My budy (Jon) sent me a picture of an Audi S5 that was CPO and pretty much right what I was looking for. It happened to be in Rochester and my buddy (Jon) also happened to be going that way. Long story short I ended up with this.......



I feel like this is a step up from my school boy racer days. While the focus was quite quick and a blast to drive, this car is an absolute thrill. It?s also full of potential. I waisted no time planing my next step. Fortunately ECS is producing some great products. One of them is an intake for this car which is quite nice to look at, induces a loud supercharger whine, and seems to add a couple HP points in the old butt dyno. Check it out, they did a great job designing it. Never mind the dirty engine bay I haven?t detailed it yet.



Not long after I picked up this monster truck I thought about ways to lower it to a reasonable height. I was originally thinking coilovers but after talking to my buddy (Jon), I elected to purchase a set of bags he had for sale. The other day I worked on getting a few things installed. First was mounting the tank. I like air ride but I want it to look normalish when you look in my trunk. Thus I mounted it to the top of my trunck. Ps, is a pain in the butt



Space is a premium and loud noises annoy me so I wanted to find a location to mount the compressor that wouldn?t showcase its volume. I also wanted to retain my spare tire and I found that if I made a bracket I would be able to mount it under the spare. This also makes wiring easy. I welded a piece of steel to the factory battery bracket.it connects to the compressor and seems to keep it pretty solid. Don?t worry about the slag. I found a beat up Allen key to knock the rest off. Using flux sucks.



Here it is all set up



I have some lines to run and I?ll be ready to throw it all together.

[npater01]

I also scooped up a set of wheels. I was originally looking at a set of BLQ’s. Only problem is they don’t make BLQ’s any longer in a 10” wide wheel. After informing me of the news wheel warehouse hooked me up with a set of TSW’s. This is probably better anyway as they are forged.

[meijerbrantm]

Hey it's me (Jon). I like white cars. Looking forward to seeing the progress. Much better than that last build thread, but I doubt this is that much of a "project."

[Jake]

Nice progress thread. Don't make me upload photos of a real project lol. Let me guess on this one...tune, wheels, maybe bags/coils andddddd DONE. Hah. Maintenance doesn't count as a project btw.

[zeeuwvw]

Nice buy. Let's see it sitting low.

[joezeeuw]

Nice buy. Let's see it sitting low.

Shoulda gone to Motorstadt

[npater01]

So its been quite a while since I have updated my thread so here we go.......

I ended up running the lines. Me being as picky as I am this was a pain in the butt. Its nice that Audi added all sorts of plastic bits and heat shields that make hiding air lines easy. Since these did come off an A7 they did need some reworking.




Finally after all the work I get to enjoy the fruits of my efforts. I have to say the ride is very comparable to coil overs. I was initially skeptical about the performance but that doubt quickly faded. That doubt was further suppressed after doing a track day.

[meijerbrantm]

And then?

[npater01]

With the air ride all sorted, I shifted my attention the brakes. I don't really have pictures but after a little digging I ended up installing EBC red stuff pads with factory rotors. The front rotors did not have many miles on them because the fronts were done as part of the CPO warranty. As such, I checked the width and resurfaced them. The new brakes feel good. They don't have the same initial bite the factory brakes have. Rather they have a more linear pedal feel which I prefer. Excuse the dirty rims

[npater01]

My father taught me when I first started modding cars that I should never add power unless the chassis had the ability to handle it. Having done the suspension and brakes, I felt it was time to pour the beans to it. So I first started with single pulley. A lot of people remove the blower for this install. I just put it in service position. I had plenty of room. Lots of people have problems with this mod. Being that I did not intend to reinstall the stock pulley, I did not opt to purchase the very over priced puller. I just used a standard 3 jaw puller a torch and some patients. It came off with little effort, installing it can be another issue. After a few attempts I figured out that the key is to ensure the pulley is heated right next to the car and the input shaft is cooled (i used an upside down can of air for this). To heat it I had the pulley in my stove the whole time I was removing the factory pulley. When I was ready to install it I put it on the ground and used the torch to get it super hot. I had a helper cool the shaft as i heated the pulley. Doing this it slid right on.



The car stayed this way for the rest of the season. With the tune it generated fantastic power. So much so that the clutch did not in fact enjoy it. After some some abuse it went out. Knowing that I had plans of further increasing the power and after some soul searching (thanks Ben) I opted for a south bend stage 3 with a single mass flywheel. For the first time in my life I hired a shop to do the work. The guys at GAS did a fantastic job and stood by their repair when an issue had popped with the new clutch. It would appear that Southbend has had some QC issues as of late as it was not caught that lock rings had been installed on the pressure plate bolts. Its weird I know, it actually comes as an assembled unit. Ben and Joe were able to get it worked out with Southbend and we are all good. I expected the clutch to be super stiff and much to my surprise, it feels pretty much normal. notice the space between the pressure plate and the flywheel.



While the clutch was being replaced I had them install a set of down pipes. The factory Cats tend to melt when you go double pulley in this thing. Since that was the next logical step I felt aftermarket cats would be best. A down pipe (test pipe) allows the cats to be installed further down the line which allows them to run much cooler. This paired with the resonated X-pipe I installed give the exhaust a nice rumble without being obnoxious. Unfortunately I don't have any pictures of the pipes and I'm too lazy to climb under the car to take photos.

The clutch was not the only piece of the puzzle unfortunately. I suspect that limping the car to the other side of the state not being able to use the clutch (I literally drove from flint to GR with out touching the clutch to shift as it would not fully disengage) caused the third gear synhcro to wear. This chassis like pretty much any other Audi is known for sloppy tranny mounts and shifter slop. even being a newer car it was night as tight as I prefer. These don't help clean shifts. The help I installed a lower tranny mount from ECS and a short shifter. The short shifter replaces the flimsy plastic factory assembly with a nice adjustable billet one. This virtually illuminated any slop. I also swapped the tranny fluid with Royal Purple 75W90 of which I am not happy. I have ordered Motul gear 300 to replace it. as I understand it the royal purple is great for the diff, not so much the tranny.


*The ecs shifter looks really nice. Its quite a shame it gets all covered up.

[npater01]

Also neglected to mention these.....




These are essential for this car with any sort of lower ride height

[npater01]

As I mentioned I ran single pulley for while. The reason being is that switching dual pulley comes with it some additional issues. Many of which by this point had been addressed. Up to this point a heat ex-changer for the supercharger has only been recommended. Going to dual pulley requires it. If you need an example of the Audi tax look at heat ex-changers. They are $1000+ on the low end. Knowing that high quality ex-changers exist for a fraction of that price, I did some digging. I ended up with a quad pass cooler for $400. With a little modification if fit perfect.




bleeding the coolant system in this thing is a chore. I need to purchase a vacuum filler for this thing. luckily I used some hose clampers that limited the fluid loss.

[npater01]

With the charge cooler now installed it was time to go dual pulley. I decided to stick with Integrated Engineering for this as at the time they had the most power. They were also able to hook it up so I added the their throttle body kit at the same time. The throttle body is off of a Hemi and while it does not have the same throttle response, it does make a massive difference in allowing the engine to breath.



I started by installing the pulley. While I will probably end up with a fluid damper pulley the one I have is a great option. A lot of guys running single pulley are starting to have issues with splitting harmonic balancer's. Being that the pulley from IE bolts the crank and surrounds the stock pulley means that the torque running the supercharger is not being being applied to the factory pulley so it should not have any issues.



Installing the pulley is not to difficult. I put the car in service position as i have before and that gave me ample room. The only thing a little annoying is that you cant see the bolts holding the pulley on. Additionally one of the bolts for the pulley is off set so making sure you mark the pulley and install it in the same position helps make the install go easy. After that I installed the throttle body and adapter. The new throttle body is quite a bit larger than the stock one so I was unable to use the intake tube I had. Additionally the intake tube they supplied was meant to go with their intake so it did not line up either. It took a little trimming but eventually I got it all figured out and it's fitting pretty good.



on to the Meth!

[npater01]

After much consideration I decided to add meth to the system. A water meth system is a huge benefit to a supercharged car such as mine. It drastically lowers IAT's, cools the rotors in the supercharger, and boost the octane. While I'm not interested in the octane boost, the ECU does love it according the data logs thus far. Another benefit is being a direct injection car it cleans the valves so that's neat. People have some wild set up's when it comes to this stuff. I did not want to go crazy with it so I opted for a Stage 1 Snow Performance kit. These kits are universal so it took a little bit of thought on how I wanted to lay it out.



I started first with the tank. I had thought about placing it in the trunk but I thought that spilling meth while filling may be less then ideal. Plus I would have to run the lines all the way up front. I ended up mounting the tank between the two firewalls. As I did not want to remove or modify any stock parts I found that if I put it on an angle it fit perfect. There were even two studs right from the factory; almost like Audi wanted me to install meth. I welded up a bracket to hold the tank and bolted it up.



Next order of business was to mount the pump. The best location would be right under the tank but I didn't feel there was enough room so I installed in the passenger side bumper. While the line does have to go up over the tank its not an issue as these systems are self priming. Once its primed its a non issue anyway. To ensure a clean look I wrapped the lines and all the wiring in sheathing and ran it along side a factory harness.




As you can see from the picture above the system also includes a solenoid and check valve. While the nozzle is about level with the tank, I was worried about siphoning and this solenoid prevents that. I was able to just drill a hose in the intake tube for the nozzle. To be honest, unless you knew what your looking at, I'm not sure you would even notice the system.



Now it was time to move on the wiring. While not difficult, I'm very picky. I made nice little harnesses and tucked everything away. To make it easy to access the tank, I cut a hole in the rain tray and used some door guard to dress it up



I also added the status lights Fast and Furious style hidden in the ash tray



And this is pretty much how it sits for now

[n0ftInc]

Looks great..I'm sure it's a blast to drive!!