My wife's car is a B6 A4 18.t quattro. About a day after we got it we did the APR stage1, AKA reflash. I can never leave well enough alone, so I'm considering doing more mods. At what point do you think enough is enough in terms of driveability and reliability?

Or put differently, when are you better off just upgrading to an S4?

 

at the very beginning!

I mean the 1.8T does not offer that much power..even with the APR stage 1 it will put out "only" about 209 hp

the S4 offers 344 ponies to a considerable price

all the modding won`t get the 1.8T at the level of the S4 so you`d better save the money and get a nice sounding V8

 

When you realize that a stage 1 isn't enough is when you should trade for an S4.

Back in the day when I had my S4, all these kids on Audi boards with their modded A4s claimed they could outrun S4s. What nobody ever told them was that the turbo lag when you have over 300 horsepower in a little 1.8 liter 4 cylinder engine could be measured in minutes. The cars became asolutely horrid.

And the S4 isn't exactly an expensive car anymore. When you're done rebuilding the engine, had a new turbo, clutch, flywheel, injectors and software put in - you've already spent the whole value of the car in mods on a car that now runs like a boyracer in limp mode.

 

Yes, the entire point is that I don't want the car to be "fast and furious". I only drive it occasionally but I'd like my wife to have some fun too. (I get my speed kicks on the bike) Thanks for the sanity check. I'll leave it as is for now and think about an S4 or something else in the future.

 

^ good idea

not only that, but mod money is lost. S4 upgrade is an investment (albeit depreciating).

 

While the V8 in the S4 is great, it is very hard to mod. When you have an engine bya mde for a I4 and stick a V8 in there it is very though to work on. Just look in the engine bay of an S4 and see how little room there is.

So if you do upgrade to the S4 (which I advise with S4 prices dropping) be prepared that labor for anything done to the engine is expensive. Just to replace the clutch is over 20 hours of labor.

 

After the basics (ECU reprogram, suspension) then it is no longer worth it. I went down this road and ended up with a nice car that looked great but was ultimately a bit of a frankenstein car that never ran quite right. The fact is, a lot of modifications work well in a vacuum but once you hobble all these changes together from different vendors, often the end result will not meet your expectations. If you do indeed go down this route have a plan first and pick your parts based on your original plan.

Get the S4.

 

As another former B4 S4 owner, exactly what he said^^^

 

Skip the S4 and get an RS4 (or save for an RS4). The gap between A4 and S4 is like this [ __ ] while the gap between S4 and RS4 is like this [ ___________ ]. That is not an exaggeration - I had a B7 S4 and a B7 RS4. My buddy's modded A4 2.0T could hang or beat the S4, but got lunched by the RS4. And that's before we even talk about the brakes, handling, etc.

 

Manufactures tend to do a pretty decent job beefing up the necessary components when adding HP. Besides the fact that I'd rather hear the tuned rumble of a V8 over an turbo setup, not having to mess with brakes, transmission stuff, etc. is nice. I enjoy well balanced cars, and I think that becomes lost with a lot of the high HP A4's running around.

But, to the point nobody has raised: what's your wife comfortable with? Does she like her A4? Would a 340HP V8 be overkill, or even unsafe for her? With that kind of power, a quick acceleration run to get in front of some cars on the onramp all of a sudden has you on the other side of 100MPH -- some people aren't comfortable in that world.