Take Your Audi Engine To The Next Level

Audi’s RS division makes it a point to take the fight to it’s fellow German performance brands at AMG and M-Sport. However with Audi’s reputation of delivering both performance and reliability, many owners feel like there has been a compromise, and long for more power out of their cars. If you happen to be one of these owners, you’re in luck, as our performance shop pro’s have decided to share their knowledge on how to get the most out of your Audi’s engine.

A Word of Precaution

While modifications are a great way to make your car both more unique and more powerful, we recommend that you first understand how modifications will affect your Audi’s warranty. We also recommend that you firmly stick  to your car’s recommended service schedule, as all performance upgrades are only going to reliably produce more if your car is maintained well enough to handle that power increase.

Engine Upgrades

While there are many other ways to boost your cars performance, we have already discussed both non-engine modifications and hardware upgrades you can do for more performance. So this article will focus more on engine upgrades for performance.

• Upgrade The Basics

  Your engine needs three things to operate, fuel, spark, and air. The first step many tuners will tell you to do is to upgrade your cars intake and exhaust. A cold air intake, or CAI, is less restrictive than your standard air filter, and allows for more air with a direct route towards the intake manifold.

  With more air now reaching the engine, it’s important to make sure the air-fuel ratio is maintained. Larger injectors and a high pressure fuel pump allows the car to inject more fuel into the engine, to match the higher concentration of air in each cylinder.

  With a high concentration of fuel and air in each cylinder, you want your ignition spark to be strong. To make sure your engine continues to fire on all cylinders, you can fit higher performance coil packs, such as R8 coils on a S3, with stronger spark plugs.

• Let Your Engine Breathe

  Just like an Olympic runner at full pace is going to exhale more Carbon Dioxide, your car’s engine at will produce more emissions, but stock components may prevent emissions from escaping easily and compromising performance. To make sure this doesn’t happen, upgraded exhaust headers, downpipes for turbocharged cars, and exhausts are next.

  It’s important have your exhaust made by a professional, as a exhaust that is too narrow will create too much back pressure on the engine, while an exhaust that is too wide won’t have enough back pressure. A professional exhaust will also have a less restrictive catalytic converter that allows exhaust gas to pass at a higher rate.

• Keep Things Cool

  As you increase performance, your engine is going to begin to generate more heat, that your stock cooling system cannot handle. Even if your car is stock, an upgraded cooling system will unlock some extra horsepower. The go to cooling upgrade is to fit a larger or more efficient radiator. Your radiator is made of a series of tubes with small fins attached to these tubes. The fins help dissipate the heat from the coolant in the tubes. A more efficient radiator will have more tubing running through it, with larger fins, and be made of a material that dissipates heat easily. On turbocharged cars, the principle is shared, except this time you aren’t cooling down coolant, but rather the pressurized air coming from the turbo. An upgraded inter cooler can make sure the air entering the engine is colder, and in turn increases performance.

  If you’re looking to take inspiration from Audi’s race cars, a great way to keep things cool is have your metal parts ceramic coated. Ceramic coated parts ensure that the heat from the engine does not reach the air in the ceramic coated parts, so that the air isn’t further heated.

  Meth induction kits is a system that squirts methanol alcohol into the intake manifold of your car. As the methanol is injected, the heat of the engine causes the methanol to rapidly evaporate, and makes the air entering the engine cooler.

Our performance shops pros have created some of the meanest and most impressive Audi’s on the streets today. Should you have any questions, or would like to take your Audi to the next level, look no further than Foreign Affairs Motorsport, South Florida’s Premier German Auto Repair, Performance & Race Facility Since 1978.