ACHTUN!NG | Audi A3 2.0T FSI Project

[Dion@ACHTUN!NG]

The next Achtuning Project: 2.0T FSI Audi A3

Introducing this Brilliant Red 2006 Audi A3, Achtuning has a lot in store for this new project. This base-model A3 is the perfect blank canvas for us to begin with, equipped with the 2.0T FSI motor and a 6-speed manual transmission. The lack of an open-sky feature means this thing will be better equipped to handle the track with less weight and body flex.

The Audi A3 has graced North American roads since 2006, and you'd wonder why we would choose a 3-year old car to begin a project like this - especially when so many properly modified examples roam our highways already. Many companies will opt to pick out the latest offerings by a manufacturer to be the first to mod it - after all, being the first to successfully modify a new vehicle puts you a step ahead of your competition.

The first Audi A3s to hit US roads are now running past their factory warranties, which makes deciding on a turbo upgrade much easier to swallow. Pricing for an A3 is now very close to it's step-brother (the VW GTI) especially since many of these are coming out of the very popular 3-year lease program Audi had offered. With as many performance modifications that will cross-over between the GTI and A3, the decision to go A3 was a "no-brainer" as it gives a bit more bang-for-buck over it's VW counterpart.

We'll be selecting the S3 Conversion Package as our weapon-of-choice for our A3. This should take our current 200hp and 207lb-ft Transverse 2.0T FSI Engine to 355 horsepower and 368lb-ft of torque (on 100 octane gas) with all of the necessary OEM components from the European Audi S3 and APR’s FSI High Pressure Fuel Pump with meticulously re-calibrated Engine Management! Instead of building a high-horsepower, "balls to the wall" project car we felt that picking modifications that are easily within the reach of our most common enthusiast would be best and show-case a car with every-day dependable upgrades. This A3 is a great platform to show off those reliable, daily-driven modifications you can pick up at Achtuning.

A suspension upgrade will follow shortly after, so we can get rid of the nasty wheel gap these NA-spec cars come equipped with and improve over-all stance, but more importantly so we can reduce body roll by lowering the car's center of gravity. We'll have the car wrap some 19" forged Hartmann Split-7s which are 19x8 and a 45mm offset - we're still undecided on the final finish.

The interior is pretty basic, which is perfectly fine since much of it will be changed to better suit our Achtuning theme. We don't wanna give away any details about that yet but expect some more black and red inside the car.

Rest assured the engine and turbo will receive APR upgrades... We'll leave it at that for now.

As we progress with our new project, we'll keep you updated here so check back soon!!

Modified by Dion@ACHTUN!NG at 2:56 PM 1-26-2009

[the4ringer]

DONT use the Reiger kit that uses the a8 grille. other then that, lookin forward to see the build up

[Dion@ACHTUN!NG]

Yeah no worries there.

[yoonskim]

I already smell 300+ horsepower at the wheels here

Fast pace project?? I hope so, we all hate waiting

[Dion@ACHTUN!NG]

We'll have a good majority of the performance upgrades done fairly quickly yes. But we're going to address some minor maintenance issues first (found a torn CV boot - no biggie) and get the under-side cleaned up real nice before we get going. As busy as we tend to keep, we'll spend time on this project as much as we can but we won't have time every day to make progress.

[vwracin86]

so who bought it?

[Dion@ACHTUN!NG]

I don't get it... We did.

[Dion@ACHTUN!NG]

Achtuning A3 Project Update: January 22nd, 2009

8:30am - Loading APR software to ECU

9:30am - Taking out some parts from inventory

As of an hour ago...

[the4ringer]

that s3 IC and k04?

[Dion@ACHTUN!NG]

You got it!

[Dion@ACHTUN!NG]

As of this morning, this is how the Achtuning A3 Project sits.

The turbo-swap is almost complete but we have several other engine upgrades on the way so we can't quite wrap-up the front end yet. Shown below is the stock A3's turbo compared to the K04 off of the Audi S3.

Last Friday, we received the Audi Votex body kit for the Audi A3 which includes a front valence, side skirts, rear valence, and upper hatch spoiler. These will go out for paint later this week.

While the Oettinger kit was the first choice for body styling, the current cost of the factory Votex kit offered by Audi could not be passed up. We can always do Oettinger later anyway.

More updates to come as parts start to arrive!

[Sales@DBCPerformance]

we have the same car Dion, and the same path, even the same parts on install, except the wheels.... lol. Good Luck, so much fun the car is....

Berk

[Dion@ACHTUN!NG]

Yup, then there's Vivid who has quite a bit done to their's and will be featured in the upcoming Eurotuner issue - we'll make as many subtle changes as possible to set our's apart.

[Dion@ACHTUN!NG]

Our very close friends at H&R sent us a set of their Premium Coil-Overs for our Audi A3 project.

H&R's Premium line offers ultra-lightweight performance with these aluminum-bodied dampers with a reduced weight of up to 40% from factory suspension components, further assisting us in the reduction of unsprung weight. Each shock is "tuned with a progressive rate spring that is engineered from its inception to work with the shock’s valving, creating a finely tuned suspension system." The coil-over kit has a drop range of 1.0 to 2.5 inches and are hard-anodized in black - perfectly matching our Achtuning theme.

[Mentosman42]

cant wait to see the final product, esp the interior, i have the same car(red baseline 2006 2.0t) and have always wanted to do some interior work to go with my outside theme(red and black). maybe you guys will pave the way for me to do some of my own haha.

[Dion@ACHTUN!NG]

Even more parts arrived today for our A3 project, courtesy of Neuspeed...

* under-drive pulleys
* short-shift kit
* hi-flo intercooler pipe-conversion

[ODY]

Coming along very nicely.... I wish I had parts being shipped to me everyday....

[Dion@ACHTUN!NG]

We dropped off the Votex kit for the Achtuning A3 Project at Dreamwerks yesterday! Known for their excellent quality and passion for everything European, we knew our OE body kit was in good hands...

[Rub-ISH]

R U Guys going with the Stasis GIAC tune or the APR K04 tune? Since your a dealer of both

[Dion@ACHTUN!NG]

STaSIS Engineering uses GIAC tuning with their hard parts. We only sell STaSIS Engineering hard parts.

This is an APR-tuned S3-conversion.

[Sales@DBCPerformance]

looking good

[Presns3]

whos the lucky mofo whos getting all these parts at cost

[3lfk1ng]

not me

[Dion@ACHTUN!NG]

In true "shop project" form, this A3 belongs to Achtuning. As our demo, it will be available for viewing (and rides for those who are in the market for the turbo upgrade) during our shop hours...

[vwracin86]

lookin good. i might have to come by and take a look

[Dion@ACHTUN!NG]

More parts trickle in for the Achtuning A3 Project - today from StopTech we received a 328x28mm, 4-piston Big Brake Kit.

We picked up some stainless steel lines as well to complete the front brake upgrade for the A3.

Starting at $1995...

[sabba]

i like what I am seeing so far. Cant wait till you get the car on the road and post up how it performs. I think you should put a set of the Work VSXX wheels you have for sale on this car.

Will the 328 Stoptech's fit behind the A3's 17" sixteen spoke wheels w/o spacer? I would like to eventually upgrade both my wheels and brakes but want to keep the OEM wheels for my winter setup. I know the r32/s3 brakes will fit but I'd prefer the stoptechs.

[the4ringer]

someones bumper has a little razor burn on the chin. dont i know how that feels

edit edit edit: truck this thing down for Wuste09 in LV in june. Reps the A3's


Modified by the4ringer at 3:56 PM 2/9/2009

[Dion@ACHTUN!NG]

That's why they have the front bumper - it's been completely sanded down and resprayed. Also notice we have two votex front lips sitting there getting painted. We're anticipating some scrap-age.

Quote, originally posted by sabba »

Will the 328 Stoptech's fit behind the A3's 17" sixteen spoke wheels w/o spacer? I would like to eventually upgrade both my wheels and brakes but want to keep the OEM wheels for my winter setup. I know the r32/s3 brakes will fit but I'd prefer the stoptechs.

Doubt they'd fit without the use of spacers. We don't have the wheels here to answer that question for you but StopTech offers brake templates you can use to measure their calipers against your wheels for proper fitment.

http://www.stoptech.com/tech_i...0.pdf <--- A3 328mm brake template

[Dion@ACHTUN!NG]

Dreamwerks completed the Votex kit for the Achtuning A3 Project and we couldn't be happier with the results!

The kit will go on the car within the next couple of weeks as they will likely be the last itmes to go on the car but we're confident the look will be just right! Thanks Hans and Andy for your diligent and quality work!

[vwracin86]

i heard there was a problem with the turbo install....

[Dion@ACHTUN!NG]

Quote, originally posted by vwracin86 »

i heard there was a problem with the turbo install....

Not at all. We had no problems throughout the turbo installation, in fact the install went very smooth and the kit operated perfectly... However our initial test-drive wasn't what we had hoped.

Here sat the Achtuning A3 project as we had pulled it out for its maiden voyage with the completion of the S3 Conversion to the 2.0T engine. We wanted to make sure it was properly warmed up before seeing how much power the turbo upgrade would produce.

Our test-run didn't last long... It seems the high-mileage motor in the A3 we picked up wasn't a clean-slate, "blank canvas" as we had hoped after all as it gave up on us within 5-minutes of our run. As we knew there had to be underlying issues with the motor in our A3, we decided to pull it.

We found unusually excessive carbon build-up on the valves along with a few other things we noticed indicating this motor had been tampered with before - and not necessarily in a good way.

Despite the small hiccup, we're moving forward with the A3 project but with a slightly different direction this time...

We're building up two motors for this A3 now, one to continue our "Edition 30"/S3 Conversion and another, more powerful motor. We'll keep you updated but the project had been set aside for a very busy week of customer installs. Check back soon!

[3lfk1ng]

Aw that sucks, everything was going so smoothly too. I cannot wait to see what this "more powerful motor" is. S3 conversion is one thing, being faster than all S3's is another.

[vwracin86]

man that sucks. hope it all works out. cant wait to see what that thing can do.

[Dion@ACHTUN!NG]

It's been (thankfully) a busy couple of weeks and despite our hectic schedule, we're pleased with the progress of our Achtuning A3 project. Everything that was added to engine number-one as far as the S3-Conversion has been reinstalled on engine number-two.

Today we've got the front end all wrapped up and we'll begin to work on other areas of the car. We also had to take our Neuspeed P-Flow and modify it due to the relocation of the electronic DV (diverter valve) on the S3-conversion.

Then some wrinkle-finish paint to touch up the new addition...

And the final product!

We still have quite a ways to go but considering circumstances we couldn't be in a better position.