Good story... S4 vs BMW
 

My car is in the shop right now, needs the EGR valve replaces and some carbon cleaned out of the throttle body/ EGR intake etc. With this, I was forced (poor me) to drive my mom's Audi S4. For those who are not educated unto what an S4 is, it is a Audi A4 with a 2.7 Litre V6 + twin Turbos = 260hp (ish).

I'm driving on I-70 back from Baltimore last night at about 10:30/11 when this BMW comes up behind me and passes me. I gunn it and he gunns it (I wasn't pushing too hard thinking this was a puss 330Ci or something). Bad idea. I hear his exhaust system bark and he takes off. When I eventually catch up with him, he signals that he wants to fomally race. I'm like, "Sure, I'm in an S4 , I can floor it and leave him in the trail." We even up at about 60 mph, theres a straight, clear road ahead. We both floor it, my turbos spool up and we start going FAST. We're even past 90mph and he starts pulling away. I'm now saying to myself, HOLY SHIT, what is this thing? He's a couple car lengths ahead I glance down and see myself go flying through 145mph and mash the brake pedal. This decision was also helped by the fact that the road comes to a dead end VERY quickly. I signal for him to pull over just to see what he had. To my GREAT surprise, this young man was driving a BMW..... wait for it... M5. He was running straight pipes for an exhaust and sounded absolutely wonderful.

I think if the computer chip that we had in the S4 were still in there, (maxing out BOTH turbos and boosting HP to 350) I could have kept up with him. Although I lost, it still makes for a damn good story... :doh:

It is tough keeping up with those M3's & M5's. Our little Protege's don't stand a chance and it is a good thing you were driving a Audi. If I had $100,000.00 I would go buy a new BMW M5 (V10 with 507hp). Those are coming out pretty soon, if not already. Good story though.

2003.5 Titanium Grey
Bone Stock
Correctional Flash
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The s4 is a BI-TURBO, not a twin turbo...there is a difference. Sorry, but I had to correct ya, I'm kind of an audi fanatic. Good story tho.

-Brad.

what's the difference between a bi-turbo and a twin turbo?

Yeah, you are absolutely right about the Bi-Turbo thing, I didn't expect a lot of people to know what Bi-Turbo was, so I put it into an easy-to-swallow form. We bought the car used and loved it because it was REALLY fast (although anything is when your last car was a minivan). Unbeknownst to us, the previous owner put a racing chip in it, maxing the boost out of both turbos to about 22psi (YIKES). We discovered, or shall I say the dealership did, that it was there when we reported a strange tranny sound as it was dropping the clutch, as opposed to feathering it for a smooth transition. The manager drove it home to help pinpoint the problem, and discovered that it was much faster than a regular S4. He put it up to their in-shop dyno and it littereally went off their scales for Tourque and HP (We guesstimated that HP was above 350). Now you might say, wow, you must have a kick-ass car! WRONG! Unfortunately, the presence of the chip voided the warranty and we didn't quite want thats so they had to replace the ECU (Thankfully at their cost). Anyway, I think had the chip been in the car, my story with the M5 would have been a little different... I'll post some pics of it this week. Good to hear that there is another Audi buff here.

I see, that makes plenty of sense. 22 psi...holy crap...I wouldnt have minded voiding the warantee for that, but I can understand your situation.

A Bi-Turbo is different because instead of both turbo's spooling at the same time, one spools after the other is maxed out. I believe this is to widen the power range instead of both turbos spooling and then maxing out at the same time. This is what someone told me, please correct me if I am wrong.

-Brad.

You're right. The pull from the turbos starts at about 3300 rpm (damn turbo lag!) and continues to just before the redline (7000+ I think) which gives pleanty of power. Yeah, we're gonna put another chip into the car in about 6000 miles when the 50,000 mile warranty wears out and it'll give us 70HP back, should be fun!