ktorpil

Hello to all. I know that the 3.0 TFSI is a highly tuneable beast and I hate diesel with a passion, so that's why I bought my car. It's a 2012 short wheelbase and I'm loving it.
This will be a long post so I am asking that you bear with me as I wasted lots of money and time on this car and I am desperate for your help.

I immediately got into performance modifications and I've researched most offerings. I was about to go to the local APR distributor but when I told how much the upgrades would cost, some of my friends suggested that I cheap out and make everything custom. So I went to Istanbul, got new crank & drive pulleys made according to APR dimensions, installed an AEM water/meth kit and a custom remap. Everything was cheap of course, less than half of what APR would charge me. In the end, the car was pulling alright I thought (my car wouldn't fit into a dyno) so I went back to Ankara.

Over time I had all sorts of problems. The supercharger belt snapped 4 times, destroying the hood liner every time. Sometimes car had trouble starting. Random misfires. O2 sensor faults. Stalling when driving. Weird clanking noises on cold starts etc. I was sick of it. The final straw was that when I found a dyno that my car fit, I got a measly 323hp ! What a joke ! So I took out the ugly crank pulley and reverted the ECU to stock. All of my problems apart from the clanking noises were gone. I was relieved.

I dropped the car off to Audi and they are changing all of the pulleys, retainers, tensioners and belts, supercharger spring, the front end of the supercharger, some pressure regulators and other totally unnecessary related parts. I'm paying a lot of money for this but I don't care. At least my car won't have any supercharger related problems.

Starting off again with a clean slate, I want to do everything right this time. Complete APR modifications. No cheaping out on anything. But I am confused about what the extend of the thing that could be done to the D4 by APR. I've sent this e-mail to them but it returns a mailer daemon error:
"Hello. I own a 2012 A8 3.0 TFSI. I am confused about the available performance upgrades to my car. When I look at your site, I\'m understanding that the full package including both pulleys and ultracharger are available. However when I asked your local dealer BTG Maslak in Turkey they say that only the drive pulley and software update is available and that it costs 1450 US dollars. Can you please provide information on this? Thank you very much. "

The local distributor says that the ultracharger is out of question and they also cannot install and tune for a crank pulley. I'm confused.

NotoriousGLU

Ultracharger is not available for A8 3.0 engines only for S4 and SQ5 if I remember correctly. We can get only stage 2 with double pulley. That's all.

Puzz1

For what it's worth, I simply went for the APR Stage 1 and have been very happy. Priced at $999.00. Extremely simple mod and great results. I would be concerned with the extra stress on the engine with a Stage 2 pulley system. Sounds like your first experience was a disaster but glad you have it figured out. Just my $0.02.

ktorpil

Thanks for the replies. I am now trying to contact APR to verify dual pulley stage 2 availability and if all else fails I will call their toll free line

dgbaudiphile

ktorpil

Well I never go WOT for more than 10 seconds without injecting 50/50 water/isopropanol so intake temps will be quite cool.

1stGOAT

You won't have engine temp issues if you are using a dialed in water meth system. I stress the word dialed in. When I set them up I do 4th gear runs from 2500rpm to redline and look for timing retardation and add w/m until I reach zero and no more than that. Not enough or too much w/m can reduce power significantly. Keep in mind, that without a custom tune water meth is not going to increase you power, just help you maintain it when it is hot out or you are beating on the car at the track,

Pushing a supercharger generally means smaller pulleys so you can turn it faster. The downside of this is that there are fewer inches of belt contact with pulley and belt slip becomes an issue. Increasing belt tension does fix that short term but it gets the belts MUCH hotter and will reduce belt life and cause them to become glazed and slip, eventually break. The increased tension will also put a much harder uneven pull on the supercharger and can lead to faster bearing wear. The other problem pushing that size supercharger is that it will heat the charge air up quite a bit, ideally you would use a bigger blower if you were going to stay supercharger rather than trying to overdrive a small blower. By doing that you keep rpm of blower down, get lots of belt contact and lots of power without overheating the air.

Also if they are not offering the dual pulley stuff, it likely is because it is problematic on your setup. Just stay with APR mainstream stuff and enjoy.
As you found out with your belt breaking etc. belt alignment, finish and specific belt tension are also part of what you get with APR research.

For the money you have put in it, I would have gone turbo and custom tune. You could have easily added 100hp -150hp with use of water meth. Much better way to go for power, even Audi has gone to turbo on this motor now.

ktorpil

Well I got a reply back:

"Kayhan,
I do not see any reason as to why they cannot do this for you car as we offer these things for that platform. You need to go through another dealer man.


Justin@APR "

I am now more confused...

ktorpil

I told them:

"They are the only APR dealer in Turkey. I don't know what else to do"

And they told me:

" Kayhan,
I would strongly advise you to reach out to your APR dealer out there and just see what they suggest that they can do. "

So I told them:

"I understand but that's what I did before talking to you and as I've said they told me that the ultracharger and crank pulley is incompatible with my car. They said that they can only do the drive pulley and tune according to it.

NotoriousGLU

@ktorpil I am getting stage 2 today. And I have 2013 A8L 3.0, whoever is the distributor there don't know much seems to me