(I know I've started another thread about this but it didn't allow me to edit)
Hi all, as most people know the ITG induction kit has become the standard of the market at the moment due to its proven performance gains in the regions of 20bhp. The only improvement which could be possibly done to the kit to make it better was to reduce the bends in the pipework and also give a proper enclosed forced cold air feed, due to lack of air concerns and heatsoak. In order to achieve such a task I called Andy at ITG (btw what a great chap, always willing to go the extra mile) and had a lengthy talk about a no compromise induction kit for the S3. Andy suggested two options, one was to get the carbon fibre kit or the inline aluminium kit. The carbon kit was good for 600 bhp and the aluminium kit was good for 450 bhp on an NA car and 550 bhp on a turbo car. There was roughly £100 difference between the carbon and aluminium kit, Andy suggested if it was his car, the best kit overall for me would be the aluminium kit, due to its design. However this option as you maybe aware requires the battery to be moved or either get a smaller slim battery.
Battery
I first disregarded the idea of smaller slimmer battery, I didn't want any headache of the car not starting in winter and the battery not holding enought power. And since the A3 3.2 comes with the battery in the boot, all the relevant parts were ordered from audi which included the front positive post (with bracket and bolts), front and rear grounding straps, rear isolator fuse box, rear battery mounting kit. However the two positive wires running from the front to back were on back order and would not come quick enough since the car was booked with Andy on Friday. So I was hoping to buy a welding cable as a substitute. My installer had an R32 to hand (which has the same rear battery setup as the a3 3.2) and once we unpacked the car to see the wiring, this job became more complicated then expected. The rear fuse box had inputs for the battery and output for sending the wire to the front but it also had three other outputs which I think were for the AC and starter motor and something else. Plus there was a input socket cable to make the isolator work which was not in the S3 so things got complicated. Plus the cost of the parts from Audi alone was £350 inc vat and this was at a discounted price (this price includes everything and the positive cables which were on back order but not labour). So in order to make things work properly I would need to wire this input socket for the isolator and at this point I gave up not mainly due to the cost but also I didn't know after doing all this that everything was going to work without DIS errors.
So the slimmer battery option came back in my head. I looked at braille, varley red top, powervamp and odyssey battery. I finally settled on odyssey racing extreme 40 battery simply because I needed a battery which was 97mm wide or less and had the most power. And as a matter of fact the odyssey battery is really good since its deep cycle and has a 45ah with 87 reserve time and ofcourse 1100 amp 5 sec cranking power, so this is definitely up for the job. Got my installer to fit the battery and he had to cut and remove the original battery tray and surroundings as seen in this pic:
After trimming up the surrounding bits it was thought to cut more to give space to the new big induction kit. btw from the engine cover to the battery at least 205mm of space should be available in order to make the induction kit fit. The battery was secured with a strap and a small wooden frame at the bottom of the battery was made so it doesn't move at all. 8 layers of paint were applied to the wood and the result can be seen as follows:
With the battery you need to order the conversion terminals but the ones I received where both negative posts (i machined the negative one to make it fit) but a proper positive terminal is ordered along with battery terminal covers to make things look neat. Make sure you ask the company first that one post is postive and the other negative since most companies are selling both same battery posts (and this is not good.) As a side note the racing battery is not really that light compared to the standard battery, its only 3.5kg lighter (standard battery weights about 16 kg, this one weighs 12.5 kg) but the cars feels more nippy for some reason plus the power delivery is much smoother then before. Gives the feeling as the car is not struggling at all through the revs when the foot is set assured. Might be because this is a racing battery and gives the car a better and faster supply of power but it does feel slightly different (in a good way). I have had no prolems what so ever, starting the car or with the ac/lights not powering properly, everything is fine electrically, which was my biggest fear.
Induction Kit
I drove to ITG in coventry from Glasgow and got there at 7AM. I was presented by Andy who is a very nice guy and knows his stuff. He got on with the installation striaght away and told me everything about the kit throughout the process. I wasn't aware but this kit is made with every minor detail in mind and Andy told me why the pipes are curved here, and why the map senor pipe is still the same size and this is what really impressed me, there was even a groove in the turbo intake pipe for better airflow unlike other some kits which have the pipe stretched over. You can see what I mean by looking at this pic:
Then I spoke to Andy about the airbox and I tried to tempt him into fitting a carbon fibre box but he insisted that this kit was better suited. The carbon fibre one has the input and output pipes at 90 degrees and requires alot of space too. Then Andy boguht out the airfilter and I ****** sh#t myself looking at this thing
. Joke aside this is the biggest induction i've seen and its really light weight too, which I was even more impressed about. So I placed the kit on the engine to show you the sheer size of this kit:
Andy explained that this kit is good for 450 bhp and had a cone area larger then the other ITG kit plus can go upto 550bhp
by getting revised cone filter. He also had the metal areas of the piple taped with heat shield. So Andy set about fitting the kit and the pipes on this kit are 3.5 inchs, absolutely huge. Heres a few pics half way through the install:
You might be wondering there can still be slight heatsoak since there is a gap in the front and speaking to Andy he said this is a fully enclosed airbox (no engine air can get in the induction system) and he said I havent finished yet. He brought out a 5" flexible pipe to fit infront of the airbox and I was gobsmacked with the size of this pipe
. He said this will give the kit direct feed of proper cold air from outside of the car and here's a pic of the 5" pipe with a 50p coin the kit for your reference lol.
So Andy finished the whole kit and said he was extremely please the way this kit fitted, like a glove as if it was meant to be. The clearance everywhere from the engine block, battery, pipes under the airbox, sensor on the firewall where in the millimeters. Plus there is this cone thing on the battery tray with a gold thread in it, even this clears (i cut mines to be on the safe side lol). I was really impressed with the fit and finish of how this turned out, heres a few pics of the finished kit:
Test Drive
Me and Andy went for a test drive and he did advise me it will take 100 miles for the car to fully adjust and he was really impressed with the initial difference. So once I got back to Glasgow I tested the car by giving it some beans, well firstly with the standard airbox with an MTM panel and stage 2 with exhaust after 5K rpm the car bogs down, well what I mean is the urgent force you feel at 3K pulls hard strong till 5K and the force is there till 7K but slightly less. But know the force you get at 3K is all the way till the 7k rpm. Now you get pinned to the seats till the redline and there is no hesitation in the car and no dips in power at all. The car at higher speeds now really pulls stronger like a train with no feel of restriction (im not saying what higher speeds are lol
) And the throttle response after 3K rpm is very instant and with a liquid feeling, what I mean is the car doesn't jerk then take off, it just takes off now lol.
My friend sat in the car unaware of the kit and on the motorway at second gear I planted the accelerator and after 5K rpm he started grabbing on to things and said why does it feel different lol
Sound
Well at idle the car has a more monsterous burble but below 3K it sounds like a standard S3. But once over 3K rpm and planting it, the car sounds like a much bigger engine car, it doesn't have the high pitched whoosh noise (which I personally dont think suits this car) but rather a deeper lower sounding air induction noise. The car is louder then before overall after 3K rpm and sounds more brutal and dangerous lol, my mate said sounds like a gallardo without the v10 offbeat.
How much and when availabe
Well Andy said this kit will come in two levels. One will be the fundamental parts to make the induction kit work which will be about £370+ vat (but this is a rough guide and not set in stone) and other one is a full conversion kit. This includes the racing battery, battery posts, battery template and the kit too. Andy is working out a price for this after finding a supplier for the batterys. Plus he said he wants to make this kit avaliable very soon but I dont know when, sorry.
Maintainance
The kit has a aircone filter inside which needs cleaning every 20000km (about 12k miles). You need to first clean the oil (ITG are making spray for this which will be available shortly) then clean and massage the cone in luke warm water with fairly liquid. Then let it dry overnight and spray the cone filter lightly with oil spray (which ITG sell), then place it back in the airbox. The airbox can be released by unclipping one clip and unscrewing bolts on the box to access the cone.
Baised
I know some of you maybe thinking since ITG gave me the kit I will be not bad mouthing them, but I paid near enough the full price of the kit and only the labour was not asked for since Andy had to cut things up to size. So ive only stated what I observed and if the kit was not satisfactory in anyway I would not be doing this write up.
Your opinion
I hope I didn't go on for too long, and please let me know what you thing and if you see any downfalls to this kit, please share. Hope you enjoyed the review, Im away to test my car a bit more, its sunday lol
Hi all, as most people know the ITG induction kit has become the standard of the market at the moment due to its proven performance gains in the regions of 20bhp. The only improvement which could be possibly done to the kit to make it better was to reduce the bends in the pipework and also give a proper enclosed forced cold air feed, due to lack of air concerns and heatsoak. In order to achieve such a task I called Andy at ITG (btw what a great chap, always willing to go the extra mile) and had a lengthy talk about a no compromise induction kit for the S3. Andy suggested two options, one was to get the carbon fibre kit or the inline aluminium kit. The carbon kit was good for 600 bhp and the aluminium kit was good for 450 bhp on an NA car and 550 bhp on a turbo car. There was roughly £100 difference between the carbon and aluminium kit, Andy suggested if it was his car, the best kit overall for me would be the aluminium kit, due to its design. However this option as you maybe aware requires the battery to be moved or either get a smaller slim battery.
Battery
I first disregarded the idea of smaller slimmer battery, I didn't want any headache of the car not starting in winter and the battery not holding enought power. And since the A3 3.2 comes with the battery in the boot, all the relevant parts were ordered from audi which included the front positive post (with bracket and bolts), front and rear grounding straps, rear isolator fuse box, rear battery mounting kit. However the two positive wires running from the front to back were on back order and would not come quick enough since the car was booked with Andy on Friday. So I was hoping to buy a welding cable as a substitute. My installer had an R32 to hand (which has the same rear battery setup as the a3 3.2) and once we unpacked the car to see the wiring, this job became more complicated then expected. The rear fuse box had inputs for the battery and output for sending the wire to the front but it also had three other outputs which I think were for the AC and starter motor and something else. Plus there was a input socket cable to make the isolator work which was not in the S3 so things got complicated. Plus the cost of the parts from Audi alone was £350 inc vat and this was at a discounted price (this price includes everything and the positive cables which were on back order but not labour). So in order to make things work properly I would need to wire this input socket for the isolator and at this point I gave up not mainly due to the cost but also I didn't know after doing all this that everything was going to work without DIS errors.
So the slimmer battery option came back in my head. I looked at braille, varley red top, powervamp and odyssey battery. I finally settled on odyssey racing extreme 40 battery simply because I needed a battery which was 97mm wide or less and had the most power. And as a matter of fact the odyssey battery is really good since its deep cycle and has a 45ah with 87 reserve time and ofcourse 1100 amp 5 sec cranking power, so this is definitely up for the job. Got my installer to fit the battery and he had to cut and remove the original battery tray and surroundings as seen in this pic:
After trimming up the surrounding bits it was thought to cut more to give space to the new big induction kit. btw from the engine cover to the battery at least 205mm of space should be available in order to make the induction kit fit. The battery was secured with a strap and a small wooden frame at the bottom of the battery was made so it doesn't move at all. 8 layers of paint were applied to the wood and the result can be seen as follows:
With the battery you need to order the conversion terminals but the ones I received where both negative posts (i machined the negative one to make it fit) but a proper positive terminal is ordered along with battery terminal covers to make things look neat. Make sure you ask the company first that one post is postive and the other negative since most companies are selling both same battery posts (and this is not good.) As a side note the racing battery is not really that light compared to the standard battery, its only 3.5kg lighter (standard battery weights about 16 kg, this one weighs 12.5 kg) but the cars feels more nippy for some reason plus the power delivery is much smoother then before. Gives the feeling as the car is not struggling at all through the revs when the foot is set assured. Might be because this is a racing battery and gives the car a better and faster supply of power but it does feel slightly different (in a good way). I have had no prolems what so ever, starting the car or with the ac/lights not powering properly, everything is fine electrically, which was my biggest fear.
Induction Kit
I drove to ITG in coventry from Glasgow and got there at 7AM. I was presented by Andy who is a very nice guy and knows his stuff. He got on with the installation striaght away and told me everything about the kit throughout the process. I wasn't aware but this kit is made with every minor detail in mind and Andy told me why the pipes are curved here, and why the map senor pipe is still the same size and this is what really impressed me, there was even a groove in the turbo intake pipe for better airflow unlike other some kits which have the pipe stretched over. You can see what I mean by looking at this pic:
Then I spoke to Andy about the airbox and I tried to tempt him into fitting a carbon fibre box but he insisted that this kit was better suited. The carbon fibre one has the input and output pipes at 90 degrees and requires alot of space too. Then Andy boguht out the airfilter and I ****** sh#t myself looking at this thing
. Joke aside this is the biggest induction i've seen and its really light weight too, which I was even more impressed about. So I placed the kit on the engine to show you the sheer size of this kit:
Andy explained that this kit is good for 450 bhp and had a cone area larger then the other ITG kit plus can go upto 550bhp
by getting revised cone filter. He also had the metal areas of the piple taped with heat shield. So Andy set about fitting the kit and the pipes on this kit are 3.5 inchs, absolutely huge. Heres a few pics half way through the install:
You might be wondering there can still be slight heatsoak since there is a gap in the front and speaking to Andy he said this is a fully enclosed airbox (no engine air can get in the induction system) and he said I havent finished yet. He brought out a 5" flexible pipe to fit infront of the airbox and I was gobsmacked with the size of this pipe
. He said this will give the kit direct feed of proper cold air from outside of the car and here's a pic of the 5" pipe with a 50p coin the kit for your reference lol.
So Andy finished the whole kit and said he was extremely please the way this kit fitted, like a glove as if it was meant to be. The clearance everywhere from the engine block, battery, pipes under the airbox, sensor on the firewall where in the millimeters. Plus there is this cone thing on the battery tray with a gold thread in it, even this clears (i cut mines to be on the safe side lol). I was really impressed with the fit and finish of how this turned out, heres a few pics of the finished kit:
Test Drive
Me and Andy went for a test drive and he did advise me it will take 100 miles for the car to fully adjust and he was really impressed with the initial difference. So once I got back to Glasgow I tested the car by giving it some beans, well firstly with the standard airbox with an MTM panel and stage 2 with exhaust after 5K rpm the car bogs down, well what I mean is the urgent force you feel at 3K pulls hard strong till 5K and the force is there till 7K but slightly less. But know the force you get at 3K is all the way till the 7k rpm. Now you get pinned to the seats till the redline and there is no hesitation in the car and no dips in power at all. The car at higher speeds now really pulls stronger like a train with no feel of restriction (im not saying what higher speeds are lol
) And the throttle response after 3K rpm is very instant and with a liquid feeling, what I mean is the car doesn't jerk then take off, it just takes off now lol.My friend sat in the car unaware of the kit and on the motorway at second gear I planted the accelerator and after 5K rpm he started grabbing on to things and said why does it feel different lol
Sound
Well at idle the car has a more monsterous burble but below 3K it sounds like a standard S3. But once over 3K rpm and planting it, the car sounds like a much bigger engine car, it doesn't have the high pitched whoosh noise (which I personally dont think suits this car) but rather a deeper lower sounding air induction noise. The car is louder then before overall after 3K rpm and sounds more brutal and dangerous lol, my mate said sounds like a gallardo without the v10 offbeat.
How much and when availabe
Well Andy said this kit will come in two levels. One will be the fundamental parts to make the induction kit work which will be about £370+ vat (but this is a rough guide and not set in stone) and other one is a full conversion kit. This includes the racing battery, battery posts, battery template and the kit too. Andy is working out a price for this after finding a supplier for the batterys. Plus he said he wants to make this kit avaliable very soon but I dont know when, sorry.
Maintainance
The kit has a aircone filter inside which needs cleaning every 20000km (about 12k miles). You need to first clean the oil (ITG are making spray for this which will be available shortly) then clean and massage the cone in luke warm water with fairly liquid. Then let it dry overnight and spray the cone filter lightly with oil spray (which ITG sell), then place it back in the airbox. The airbox can be released by unclipping one clip and unscrewing bolts on the box to access the cone.
Baised
I know some of you maybe thinking since ITG gave me the kit I will be not bad mouthing them, but I paid near enough the full price of the kit and only the labour was not asked for since Andy had to cut things up to size. So ive only stated what I observed and if the kit was not satisfactory in anyway I would not be doing this write up.
Your opinion
I hope I didn't go on for too long, and please let me know what you thing and if you see any downfalls to this kit, please share. Hope you enjoyed the review, Im away to test my car a bit more, its sunday lol
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