New '10 S5 cab owner

[couragebest88]

Hi all

Picked up an S5 cab yesterday. S-Tronic 2010 in red with 54,000 miles, full Audi service history. Chopped in my RRS 5.0 SC autobiography which, although it was a fantastic machine, was starting to really test my patience.

The S5 is great fun. Pretty sure I've got the 3G MMI system. Very disappointed there's no AUX input or bluetooth audio. Seems pretty cheap not to include those, but oh well. The rest of the MMI works great and the B&O sound system is decent.

Garage is doing a fresh MOT and valet for me this week. One thing I've noticed is the steering can go from light to fairly heavy as soon as vehicle speed increases. Not sure if this is supposed to happen - I'll see what the garage thinks. The 2 front brake pads are at about 30% so they'll probably be sorted too.

Got a Carista and tune2air arriving tomorrow. Looking at Cobra back boxes as I'd like to do something to the exhaust without spending thousands on a full system.

Anyone got Cobra back boxes? Anything other cheap/affordable mods I can apply?

Will be remapping it in a couple of months once I've given it a decent run out and weened out any issues. I've used AMD in the past, but REVO look like a good choice these days. I'm near MRC in Banbury so they're also an option.

I'm aware you can do supercharger pulley upgrades along with the remap, so I'll consider that too but only if the cost isn't astronomical.

Fingers crossed this thing behaves itself, I've had 2 years of fairly frustrating LR ownership

 

[MarkWizard]

Welcome mate. You might want to update the MMI and satnav as a starting point then there's quite a few mods you can enable with Carista.

Hopefully the Audi will be cheaper to run and less problematic than the RRS!!

 

[couragebest88]

Cheers

Does it look like the 3G to you, or maybe 2G+? I'm hoping 3G because I'm pretty sure both the things I ordered rely on that!

Didn't realise nav/MMI upgrade was feasible, I'll look into that. Main dealer job?

Had a great trip home from work today these things cruise well but when you fancy opening them up they really rocket. The wind noise in the cab really isn't that bad either.

 

[couragebest88]

Just checked a YouTube vid, looks like I've got MMI 3G Low judging by the software versions screen. I have a DVD loader but there's nothing in it, pretty sure the nav is HDD.


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[couragebest88]

Well I just discovered that I have a DVD player (cool!), and that I can play a DVD while driving. Doesn't turn off even at 30mph. I thought that was illegal!

 

[couragebest88]

Just got my tune2air working. Happy to report it worked first time and audible/spotify play perfectly well. Skip/scrubbing and play/pause work fine so that's good enough for me. About to try the Carista.

 

[Dippy]

Will be remapping it in a couple of months once I've given it a decent run out and weened out any issues. I've used AMD in the past, but REVO look like a good choice these days. I'm near MRC in Banbury so they're also an option.

I'm aware you can do supercharger pulley upgrades along with the remap, so I'll consider that too but only if the cost isn't astronomical.

MRC don't change the supercharger pulley, they change the crank pulley. One of the upsides is that the OE crank pulley is a known point of failure due to degradation of the dampening polymer.

I assume you are aware of the s-tronic gearbox service schedule - it is very important that it has its oil & filter change done. Unfortunately there have been reported cases of so-called FASH cars not having the 'box serviced.

 

[couragebest88]

Yeah the car has had the s-tronic service at 37,500 miles. Now on 54,500. Was wondering if it's worth doing it again fairly soon, or is an interval of 38,000 reasonable?

Thanks for remap info.


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[Dippy]

I assume you are aware that the reliability of the s-tronic gearbox is not what we or Audi would have wanted?

The service schedule is governed by many factors, but at its core will be a reliability analysis, and then I assume the marketing guys will have an input regarding cost to the customer and comparison to the competition. In my opinion the analysis has turned out to be incorrect because the failure rate is too high (such that there is a class action ongoing in the US), and therefore the service schedule must be in doubt. So my feeling is that it should be done more regularly than 38K, but that's as far as I'll go. I had mine done at 13K but that's because it is stage 2 and the car was 3 years old. I had a used oil analysis done and of course the oil was still good but there was noticeable acid content. If yours has done 17K since the last service then it definitely won't be too soon in terms of the condition of the oil, so if you can afford it why not?

 

[couragebest88]

Yeah I'm more than aware of it, hence considering an early service (and a very comprehensive warranty). Still sounded like a better option to the range rovers I've had! The garage I bought it from are putting it through MOT + valet for me next week, after that I'll take it to my local indy and get the s-tronic serviced I think. I generally service my cars more regularly than the handbook says anyway and I'd like to take good care of this one.

 

[couragebest88]

Getting the s-tronic service done again back end of next week for peace of mind. Oil + filter. It is driving fine but might as well do it anyway.

Now I'm trying to think of mods to do once that work is done. Definitely tempted by cobra back boxes, and maybe a remap later down the line. Has anyone got an APR remap? I did search the forum for 'APR' but it pulled up so much irrelevant stuff it was hard to find anything useful on it.

 

[Dippy]

@arad85

 

[arad85]

@Dippy ... <cough> I may have an APR remap (although it is on a slightly different engine to the '10 s5). @couragebest88 what do you want to know?

 

[couragebest88]

Just generally interested in whether people who have them are happy with them. Also whether power delivery is aggressive/smooth. Seems there's quite a few options out there. MRC are pretty close to me and I've seen plenty of positive reviews but also some terrible ones, so I'm just trying to get some opinions on as many as I can.

 

[mxnrg]

Memories of my 2010 A5 Sportback, looks like the full NAV if you can play DVDs. Sounds like someone’s been at it with VCDS if films keep playing on the move!



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[Dippy]

Just generally interested in whether people who have them are happy with them. Also whether power delivery is aggressive/smooth. Seems there's quite a few options out there. MRC are pretty close to me and I've seen plenty of positive reviews but also some terrible ones, so I'm just trying to get some opinions on as many as I can.

The nature of the engine, being supercharged, means that power delivery is just as smooth in tuned guise as stock. Having previously had experience of turbo cars, I am very happy with the progressive nature of the throttle response of my S5. There is a fairly linear relationship between throttle position and torque throughout most of the rev range. I only have experience of MRC, but I cannot believe there will be much difference in overall engine response between the tunes of MRC, REVO and APR. However there is a significant difference in the gearbox remapping, and that might be worth considering.

Regarding bad reviews of any tuner, particularly of those listed, I would be wary of taking them at face value. When someone comes on a web forum to slag off a tuner, most of the time there will be an ulterior reason why they had a bad experience and that the tuner was not fully (or at all) to blame.

I am biased so I like to keep my opinions guarded, however I'd advise that the technical solution (customised vs off-the-shelf, crank vs s/c pulley, functional content of gearbox remap) should steer your choice more than tuner reviews.

 

[arad85]

Very happy with my APR tune (full disclosure: I got it at a very good price as I was the test car for the CREC engine in the UK). Having said that, I wouldn't hesitate to recommend it (and I drive ~12k miles a year).

EDIT: It is very linear in delivery and just feels like it keeps going. The power curves shown on their website are pretty representative of my specific tune (absolute values differ slightly, but the curve shape is pretty similar) so I would assume this holds for all engine variants in their charts. My car just got (significantly) quicker when I had the tune done. I didn't lose day-to-day driveability.

 

[couragebest88]

Thanks for the replies. I remember when I was about to remap my Leon Cupra R there were lots of people talking about how different maps could be (AMD, REVO etc) but I imagine that is a lot down to the turbocharger. I'll be looking to map it in 2-3 months when the s-tronic service is done and I've been using it a while.

@mxnrg that's exactly what I thought, someone's fiddled the setting!