Looking at all the build threads around and after owning this car for over a year, I thought that I should start a thread of my own and track my progress as well as share experiences of living with a modified S3. This is my first ever build thread, so be gentle 
This post will be rather long, but I want to give you some insight into the decision-making that went into this and maybe help others pick an upgrade path. I'm not all that technical and while can handle a spanner or a soldering iron, all regular servicing and some of the bigger jobs get outsourced to Fontain Audi, who are my local Audi independent garage.
When I bought this car, I was not a stranger to Audi with the first one being a 1.8T Sport A3 about 10 years ago. This was followed by a Silver S3 8L, which I modified and loved very much, but it had to go due to my newborn daughter’s child seat being too much of a pain in the behind to use in a 3-door car and the boot being just a tiny bit too small for all the newborn crud you have to lug around with you.
I replaced this with a Red 1.8T S-Line A4 for a couple of years until I started missing something with a bit more go, which is when I found this 2009 S3 Sportback, near Manchester just over a year ago.
Choice of car was driven by a few factors:
The above criteria left me with one choice, the Audi S3. I was always a fan of the 3-door version, so the huge choice of available cars for sale and the lower price of very good examples was well within my budget. I almost bought one, but in the back of my mind I knew that lack of the additional doors would result in constant nagging…I mean pressure from the Mrs and I would be back looking for a more sensible car within a few months. This really narrowed things down to the sportback, which I thought looked a bit too long… It has definitely grew on me since then - I love the utilitarian profile and the rear lights of a sportback looks so much nicer, in my opinion.
So here I was, looking at this single owner 2009 Sepang Blue S3 with S-Tronic box, 45k miles and full service history, which looked stock to the untrained eye, but did show signs of being modified in places. With the extra ‘quattro 300’ lettering on the back being the most obvious clue and hinted at a remap being there, at least in the past and the EBC Ultramax disks, with Red Stuff pads at the front. The biggest thing that jumped at me is how tidy the bodywork was and presence of a clear M3 Ventureshield being in place on all of the front-facing panels, as well as some of the other at-risk areas. The previous owner definitely looked after it properly. Anyway, a test drive later and a quick trip to get a fresh MOT, I bought it
The long drive home did show an issue, which was nothing that worried me, but did put a bit of a downer on the experience - the wheels seemed to be badly balanced and caused quite bad judder at motorway speeds. The car didn’t seem to grip in corners all that well and tended to understeer badly at even a hint of spirited entry into a corner. I later found that this was down to the combination of slightly off alignment, rubbish stock suspension and old Dunlop tyres. I know that these cars are known for understeer, but even my old 8L S3 wasn’t this bad. By the time I got home, I already had a list of things together that needed to change. Even with all these issues, I was over the moon with the purchase and was really looking forward to getting stuck into the job at hand and start making this car my own.
Within a week, the stock Head Unit was replaced with a Pioneer AVH-8600BT, which is a bit more capable and modern:
I later got my Android phone to work with it with full screen and touch control mirroring
My plan was to always take the car to Stage 2+, but I didn’t have a clear timeline in mind for this. That may have been a mistake as within a month of buying the car, I ordered a BCS PowerValve system with 200 cel cats and started talking to @Rick @ Unicorn Motor Dev. about his remapping service, which offered a remote Android-based method of mapping the car, which really appealed to my geeky nature. This allowed me to do is get one of Rick’s Stage 1 maps on the car over the internet using just my phone. All I had to do is send him some VCDS logs to ensure things were running as they should.
I had to wait for BCS guys to prepare the system and wanted to get them to fit it for me as I heard it to be a little on the awkward side due to where the turbo was located and the rather large replacement downpipe, which required the front subframe to come out. While in the area, I decided to pay a visit to Rick in Stockport and get some further tweaks done to the map on his rolling road. Funny thing happened on the day of fitting, which was the Black Friday sale at LVS Racing, so I bought a Revo CAI just before setting out on my drive to BCS Anyway, this day and my impressions are well documented in this thread - http://www.audi-sport.net/xf/threads/good-day-today-but-not-for-my-bank-balance.232260/
Needless to say, I was blown away by the sheer awesomeness of the BCS system. Read my review for full details - yes, it is that good and worth every penny
Shortly after the events of the above day, I got the Revo CAI installed and was busy pestering Rick to update my map to what would be equivalent to a Stage 2, with just the HPFP and a ECU tweak being the missing components of my Stage 2+ ambitions. This was sorted around February 2015, when the Loba HPFP was finally delivered and quickly installed. Soon after this, Rick’s Stage 2+ map made its way onto the ECU and the car finally reached my original power output goal. This was confirmed at ASN AMD RR day, with two runs just shy of 355bhp and 370lbft - I ideally wanted 360bhp, but was still pleased as the car was delivering butloads of performance where it counted - the mid range. Not bad after four months of ownership
At the same time as fitting the Revo CAI, I was also looking to sort out the car’s handling - the power tweaks were beginning to highlight the limits of the rather mediocre standard suspension. This was quickly getting to me, so I started to research suspension upgrades. I used to run a set of H&R Springs, Bilstein B4 shocks, H&R ARBs and a more aggressive geometry setup on my previous 8L S3. This transformed that car’s handling and I really wanted more of the same on the 8P, but without introducing too much discomfort into the mix. This is the thread of me complaining about S3 suspension - http://www.audi-sport.net/xf/threads/is-s3-standard-suspension-really-that-bad.230061/ . I even thought that my shocks were gone, which they weren’t... Outcome of my winge was a ST X Coilover kit, supplied by DPM, once the initial financial shock of earlier upgrade expenses begun to subside. This was one of my favorite mods on the car - it became more supple over uneven roads, ride height is good and still practical over speed bumps and offers a much more confident driving experience. It definitely proved itself on a trip to Wales last summer, where a few of my friends and I went on a driving weekend around the best roads that Wales has to offer. This kit is made by KW with the same internals as their v1 kit, but cheaper casing materials. So far, they still look like new, but my first winter with them is still to come.
Soon after the coilover kit was done, I turned my attention to the Dunlop tyres that were inherited from the previous owner. The tread depth was still pretty good, but I think that the car spent a bit of time not being driven before I bought it as the tyres were showing signs of cracking and that is never a good sign, so I splashed out on a full set of Michelin Pilot Sport 3’s. They were on the car since March 2015 until now and I do like them very much. They offer decent all round performance and even as the fronts begun to wear out, they still seem to offer good levels of grip in dry and wet conditions. I’m planning on getting a set of winter tyres for the colder periods, but will go back to these in the spring as things begin to warm up. As mentioned earlier, the fronts have been wearing rather quickly, but in all fairness to Michelin, they have had a rather rough life with me due to frequent early Sunday morning trips out to the local A/B roads.
At this point, my performance upgrade list is complete. I do have a few interesting bits on the way, but I’ll leave that for another day
As far as non-performance modifications go, I recently ended up replacing my original Pioneer with an unbranded Chinese Android unit, which for the money, is perfect for my needs. This was after seeing this thread - http://www.audi-sport.net/xf/threads/android-rns-e.248150/ It takes some tweaking, but well worth it due the features it offers for relatively little money.
I also installed a K1s dashcam, which is a nice solution for people, who want a permanent and stealthy install. I only have the forward-facing camera setup for now and the rear one will be going in at some point soon. This is a good review of the unit: http://www.techmoan.com/blog/2015/3/1/k1s-the-first-front-rear-hidden-1080p-dash-camera.html
I've added a Xenonz RS3 replica grill and still haven't decided if I want to keep it - sometimes it looks a bit too aggressive for my taste, but on occasions it looks perfect.. It stays for now
I also bought a cheap private plate for easier fitment on the side of the bumper, and found one that was perfect, for me, being a native Ukrainian
Re-trimmed steering wheel in alcantara - feels sublime
So in summary, I’ve now owned my S3 for just over a year now and I am liking it more with every tweak and modification that is added to it. I love the combination of practicality, comfort and performance it offers, and have definitely grown to love the sportback shape to a point where I prefer it over the 3-door version. It has been an expensive year, but the enjoyment I’m getting out of the car still overshadows the bills that come with it, so no regrets here!
Well, this was a very long post, but I did have to get a year’s worth of updates into it. I left a few things out and may add them in at a later date. I hope you found this a worthwhile read - there is definitely more coming soon, so watch this space
This post will be rather long, but I want to give you some insight into the decision-making that went into this and maybe help others pick an upgrade path. I'm not all that technical and while can handle a spanner or a soldering iron, all regular servicing and some of the bigger jobs get outsourced to Fontain Audi, who are my local Audi independent garage.
When I bought this car, I was not a stranger to Audi with the first one being a 1.8T Sport A3 about 10 years ago. This was followed by a Silver S3 8L, which I modified and loved very much, but it had to go due to my newborn daughter’s child seat being too much of a pain in the behind to use in a 3-door car and the boot being just a tiny bit too small for all the newborn crud you have to lug around with you.
I replaced this with a Red 1.8T S-Line A4 for a couple of years until I started missing something with a bit more go, which is when I found this 2009 S3 Sportback, near Manchester just over a year ago.
Choice of car was driven by a few factors:
- It had to be an Audi - yes, I am a huge fanboy
- It had to have 4 or 5 doors
- Reasonably recent and lower than average mileage
- It had to be a performance focused model and one that can easily be tuned to perform on a reasonable budget
- My initial budget was 20K
- The car would be my daily and only drive for the foreseeable future (if you don’t count the mountain bike), so it had to be comfortable on short and long journeys in UK or Europe. My wife and I love doing road trips, so this was a big factor for me - extra loud exhausts or jarring ride were not something I was going to put up with
- Decent fuel economy, while not hugely important, would be nice - my commute is quite short, so diesel was out of the question
- I like the idea of S-Tronic
The above criteria left me with one choice, the Audi S3. I was always a fan of the 3-door version, so the huge choice of available cars for sale and the lower price of very good examples was well within my budget. I almost bought one, but in the back of my mind I knew that lack of the additional doors would result in constant nagging…I mean pressure from the Mrs and I would be back looking for a more sensible car within a few months. This really narrowed things down to the sportback, which I thought looked a bit too long… It has definitely grew on me since then - I love the utilitarian profile and the rear lights of a sportback looks so much nicer, in my opinion.
So here I was, looking at this single owner 2009 Sepang Blue S3 with S-Tronic box, 45k miles and full service history, which looked stock to the untrained eye, but did show signs of being modified in places. With the extra ‘quattro 300’ lettering on the back being the most obvious clue and hinted at a remap being there, at least in the past and the EBC Ultramax disks, with Red Stuff pads at the front. The biggest thing that jumped at me is how tidy the bodywork was and presence of a clear M3 Ventureshield being in place on all of the front-facing panels, as well as some of the other at-risk areas. The previous owner definitely looked after it properly. Anyway, a test drive later and a quick trip to get a fresh MOT, I bought it
The long drive home did show an issue, which was nothing that worried me, but did put a bit of a downer on the experience - the wheels seemed to be badly balanced and caused quite bad judder at motorway speeds. The car didn’t seem to grip in corners all that well and tended to understeer badly at even a hint of spirited entry into a corner. I later found that this was down to the combination of slightly off alignment, rubbish stock suspension and old Dunlop tyres. I know that these cars are known for understeer, but even my old 8L S3 wasn’t this bad. By the time I got home, I already had a list of things together that needed to change. Even with all these issues, I was over the moon with the purchase and was really looking forward to getting stuck into the job at hand and start making this car my own.
Within a week, the stock Head Unit was replaced with a Pioneer AVH-8600BT, which is a bit more capable and modern:
I later got my Android phone to work with it with full screen and touch control mirroring
My plan was to always take the car to Stage 2+, but I didn’t have a clear timeline in mind for this. That may have been a mistake as within a month of buying the car, I ordered a BCS PowerValve system with 200 cel cats and started talking to @Rick @ Unicorn Motor Dev. about his remapping service, which offered a remote Android-based method of mapping the car, which really appealed to my geeky nature. This allowed me to do is get one of Rick’s Stage 1 maps on the car over the internet using just my phone. All I had to do is send him some VCDS logs to ensure things were running as they should.
I had to wait for BCS guys to prepare the system and wanted to get them to fit it for me as I heard it to be a little on the awkward side due to where the turbo was located and the rather large replacement downpipe, which required the front subframe to come out. While in the area, I decided to pay a visit to Rick in Stockport and get some further tweaks done to the map on his rolling road. Funny thing happened on the day of fitting, which was the Black Friday sale at LVS Racing, so I bought a Revo CAI just before setting out on my drive to BCS
Anyway, this day and my impressions are well documented in this thread - http://www.audi-sport.net/xf/threads/good-day-today-but-not-for-my-bank-balance.232260/Needless to say, I was blown away by the sheer awesomeness of the BCS system. Read my review for full details - yes, it is that good and worth every penny
Shortly after the events of the above day, I got the Revo CAI installed and was busy pestering Rick to update my map to what would be equivalent to a Stage 2, with just the HPFP and a ECU tweak being the missing components of my Stage 2+ ambitions. This was sorted around February 2015, when the Loba HPFP was finally delivered and quickly installed. Soon after this, Rick’s Stage 2+ map made its way onto the ECU and the car finally reached my original power output goal. This was confirmed at ASN AMD RR day, with two runs just shy of 355bhp and 370lbft - I ideally wanted 360bhp, but was still pleased as the car was delivering butloads of performance where it counted - the mid range. Not bad after four months of ownership
At the same time as fitting the Revo CAI, I was also looking to sort out the car’s handling - the power tweaks were beginning to highlight the limits of the rather mediocre standard suspension. This was quickly getting to me, so I started to research suspension upgrades. I used to run a set of H&R Springs, Bilstein B4 shocks, H&R ARBs and a more aggressive geometry setup on my previous 8L S3. This transformed that car’s handling and I really wanted more of the same on the 8P, but without introducing too much discomfort into the mix. This is the thread of me complaining about S3 suspension - http://www.audi-sport.net/xf/threads/is-s3-standard-suspension-really-that-bad.230061/ . I even thought that my shocks were gone, which they weren’t... Outcome of my winge was a ST X Coilover kit, supplied by DPM, once the initial financial shock of earlier upgrade expenses begun to subside. This was one of my favorite mods on the car - it became more supple over uneven roads, ride height is good and still practical over speed bumps and offers a much more confident driving experience. It definitely proved itself on a trip to Wales last summer, where a few of my friends and I went on a driving weekend around the best roads that Wales has to offer. This kit is made by KW with the same internals as their v1 kit, but cheaper casing materials. So far, they still look like new, but my first winter with them is still to come.
Soon after the coilover kit was done, I turned my attention to the Dunlop tyres that were inherited from the previous owner. The tread depth was still pretty good, but I think that the car spent a bit of time not being driven before I bought it as the tyres were showing signs of cracking and that is never a good sign, so I splashed out on a full set of Michelin Pilot Sport 3’s. They were on the car since March 2015 until now and I do like them very much. They offer decent all round performance and even as the fronts begun to wear out, they still seem to offer good levels of grip in dry and wet conditions. I’m planning on getting a set of winter tyres for the colder periods, but will go back to these in the spring as things begin to warm up. As mentioned earlier, the fronts have been wearing rather quickly, but in all fairness to Michelin, they have had a rather rough life with me due to frequent early Sunday morning trips out to the local A/B roads.
At this point, my performance upgrade list is complete. I do have a few interesting bits on the way, but I’ll leave that for another day
As far as non-performance modifications go, I recently ended up replacing my original Pioneer with an unbranded Chinese Android unit, which for the money, is perfect for my needs. This was after seeing this thread - http://www.audi-sport.net/xf/threads/android-rns-e.248150/ It takes some tweaking, but well worth it due the features it offers for relatively little money.
I also installed a K1s dashcam, which is a nice solution for people, who want a permanent and stealthy install. I only have the forward-facing camera setup for now and the rear one will be going in at some point soon. This is a good review of the unit: http://www.techmoan.com/blog/2015/3/1/k1s-the-first-front-rear-hidden-1080p-dash-camera.html
I've added a Xenonz RS3 replica grill and still haven't decided if I want to keep it - sometimes it looks a bit too aggressive for my taste, but on occasions it looks perfect.. It stays for now
I also bought a cheap private plate for easier fitment on the side of the bumper, and found one that was perfect, for me, being a native Ukrainian
Re-trimmed steering wheel in alcantara - feels sublime
So in summary, I’ve now owned my S3 for just over a year now and I am liking it more with every tweak and modification that is added to it. I love the combination of practicality, comfort and performance it offers, and have definitely grown to love the sportback shape to a point where I prefer it over the 3-door version. It has been an expensive year, but the enjoyment I’m getting out of the car still overshadows the bills that come with it, so no regrets here!
Well, this was a very long post, but I did have to get a year’s worth of updates into it. I left a few things out and may add them in at a later date. I hope you found this a worthwhile read - there is definitely more coming soon, so watch this space
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