Hi guys.
Its taken me ages to get around to doing this. I bought my car last May. Came completely standard with 67k on the clock, full service history and a faulty RNS-E headunit.
Loved the car and how it looked but felt it could look better. So first thing was to get some 19" A6 lemans to upgrade to 18's it came with. at the same time I got some Eibach springs fitted to lower it a little.
I then took it to FR&R for a Stage 1 remap. The difference was night at day. Vastly improved the way the car drove.
I didnt really do much to it over the summer months due to getting married and other life stuff.
About a week ago the exhaust went. It was sounding a bit rough for a while so I have replaced that with a custo built stainless steel 3" turbo back from a local place called Zorstec. After that was fitted it was back to FR&R for a stage 2 remap.
Then it was on to getting the HiFi sorted. I looked around for a replacement LCD module for the RNS-E. I wasnt willing to part with the money that people were wanting for the replacement Audi one, nor the compatible ones from the likes of the Vauxhall Zafira.
So I started exploring the possibility of fitting a 6.5" 848x840px screen, they are available very cheaply (£30). They are not a direct compatible replacement. They use a small PCB which gives you a HDMI input, VGA and two composite inputs. I am going to look at wiring the RGB output of the RNS-E to one of the component inputs so the radio can be controlled more easily. At the moment the only visual output I have from the original part of the RNS is on the MFD.
The DVD drive was also faulty in the RNS-E so I removed it. In its place the driver board for the display sits.
Connected to the board was a Raspberry Pi 2 running OpenELEC.
Added to the Raspberry Pi is a 24bit I2S sound card which you can see sat on the top in the case. Also in there is a real time clock module so it can keep the time. On the outside of the case you can see the car power supply. This is set up to safely shut down the Raspberry pi when the ignition has been off for 5 minutes, handy for when just putting some fuel in.
Control of this at the moment is handled by a Bluetooth Amazon FireTV stick remote. I a currently working on a solution using the steering wheel controls by sniffing the messages from CAN and then sending them as keystrokes to the Raspberry Pi. I am waiting parts for this at the moment. The Raspberry Pi currently lives under the steering wheel in that little slot where you can keep the manuals etc. The wiring will be tidied when I fit my clutch switch tomorrow and I remove the trim.
Sorry if the timeline is a bit of a mess. I will get some pictures of the head unit in running and some more of the car shortly.
Imminent future upgrades..
I a looking at a RS4 or a 034 sway bar to stiffen the back end up, also some spacers to bring the wheels out a little
Later on this year the alloys definitely need refurbishing, some bigger brakes too but don't know which way to go yet.
Its taken me ages to get around to doing this. I bought my car last May. Came completely standard with 67k on the clock, full service history and a faulty RNS-E headunit.
Loved the car and how it looked but felt it could look better. So first thing was to get some 19" A6 lemans to upgrade to 18's it came with. at the same time I got some Eibach springs fitted to lower it a little.
I then took it to FR&R for a Stage 1 remap. The difference was night at day. Vastly improved the way the car drove.
I didnt really do much to it over the summer months due to getting married and other life stuff.
About a week ago the exhaust went. It was sounding a bit rough for a while so I have replaced that with a custo built stainless steel 3" turbo back from a local place called Zorstec. After that was fitted it was back to FR&R for a stage 2 remap.
Then it was on to getting the HiFi sorted. I looked around for a replacement LCD module for the RNS-E. I wasnt willing to part with the money that people were wanting for the replacement Audi one, nor the compatible ones from the likes of the Vauxhall Zafira.
So I started exploring the possibility of fitting a 6.5" 848x840px screen, they are available very cheaply (£30). They are not a direct compatible replacement. They use a small PCB which gives you a HDMI input, VGA and two composite inputs. I am going to look at wiring the RGB output of the RNS-E to one of the component inputs so the radio can be controlled more easily. At the moment the only visual output I have from the original part of the RNS is on the MFD.
The DVD drive was also faulty in the RNS-E so I removed it. In its place the driver board for the display sits.
Connected to the board was a Raspberry Pi 2 running OpenELEC.
Added to the Raspberry Pi is a 24bit I2S sound card which you can see sat on the top in the case. Also in there is a real time clock module so it can keep the time. On the outside of the case you can see the car power supply. This is set up to safely shut down the Raspberry pi when the ignition has been off for 5 minutes, handy for when just putting some fuel in.
Control of this at the moment is handled by a Bluetooth Amazon FireTV stick remote. I a currently working on a solution using the steering wheel controls by sniffing the messages from CAN and then sending them as keystrokes to the Raspberry Pi. I am waiting parts for this at the moment. The Raspberry Pi currently lives under the steering wheel in that little slot where you can keep the manuals etc. The wiring will be tidied when I fit my clutch switch tomorrow and I remove the trim.
Sorry if the timeline is a bit of a mess. I will get some pictures of the head unit in running and some more of the car shortly.
Imminent future upgrades..
I a looking at a RS4 or a 034 sway bar to stiffen the back end up, also some spacers to bring the wheels out a little
Later on this year the alloys definitely need refurbishing, some bigger brakes too but don't know which way to go yet.
