Hello all!

I'm a new Audi owner and member at these forums, and in the past few months I've come up with a few questions regarding my new car.

I bought an Audi A4 1.8L '97 (NON TURBO) with 125.000KM's on it and now I'm up to 131.000KM...

Anyhow, the car is running great, and I've just changed the airfilter, front break-pads and spark-plugs which were all quite worn out already.

Now, I have a few questions:

1. I'm currently using 95-octane gas and I'm getting aprox. 10liters to 100km ... I've heard that switching to 98-octane fuel (though somewhat more expensive) would probably give me better milage and even translate into some performance gains. Are either of these states true, and if so, what would I have to do when I switch over to 98-octane ? (Change fuel-filter?)

2. I've just started wearing in my new breakpads and after some rough driving today I got home to find my breaks smoking (literally) -- how bad is this, and when the time comes, is it worth it to switch to ventilated disks (replacing the solid stock ones).

3. Finally, I find that the power-output for the car is relatively good, but nothing extraordinary. My question, though, is whether it's normal to have my rpm's rise to 3,000 at 100km/h and 3,500 at 120km/h ? Is there some tuning that can be performed to increase performace/lower RPMs or is this the normal output for the 1.8 engine?

Thanks everyone!Finally, if anyone wants to post any recommendation on things that are worth changing in the car please post them here. The car is 100% stock (to my knowledge).

 

Performance gains from a higher grade gasoline will be unnoticable, if there are any at all. You will most likely have a small increase in gas mileage.