What's a good EGT range to look for in a B5 A4?

My background is mostly in pickup truck turbodiesels. In that world, 1200f+ is considered "bad" for the health of the turbo, but anything below that is acceptable and keeping it in the 1000f-1200f range for WOT runs leads to ideal power output. But then diesel and gas burn at different temperatures, so I was wondering what 1.8T tuners consider to be "too high".

 

For a completely stock turbo/engine, you don't really need to monitor EGT's. When you get into the BT/BAT range you'll want to keep an eye on AFR, IAT, and EGT very closely. In that scenario, you'd want to add a sensor bung in one of the exhaust manifold runners for a EGT sensor. The wideband O2 sensor in our cars isn't very accurate in that regard because it's too far away from the head. In any event, you want to stay in the 800-900 deg C range.