all you really have to do is let the car idle for about 60 seconds before you take off, then just stay off the boost untill the coolant gauge starts to move. dont floor it out of your driveway. and to cool it off, stay out of boost as much as possible for the last mile and let it idle for 30 seconds in the driveway before you turn it off. you dont have to sit there for 5 minuits unless you tore *** up your driveway.

i dont think thats correct at all. the manual trans is much simpler, theres a clutch sandwiched between a pressure plate and the flywheel. if you know how to not destroy the clutch, it will hold up for a very long time. if you upgrade the clutch (which is much easier and cheaper to do then an auto) the stock driveline can hold 600+ whp.

the tiptronic has a ton of parts that are all designed for stock power levels. there arent upgrades (other then the level10) for the tip and its really hard to tell when its about to **** the bed. the only thing you can do is to change the fluid regularly, which is 5x more expensive then a manual. and when it dies, its a multi thousand dollar repair bill. when a clutch goes, its $500-1000.

yes premium gas is important. dont put in anything else especially if you have a chip and running more boost.

yea what ghost said.....

and if you r getting your car and want to chip it right off the bat, go with speedtuning, its way cheaper than revo, giac, apr, and it has very similar power and torque results...

then later on when you get your k04 go with GIAC, they have a really aggressive tune for the K04....

IMO why spend like $400-500 twice? just buy the $150-200 speedtuning chip and when you get your k04 then you can go GIAC? just my opinion though...

if you plan on a ~k04 upgrade later on, i would get giac just because they offer a discount if you want to upgrade later. if you plan on bigger then a k04 either giac, apr, or unitronics. stay away from revo for B5's. if you dont plan on upgrading the turbo and just want a chip, speedtuning is the way to go.

What do you mean? more than 250? Maybe, but I don't think I'll be able to afford it with college and its rising mileage.

Thanks for the advice on tranny, I'm feeling more like a manual now. I was planning on getting an exhaust right off the bat. Is it really worth the grand to upgrade to a KO4? I thought you had to upgrade to chip, but now I'm starting to re-think that...

Also, since this car is going to be a daily driver that will take me places out of cell range on mountains or by rivers and such, will chipping it or lots of mods take away from its reliability?

with a k04 and a chip you wont have a problem, a k04 is not a huge upgraded turbo over the k03 just a lil bump to get you a few extra ponies....
unless you start to launch your car every 5 mins. and run it hard, then you will have a problem..

theres a lot of guys on here running the k04 or who had it before that used their cars as daily drivers...

soo it depends on you and how you treat your car...

So the KO4 is less reliable? I mean, I am a teenager, prone to doing stupid things at high speed with my car, so I need it to stand up to some level of abuse.

dont get me wrong we all get on the gas once in a while and run our cars pretty hard, some more than others....
but like i said if you are going to be doing this be sure to let it cool off a bit longer and give it all its routine maintenance maybe a couple hundred miles ahead of time...
but yea it will hold...

I'm not an expert here but can atleast provide the viewpoint of someone with tiptronic.

I know there are a few people running elim setups on a tiptronic transmission. So the upside is that you can go up to ~350hp (+/-) with the auto. Ghost is right that there is really no upgrade to the auto so there is no way to go beyond ~350. In this case, it doesnt sound like that is a problem. Some s4s have auto in them, and as far as I know it is the same auto as the a4, which means the auto was not designed for stock a4 power.

I dont know how often the auto transmission fails, but I have heard of very few cases.

From what I here, the manual will need to be upgraded with even modest power gains. It is not cheap but not to expensive either. The upside is that you can upgrade it to handle ~600hp.

Anyway, I'm not saying the tip is better than manual, but it is certaintly an option for someone who is not a diehard stick person with massive power ambitions.

Thanks AUF. I'll see if I can't drive both transmissions and decide what I like best. I'm willing to put some money into this car for power gains, but I'm going to excercise restraint because I need to keep some money in the bank for college and starting life in the real world expenses.

Complete nonsense... I run a stock 2.8 trans in my 1.8t.... cough cough 2.0T.... with way more power than he will probably ever get close to, and it holds up perfectly... Mike is near 600awhp with a stock 1.8t trans, so really, dont worry about the capabilities of them. The only upgrades you will need is a clutch and possibly a flywheel depending how far you take the modding, but thats textbook of most any modded car. If these transmissions are holding the power of gt3582r's, then there are no worries.