Thanks for the info This is the one I'm looking at: 034Motorsport Solid Rear Sway Bar. I'm not sure which to consider more. The 034 is a little bigger and tried and tested for direct compatibility with the B7 A4s, which I'm sure the ECS one is too, but 034 specifically states that, which I like lol. I also am drawn by seemingly higher quality materials, and yes, the fact that all the necessary installation hardware is included; I hate having to make multiple orders from different places for one part's install, so I tend to avoid it if I can. At the same time though, a solid 80 dollar difference between the two talks a little as well, so I dunno for sure yet...

As for the exhaust, I'm not too concerned about the time/work. After doing the same part on my friend's MazdaSpeed 3, which, for those who don't know Mazdas, has a transversely mounted engine with the exhaust mani/turbo on the back side, with about 3 inches of room between that and the firewall. You wanna talk about a pain in the Aß... That job took us (5 guys) almost 8 hours with air tools, but on jack stands. I'm planning to do mine on a lift, and with the easier access to the bolts (it looks tight, as you mentioned, but once you take the airbox out, all sorts of room opens up) I expect to be able to get it done in an afternoon with time to pop off to a pub for a bit after I'm just excited to get it on, even if it does end up taking all day

As for the color matched reflectors; I'm right there with ya. The red ones in the rear don't bother me that much, I think I'll just put some vinyl tint tape stuff on those to shade them down a bit, but the amber up front has. definitely. got. to. go. I hate amber anything on my car; some day, I'll nub up the motivation to rip apart the headlight housings to do the clear corner mod. See, I don't mind the amber light, that's fine; but that little circle of amber plastic drives me bananas. Its such a hideous color and completely throws off the elegance of these cars in my opinion...

 

The 034 is a fantastic set up, and I believe you can get it adjustable (for more of course), but I didn't want to get out of control. The RS4 bar is what, 2mm smaller in diameter, and is made for the B7 platform. Seriously, plug and play. To me, $80 is $80 spent on something else. Not only that, how many times (if you search audizine or here) do people say "RS4 sway bar, best bang for your buck"? I am inclined to believe it, and the difference is amazing. Hell, took me 50 minutes with an air ratchet to get the old one off and install the new one with my cousin.

For the pipe, it's good you have a plan and a location to get it done. Time, location and lack of propper tools was really a hinderance for me, so I had to pay. Make sure you get tuned to the pipe when you are done. The RAI isn't going to throw a code, and I know that people say "Stage 2 is to just get rid of the CEL" but I have my doubts. The tune really pulls it all together.

As for those stupid side markers, I'm probably going to remove them and spray bomb them with the paint code of my car.

 

You'd be better off masking off the surrounding area if you paint; taking them off - the fronts at least- requires pulling the bumper. For me, I'm just gonna order the $10 replacement reflectors that are a smoked, clear plastic off ecs and put those in. I personally don't want the mismatched bit of paint mingled in on the bumper- if I were to paint that particular area, I would shave the whole reflector off and respray the whole bumper. Which Horus knows mine could use a respray; I got hella roadrash- mostly from the original owner. Someday when my power goals are satisfied and I have the extra pennies, I'll shave the reflectors, cold-weld the cupra lip to the bumper, respray the whole front end, and clearbra that $hit lol.

As for the bar, the one in my link *is* the adjustable one ;p but you do make a good point on saving the extra bucks; and getting that one from ecs that already has free shipping would allow me to bundle a couple smaller things in with it- like the smoked reflectors- that I've held off buying for a while cuz its a minimum of about $13 bucks for ecs to ship to me, so it's kinda stupid IMO to order a $10 item and pay almost 120% of the item cost to get it here... idk, we'll see. Gonna be a couple weeks before I have enough saved up to order either of them so I got time to weigh the options.

Regarding the pipe install, I know exactly what you mean about tool deficiency and time constraints. That's the exact reason major things like timing belt and a front end suspension rebuild on my b5 were done by my mechanic; it took them- guys who have all the tools and years of experience - 8 and 6 hours respectively for those two jobs. I wouldn't have been able to drive that car for a week if I had tried to DIY those. Very worth the labor costs to have the jobs done in a reasonable amount of time, and done 100% correct too. I'm iffy on my ability to do a tbelt; its such a precision item that I don't know if I want to risk my inexperienced hands on. At least, not without the aid of someone that *has* done that job before to check me as I go.

 

Played hookie from work yesterday. Picked up a new N80 valve plus clips for $21 at dealership. Going to replace it this weekend. A lot of articles I read state that the N80 valve should probably be a regular maintanance item. With my car having a bit more than 75k miles on it, I figured it's probably a good idea to replace this. It's a cheap item, and can be replaced in about 20 minutes with a pair of pliers.

 

^ Which one is that again? I have heard so many people mix references between the DV, N80, 710N and a number of other things that I've lost track of what the hell is what, and what it does for that matter lol. I know for certain what the DV is, does, looks like and where it is on my car; can you post up a pic of which one the N80 is, and enlighten me on what it does maybe? I think someone once said it was part of the internal wastegate once, but like I said, a lot of people seem to mix and match the names of various valves so I have no idea haha

 

audizine.com replaced-the-n80-valve-no-CEL-smoother-idle-no-vibrations-when-in-D

Check it out, with pictures!

 

Point 1: you should consider editing your link above. You seem to have missed a colon after the http in the url so the link doesn't take you anywhere. I found it by right clicking your link, clicking to copy link location, pasting that in the address bar, and seeing that it was missing the colon; inserted that and it took me to the page

Point 2: This isn't what I thought it was, but good info regardless; I think I may consider swapping that out to see if it takes care of some of the noise in the engine bay. I gathered from the link that some of the pertinent ticking that is present in there could be caused by this. I know most of that noise is just the fact that its FSI, but mine seems to be a lot louder than expected so since its such a cheap part and easy to swap out, I think I'll go through with it, even though I have no codes or anything about it.

Point 3: unrelated, but thought I'd throw it out there. Got my downpipe installed and I tell ya it couldn't have gone any smoother as far as doing it on jack stands. Going at a leisurely pace, we had it done in about 3 hours; if we had been gunning to be done asap and had a lift to do it on, we could have easily made 2 hours. All of the bolts broke without much difficulty, didn't need air tools at all, and putting the new one in was incredibly smooth. You are right though, it is pretty raspy. Its not unbearable though, to me at least, so overall I'm satisfied. And for not having a tune to go with it, I still can tell a difference. Definitely seems more torque-ey in the midrange and a little quicker getting up to speed. Obviously, I won't see the full potential of it until its tuned, but for what it is right now, I'm pleased Can't wait to finish the system to smooth out that rasp though; as I said, its not unbearable, but its definitely not the tone that I want long term.

 

Fixed. Stupid interwebs

I haven't gotten to mine yet. Have the parts and clips ready to go, but never seem to have the time. I'm hoping to get it done this weekend, unless of course the wife decides I need to paint more in the Slanty Shanty.

Damn it, I new it was going to be easier than I though. Should have found a way to do it myself. As for the sound and smell? I can't stand the sound in the morning at warm up. Loud as a Harley, and I don't like it. Don't like the smell either. Because I got the RAI set up, I think I'm going to buy their high flow cat and swap out the test pipe. It's going to have to wait though.

As far as the raspiness, I think that swapping out to the high flow cat might fix that a bit. However, the performance is deffinately different.

Unrelated, I think I need to check the gap on my plugs. I can feel the car misfiring. I would start with the coil packs, but those are brand new. I honestly think I gapped the plugs to much, and am going back down to .28.

I'd really love a set of Okida coil packs, but just cannot justify the cost of them.

 

Yea, time is always against us. Let us know how it goes and if you notice any difference with it in there, since its not something going in to fix an actual problem.

The HFC will bring your cold start noise down a bit, and definitely take care of the smell, but the raspiness probably won't change too much. Most of that noise, as I understand it, is due to the bottleneck induced by the reducer that's connecting the downpipe to the rest of the stock piping.

I think I just need to change my plugs lol. Somehow, not 2 hours after doing the downpipe, I blew a coilpack while driving home and of course, in the diagnosis leading up to that determination, I checked the plugs too and they didn't look bad per se, but they did look a little burnt. I don't have any firing problems though, so maybe they're fine and just look the way they do because of FSI.. I dunno lol

I thought with a tune and all the other goodies, they were supposed to be gapped shorter than normal, which I believe is .32? What plugs do you have in there anyway? Are they a step colder than stock? IIRC, stock is iridium, which is colder than platinum, but too warm for a tuned motor so after a tuning and other upgrades, we're supposed to do copper plugs, which are colder than the iridium?
See, I was actually thinking about changing mine soon, just in lieu of how they looked when I was diagnosing the gnarly misfire I had going on care-of blown coil pack (still haven't figured out how installing a downpipe fried that, btw, but whatever) and I was going to do a step colder in case that in combination with the extra flow from the downpipe is by some absurd happenstance what fried the coil; even though that seems completely illogical to me, I have long learned to not be surprised by seemingly completely unrelated things being the cause of problems with these cars. Anyhow, I was going to change the plugs, and then realized I wasn't completely certain what actually is a step colder, what gap they should be at, etc. so whatever clarification you could throw on that would be sweet

 

Here's the deal. So after reading This thread on the zine, I got it in my head to gap my plugs at .032.

I have NGK BKR7EIX in there right now (iridium) but am going to pull them and regap to .028

Do yourself a favor. Go here and get all new plugs and coilpacks at the same time. Ultra convenient, they sell it as a kit. That's what I did a couple weeks (months?) ago, but I gapped the plugs too big. Gap them at .028 and you'll be good.