In the past on other cars, I've been able to get more response out of the car, especially at the low end on a motor that's designed mainly for top-end power, by advancing the ignition timing a few degrees. It's no drastic power gain, but it does make some difference. Has anyone done this on their Audi? I have a 30v 2.8L, and I'm not sure about doing this on this engine. If you have done it, how was it done? Is there a mechanical adjustment to do it, or is it done via VAGCOM? On past cars, I've been able to slightly turn a cam positioning sensor to create the timing change, but on the Audi I am not sure about how to do it, if it can (or should) be done.

I searched various combinations of "adjust ignition timing", "change ignition timing", and "advance ignition timing" but pretty much all that came up were discussions about fuel octane, increased boost, and the effects of and need for timing changes as a result of these things. There was no mention that I found about how to intentionally alter the timing. Anyone?

 

Thats what chips do. On the 2.8 most all of the power gains come from advancing the timing. "Adjusting" the cam sensors will probably just cause cam sensor faults. The timing is electronically controlled by the ecm, no mechanical adjustments there.

 

Exactly what I was looking for - thank you. I figured that on a car with as much computer control as the A4 has, that might be the case. Figured it was still worth looking into. Looking at cam sensors, there really isn't a way on these to adjust them but I thought there might be some other way besides shelling out $500 for a chip. OK then, screw that lol.

 

If you really wanted to you could oval out the bolt holes for the cam sensors,but that would most likly result in cam timing faults with no gain in the ignition timing.

 

Yeah I agree with you on that. If it's not already meant to be adjusted, that's not the kind of thing I'm gonna go messing with on this car. Seems like it's just gonna be asking for trouble.