Be Excellent To Each Other

Audi's what?

Audi's are better than you.

Audi's making me think the jokes are getting wurst.

Well yes it was a conscious decision on my part to get something that really doesn't look at all snazzy or sporty. For example the car below is one he has in stock at the moment and was available for me to test drive yesterday as well, but I decided I just didn't want another 'in your face' styled car, which I have had in the past. (The Impreza STi, for example.)

Whatever car I have also has to provide decent family transport too, so that's four doors and a decent boot, and also needs to be a nice place for Mrs H and Jnr to be for when we're just pootling over the mountain for a trip to Douglas or something.

On top of that I do rather like the whole 'Q-Car' concept, to most people the S4 just looks like an A4 S-Line, but the cues are there for those in the know, the proper S badge, the quad exhaust pipes, the different grille and wing mirrors etc. But yeah, fundamentally it looks fairly bland/boring/dull/etc delete as appropriate - and yet this is a car that will out-charge pretty much everything else on the road. (Albeit with the handling caveats Cavey identifies when really pushed.)

I liked it, I took it out for a fairly long test drive, and found myself thinking it was a car I'd like to experience owning for a while. It'll almost certainly be gone for something else in two years tops regardless, as that's about my limit for keeping a car and always has been

But yes, he had this on his forecourt as will, didn't even bother taking it for a test drive after getting back in the S4.

Spent the longest (stupidest) amount of time yesterday trying to work out exactly what ADS and/or sports diff, and entertainment options my S4 has got on it. This wasn't helped by the fact I didn't take any interior shots on my test drive so I was having to do it all from memory, comparing what buttons and knobs I'd remembered seeing, with forum posts describing the options, and looking at photos on car review/sales sites, or videos on YouTube.

Ideally I'd have driven to the dealers to take a look, but thanks to me making a fantastic lunch for the family 'Keith Floyd' style I'd been over the legal limit from about 11:30am onwards. I could have rung him up but I wasn't going to be barking instructions down the phone along the lines of, 'On the climate control cluster, does the middle button along the bottom row say 'SETUP' or 'AC'?'

The overarching issue is that Audi sell their cars with a ridiculous list of options, even for a high-end model like the S4 where you'd think a lot of stuff would just be standard, and the list changes year to year. Compounding this is that the 2009/2010 model year saw them fundamentally revamp their MMI (MultiMedia Interface) from second-gen to third-gen. (You definitely want third gen.)

ADS is Audi Drive Select and was a £2500 option (!), and apparently you really want this. It has four settings, COMFORT, DYNAMIC, AUTO or INDIVIDUAL. They're kind of as you'd expect and by all accounts COMFORT is really good when you're ferrying people around and not at all interested in pressing on, it's also better on fuel in this mode. DYNAMIC is where you want it when driving properly, AUTO where you want it to adapt to how you're driving at the time although apparently is more just like a midpoint between COMFORT and DYNAMIC, and INDIVIDUAL allows you to tweak the variables manually.

http://www.audiforum.ca/3-0l-supercharg ... post184898

I know it has ADS because I definitely remembered seeing the buttons for this under the multimedia interface in the dash, unfortunately there's no way to tell if it has the sports diff or not just from looking at it, this will be an extra option available through the ADS settings on the screen, or getting it up on a ramp and looking to see if it has the sports diff module on the rear axle. The sports diff is supposed to be fantastic, and tries to give the car more of an oversteer feel as opposed to understeer, which is reckoned to be the main problem with these big Audis - so yes I'd be happy if it has the diff, but for the way I drive 99% of the time it's not the end of the world.

https://youtu.be/2mcmvkBkVeg << Here is Chris Harris trying to get an S4 Avant fitted with the sports diff to oversteer. (Spoiler - he manages it.)

The ADS + sports diff came in at about £4000, so the sports diff was an extra £1500 on top of the ADS.

CONCLUSION - I definitely have ADS. Confirmation on sports diff will have to wait until I have the car.

As for the entertainment/MMI situation, I think I got there in the end. I definitely have MMI which is Multimedia Interface, but was shocked to discover that MMI wasn't standard on a car that started at £37K! The giveaway for MMI is the cluster of controls and little knob thing behind the gear lever, there are loads of S4s on Autotrader where this isn't present at all, and instead they just have one of the standard Audi head unit arrangements (called stuff like Chorus or Symphony).

I then had to try and work out if I have MMI 2G or 3G (second or third gen, nothing to do with phones!). They switched over in 2009 but there's a bit of confusion around build dates and model years, so whilst I think my car is the right side of the switch and will have 3G, I couldn't be 100% certain so did a lot more detective work.

Given what I knew for sure about my car I eventually concluded that I have MMI 3G + NAV, (this took me fucking hours, the number of variants is fucking ridiculous), but I can't be 100% sure if it's NAV HIGH or NAV LOW. NAV HIGH added Nvidia graphics (!) for proper 3D sat nav style graphics, where as NAV LOW was a more traditional style of nav graphics.

The real big thing on MMI 3G for me is that 3G supports SDHC cards in the SD slots up to 32GB per card (it has two slots), whereas MMI 2G was capped at SD cards so could only read up to 2GB per card, which is shit. (Apparently there are some 4GB Transcend cards that work in this.)

In the pictures below you can see an S4 that doesn't have MMI at all (or ADS), you can see one that has MMI but no ADS (the green arrow points to where the ADS buttons are on mine), and also one that doesn't have MMI but does have ADS (the green circle is where the ADS buttons are). Finally there's one that has MMI and ADS, which is the same as mine, you can see the extra ADS buttons under the multimedia interface.

CONCLUSION - 99.9% sure I have MMI 3G + DVD + NAV, jury is still out on NAV HIGH or NAV LOW.

OVERALL - Mine is very nicely specced, having had a proper dig around on Autotrader yesterday there are an awful lot of S4s on there that are missing all sorts of options that mine has on it. I'd put the list price on mine with the options at £43-44K or thereabouts, from a base spec cost of £37K.

Also, price-wise I seem to have done very well too. Obviously I did some research beforehand to check the price mine was being sold at was reasonable, but I hadn't realised there was such a raft of options to factor in as well, which makes the price on mine pretty damn good overall.

Rather looking forward to collecting it now, hopefully tomorrow but could be Tuesday. Depends on when the tyres turn up and how quickly he can turn all the paperwork around.

Apparently if you register the vin on the My Audi site you can get a full list of options and spec.

Pffft, where's the fun in that?

I don't have the VIN anyway, although I suppose I could have rung him up and asked for it.

I understand that the Supercharged six in the s4 can be very easily chipped to be lot more powerful without any reliability issues as well...

TL:DR but it does have Parktronic, right?

So I just made a 32 mile round trip to the dealers, in the hope that my car would still be outside on the forecourt. (I know he's closed on Sunday, I just wanted to look through the windows to nail down for sure what MMI revision was in there, and get photographic records.)

Fortunately it was there, albeit with a big SOLD sign in the windscreen, and I was able to gather the HARD EVIDENCE required.

Going off this video here https://youtu.be/O34bGa1U2rE and various other sources I've referred to, I must have the HDD NAV which is the better version of the two. Mine has the little joystick on top of the MMI dial, as you can see in the video and in my picture below.

So overall it looks like mine has a pretty tasty spec. Assuming it is HDD NAV then there will be a 40GB hard drive in there, a large amount of which is given over to the nav stuff, but the remainder I can copy my own media to (a 10GB partition I believe). I'm pretty sure I saw the 'jukebox' option when I was playing around with it on the test drive, which means the hard drive is in there.

https://youtu.be/B46lcL8Dcig







Stage 1 takes it to 400bhp without any additional hardware - http://www.revotechnik.com/product-deta ... 46/stage-1

Stage 1+ can be as much as 448bhp (!) but needs additional hardware as well - http://www.revotechnik.com/product-deta ... age-1-plus



Sensors front and rear, and it shows an overhead view of the car on the screen when they're active, with nice graphics to show what you're close to.

Mate, that's some serious dedication there. We truly are total opposites; I just check if there's a steering wheel and the exhaust sounds loud.

In other news, I've decided that, what with the polar bear friendly advent of putt-putt 4-cylinder mid-engined Porsches from now on, I'm finished with Porsche, so it's time to get busy with "interesting" rather than out-and-out sports vehicles.

I was going to get a V8 Mustang but even I wince at the thought of 20mpg real-world (even the Range Rover does 32mpg average FFS, and that's a 2-tonne behemoth that can probably drive up Everest). Looking at the tax advantages, running a truck through the Company seems mightily attractive, this being nowhere near as costly as a company car, and having no polar-bear engine/emissions limits either.... basically if it's a truck, not a car, you can spec it with a chuffing great Cavey-friendly monster of an engine without being told off. Bonus! There's 'no replacement for displacement', right?

VW are bringing out a 3-litre V6 diesel version of the Amarok pick up, which can be specced with full leather, permanent 4wd and offroad, all-seasons rubber etc., which appeals (in bad boy black obv.). That's the same engine as used in the Cayenne, so should be interesting.

https://www.volkswagen-vans.co.uk/range/new-amarok

I feel this is subtle transport missing from my life at the moment.

OK, it's a bit of a step change from the rapier-like Cayman S, my Porsche-obsessed bruv is having kittens at this point. But I ain't paying our upwards of £65k+ for a Golf-engined piece of crap (I don't care how fast they tell me it is; if I just wanted to be the fastest guy on the road I'd have bought a GT-R.... ugh), and I cannot stand the way Porsche get the mags to review all the cars we enthusiasts actually WANT (Cayman GT-4, 911-R, 911-RS etc.) but don't make 'em available.... last I looked, the supposed £130k 911-R sold for almost a million quid FFS

http://www.autocar.co.uk/car-news/new-c ... 31-million

Supply and demand eh... that's some contemptuous way to treat your customer base!

Christ, my car of two years has a button the gear stick that I have no idea what it does, if anything!

How much would that cost to do? Then how much would your insurance go up by?

Must admit I do fancy a fast car, but would want something like yours shape wise to get the family in on those odd days my wifes car is getting serviced etc

Ejector seat

Overdrive

Get a PS4

If you look at the front, there is probably an emitter to tell the traffic lights to change and pressing the button activates it.

Do...do you not press it to allow reverse...?

Looks like Stage 1+ comes in at around £2200, so if you knock off the hardware costs of Stage 1+ I guess a Stage 1 would be about £1400-£1500.

http://www.audi-sport.net/xf/threads/re ... 6t.232645/

One of the guys at work is a proper Audi-nutcase and he's very much involved with the local Audi scene, so I'll have a yap with him about my options. (He's got a tripped-out older S4 that he's had dynoed at very close to 1000bhp.)

That said, even at its stock 333bhp the S4 is a very fast car, (as I discovered on my test drive), so I can't imagine I'll be in a tremendous hurry to drop another couple of grand on it to make it even faster, plus the insurance implications might be 'interesting', I guess that's where Adrian Flux would come into play.

It's weird; I've always shunned any form of tuning on any of my cars (unless going all the way back to the '80s with my old Fords) - but I usually tune the balls off all my bikes, even the last two, which have been Harleys for goodness sake. How odd.

Also, old-gen S4 with 1,000bhp...?
Shit, is he running that on methanol or summat? I would've thought that sort of power would have burst the block and/or required full rebuild every 10 miles! Fair play.

I'm not particularly well versed on the details, although it's a project car of his (very much not a daily car! I've only ever seen it twice), and he's taken the thing to bits and put it back together about three million times by all accounts.

1000hp or thereabouts is the figure I'm sure I've heard. I'll ping him on Facebook just to check I'm not talking total bollocks

Answer is in so I did over-egg it a bit

Shouldn't have gone to this trouble lol.
Heck, even 600PS+ is hugely impressive.... as is 201mph. He sure sounds a horrible man, we need to meet at some point.

That RS4 is pretty much the best car Audi have made in the last 15 years for me. (The R8 doesn't count, it's a Lambo)

Mmmm. Num nums.

No, it's a semi automatic.

The Button doesn't seem to do anything and I can't find reference to it the manual

What car is it?

Took the Celica out for a good few laps around Curborough today. You'd probably enjoy it Grim..., lots of Pumas out today!

One of my many laps - managed to get about 10 on video before the GoPro battery died. Annoyingly, I span out on my first and last lap, but didn't have the camera on for either - on the first one because I'd forgot, and on the last because the battery had gone kaput.

Cool!

It's not the fag lighter is it?

Bought two new interior lights for Mrs Zs car (one had blown so wanted two that matched).

Went for LEDs.

£3.49 including delivery.

Sounds unpleaseant, You should probably see a doctor about that



There's probably one behind the steering wheel in that car too.

It'd be a fag lighter after you got out

Zing central!

Oooh matron!

Wise move.

I bought four spark plugs for the Exciting Rover and a gap measuring whatnot. £13.88.

Which means I have to redo my sums now.

One I've seen performance gains figures from the weight reduction I'll be looking into the modification for my own car.

For better handling, pour cement into the floor to lower centre of gravity.

Old mate of mine had a wreck of a Mk II Capri back in '86 or so - used to keep a concrete slab in the boot to provide inertia/damp down its more, ahem, wayward handling. The shocks probably didn't have a drop of oil between them and the bloody thing must've been bent a dozen times - by him and it's 20-odd previous owners... the shell had more P38 and ferrous (III) oxide than steel.

It's really quite amusing to consider we're all still alive. (He was only round my house weekend before last... we've known each other well over 30 years and still doing the same old shite like this, just more money involved and shinier toys)

My Vogtland springs have that base covered.

Meant to post pic of the springs they replaced. The front two were different heights and one was bent!

Much better now.

Yay S4 get! Boo no sports diff

However all my conclusions about what I thought was on the car were correct, so I have the super-high HDD nav and all that jazz with the 3G MMI.

It's also got a connector in the glovebox with cables for Apple gizmos (30-pin and Lightning), and also USB - so all bases are covered.

Unfortunately I got stuck in a line of traffic all the way home with a freight truck at the head of the convoy, so didn't really see the high side of about 42mph. Did manage an amazing 24mpg though!

See post three here.
http://www.vxronline.co.uk/forum/showth ... 5-My-Corsa

Wow.

Superb.

Email him our joining page.

Reset all the computer-me-bobs on the car last night so I get numbers and shit for my ownership regime. This was the MPG after the drive to work this morning which does at least suggest borderline sensible MPG is within the realms of possibility, although this was a proper granny drive as it was snowy and icy as fuck up on the mountain so I did not go fast at all.

Would be quite embarrassing to bin the thing on my first full day of ownership.

Oh man, that thread has cheered me right up

A little knowledge can go a long way (sub please check)

I'm sure there used to be a lot more posts in that thread but it got pruned along the way.