Interesting questions — I’ve wondered the same about the V8 stuff getting overlooked. Seems like most tuning/dev talk leans toward the V6 crowd. Would love to see more info on RWD conversions too.

 

I imagine that a 4.2 litre S5 with rear wheel drive only would be an oversteering nightmare at the adhesion limit. All that weight ahead of the front axle line is surely not ideal without all wheel drive?

 

I dont know the answer to your valid questions but try this...

1. The V8 is naturally aspirated so cannot be tuned or chipped.
2. Whereas the V6 cab be chipped very easily.
3. The V8s main problem (I had the S4) is that the engine is toooo far forward to the car is too heavy to make slow corners.
4. I would NEVER want the V8 with 2WD.

I drove my S4 from 100k to 200k kms and had LOADS of fun. I drove from south France to the north thro heavy driving snow and the car (on summer tyres) never put a wheel wrong even in the overtaking lane covered in snow. With RWD I would never have made that journey.

Simon

 

Perhaps it is all my experience with RWD in both Front Engine and Mid Engine placement that I feel removing some of the weight from the front would be helpful to this car.

Honestly I want to get it on the lift but I have my Roush on the lift now for a built motor and trans swap so it will be a little while before I can open it up for this S5.

But back to my thoughts on it, I feel that with the Front Diff and Axles removed you would drop a nice amount of weight. Then you could also move the mounting of the motor and trans further back, the big issues there (Me guessing) would be shortening the driveshaft, trans placement requiring shifter modification (I don't see this being to much different from some of the work done to move shifter placement in my FD when I went T56 but I need more time to confirm) and the fact you will make the notorious timing chain setup impossible to get to without engine removal.

But that along with other items I am sure I will find to remove I would hope could help the car gain back some of the weight disadvantage in both placement and amount.

Honestly the car feels fun but a diet would do it good... probably could say the same for myself lol.

But, getting back to my main topic, I have seen tune options for the S5 V8 and the RS5 V8 so the options to tune it exist. Plus with the Supercharger options for the V8 they have to have tuning options.

It looks like if I want to do this I am going to have to look into making something myself and most likely being the only one who wants to do it. I wonder if HP Tuners added this year of Audi to it's list at least then I could attempt to tune it with my current setup if I go this route.

 

I don't see the point in going through all that effort and time to gain what 30bhp? Or do 0-60 in 1 second faster? It does 0-60 in 5.4 seconds as it is stock and straight out of the factory. Even less with age and maintenance.

Let alone to go through all that and spend countless hours and money you might as well just got the RS5 to begin with for performance or just went and got the V6 S5...

No matter what you do, it's never gonna be this ultimate track car as it's too front heavy. Unless you wanna go the supercharger route, but then you're spending 10-11k without the kit even being installed and tuned and makes around 550 bhp. Totally the wrong car to modify in my opinion

You're better off renewing all the injectors, high pressure fuel pumps, in tank fuel pump, carbon clean, gearbox service, diff service and then you'll creep back the bhp to factory

 

This isn't about power, I have cars that are far better set up for straight line and track, this is more about removing a common point of failure.

The secondary question that has gotten more attention is more me thinking how I would want an S5 set up for myself, this one is for my son and for now it will stay AWD and he can pick how he wants to go but I have found myself thinking about picking up an S5 myself to try my more drastic change ideas.

Back to my original topic, knowing that these flaps will commonly end up having issues mechanically, it's logical to explore removing them.

 

Goodness Wanderor you sure like a challenge!! When I said no tuning sorry I was referring to the V8 4.2 normally aspirated motor fitted to my S4, the RS5 has a similar but MUCH more powerful engine which as you say CAN be tuned.

 

Ehh sometimes, I mean at times I like to do things and other times I just think they might be fun and then go do something else that I think will be simpler and half the time it is not.

But I swore we found a site claiming to tune the S5 V8 too, but then it is not uncommon to see claims and it turns out to not be true but I swore I saw an NA S5 and then the Boosted S5 tune options but since his is stock right now I wasn't pushing to hard to pay attention to how detailed they were/are.

I just noticed that many of the S5's I see online for sale mention having an issue with the Intake Flaps and it seems many people don't want to deal with itdue to how much you have to deal with to get the manifold off and then of course that you should do a carbon cleaning at the same time.

Figured if I was going to do this to his car with him, I should look into deletes because I know myself and I tend toremove things that are common failure points or repair them so I don't have to worry about them further and that lead me to finding the V6's have delete kits but the V8 doesn't sadly.

 

Actually yeah here are the tunes I found available for his S5 V8:
APR - $499

https://www.goapr.com/products/software/ecu_upgrade/gasoline/8/42l_ea824_fsi/parts/ECU-42L-FSI-S5

JHM -$399 (On Sale for $359 right now)

JHM ECU Tuning or Tune for B8 S5 w/ 4.2L FSI V8 (32v)

Audi JHM Tuning or Tune for B8-S5 w/ 4.2L FSI V8 (32v) . JH Motorsports - home to the world's fastest Audis. Shop now for best selection & quick shipping!

jhmotorsports.com

I believe there were others but none talk about the delete and I have not searched the forums to see what people think of any of the tuners so far or who they prefer but when he actually gets done doing a few modifications where it would be useful we can look back into tunes.

 

You can't delete these flaps, the engine won't run properly. It's there for a reason. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variable-length_intake_manifold

Also, the flaps aren't the problem, the carbon accumulation in the inlet trajectory is the culprit. If you want to improve your car, solve the root problem, not the symptom. Just keep the inlets clean and they won't fail. When they fail due to carbon build up, the flaps are the least of your problems... You can't run these 4.2 FSI engines on a budget.

 

You do realize many different car manufactures run similar designs with variable length runners and many of them have delete options.
Just because it's a variable length design that's not even built into the manifold itself doesn't mean you can't remove them.
Now if the lower runners are not serviceable, maybe but from what I've seen others have removed them and reinstalled them, sometimes incorrectly, so outside of possibly machining some pieces at this point I see a possibility.

I've actually talked to JHM and they feel they won't have any issues adjusting their tune for removing the flaps.

As for dealing with the carbon issue that's really only going to be solved by running injectors before the valves or repeated cleanings and it's easier to remove the manifold with all the extra vacuum lines, canisters such gone.

As for your comment about trying to be cheap, no where in this post was anything mentioned about trying to do things on a "budget".
However if that were a concern I don't think I'd own some of the cars I do.

 

Alright, so I decided to take this more seriously and will be picking up another S5 this week. Sadly which still a B8 it is the Aluminum Intake Manifold with the slightly different Flap setup.

What I plan to do still is finish helping my son with his 2010 S5 just to get it cleaned up and the basic upgrades I have gotten him on (Downpipe Kit, Q5 Front Brakes, Exhaust, Shift Plate, Cleaning and hopefully basic fix of the Flaps on it currently and any other suspension stuff we find while going through it)and then on mine I am going to see if I need to make while new runners with the setup for deleting the flaps as well as my idea of deleting the Front Diff and pieces.

I do have two projects in front of this (Built motor and trans for my Roush so I can go for over 1000HP as mine is a Gen 1 setup and New built LS as well as 8.8 Diff Upgrade for my FD which I am switching to Haltech and I want to get that done first before October) as well as building my new garage so I can get a lift up at the new house and stop traveling to my old house to use my lift and tools etc.

That stated, I will at least get a good view of the runners on the composite manifold and then I can compare to the Aluminum one. I have a porter back in AZ that I might have port an intake manifold for me depending on what I find and what he prefers to work with. But we shall see how far I get with this in the coming months.
Knowing me I will be mirroring most of the mods I am helping my son do on his S5 so I will be picking up Q5 Front Brakes, Downpipes, Exhaust and based on how his shifter feels go with something similar or different for myself.

I don't see JHM having an issue with tuning my 08 vs his 10 but I will double check with them.

So slow rolling project but felt I would let everyone know I am moving forward with this and bought a car to do it. I will keep this thread more on the Intake Manifold Flaps and the Delete, etc and then when I work on the Front Diff Delete piece I will make a different thread as I imagine that is going to take far more time and may not even be possible depending on how it is set up.

 

So I have a v8 s5 deleted flapper and did a stage two tune and never had issues from it- maybe a thousand other unrelated but nothing with the flapper being deleted and then tuning

 

Thanks for the info co88, I have been a little distracted since I bought the S5 I am going to build, I also traded in my Cayman and bought a new Z and kinda let myself go crazy modding it.

I should get back to the S5 next month most likely.

 

They are frustrated- my first post on here tells my nightmare and I’m still fighting with her! She is worth it tho only had 95k miles for 09 - ex was a *** when he went to pick it up and after only paying 5k and now putting over 4k yeah she is my project for sure

 

I know what you mean but then I have a bad habit of collecting projects, I'll check out your posts on what you have done I am sure it will be helpful to see any pictures and info you have posted.