I got around to making a 3rd gear pull up to 6500 rpm today on the stock tune.  It was almost entirely uphill so as far as the time aspect is concerned the results are not valid.  I was more interested in recording how the stock tune performs and a couple of other measurements which are shown below.

The pressure drop through the stock intercoolers continues to increase as rpm increases, but with the stock tune only requesting between 8-9 psi the k03’s have no trouble supplying the requested boost.

I continue to be impressed by how well the stock intercoolers work with the k03’s and stock tuning.  This pseudo-FATS pull was made after warming the car up in stop and go traffic, making a stop to pickup some tires, and then almost immediately after coming out of a parking lot I was turning onto the onramp and going wot. That’s the type of scenario that can show IAT’s going through the roof.

As can been seen from the chart comparing the compressor outlet temperature to that at the intake air temperature sensor, the stock IC’s really did a good job even with a pull out to 6500 rpm.

I am interested in recording the pressure of the exhaust gasses entering the turbocharger’s turbine which should be nearly the same as the turbine inlet pressure (TIP).  To do this without altering the exhaust manifold necessitated piecing together an adapter to which I could attach a pressure sensor.  With some helpful suggestions from Jonathon C. I pieced together this adapter.  I also acquired a 4 Bar absolute pressure sensor from Auber instruments to feed pressure readings into the Innovate LMA-3 for post drive analysis.

Now that I have all of the equipment on hand I need to get it installed, wired up, and calibrated so that I can see how much pressure is building up before the K03 turbine inlet.

A while back I purchased a set of Phenolic spacers from Autospeed Performance to use on my car.  A well read visitor will note that I have thoroughly documented how the similar phenolic thermal spacers from 034 failed to impress me.  So why would I purchase another set of these?  It wasn’t to try and prove or disprove Autospeed’s claims that:

• Proven to reduce intake air temps as much as 10%
• Reduced intake air temperatures result in better throttle response
• Maximizes spark advance
• Reducing the influence of detonation
• Overall increased torque and power

Though it would be great if these phenolic spacers managed to do all that for my S4.  No, I bought the Autospeed spacers because I had sold off the 034 spacers only to discover a while later that my RS4 Y-pipe did not fit on top of the stock S4 manifold as well without them.  I simply bought the phenolic thermal spacers to raise the intake manifold slightly.

As a side bonus I do plan on subjecting the Autospeed product to a similar rigorous evaluation as I did with the 034 product, who knows, maybe the phenolic material Autospeed uses in their thermal spacers is capable of delivering the results claimed.