When it comes down to it, these forums on AZ have served as an inspiration and an education. Prior to purchasing my S6 in NOV2016 (although I bought it 'new', it had been sitting at the dealership for nearly a year), I had been driving a Volkswagen Passat for 12 years, had never owned a 'luxury' car, and had never even changed my own oil!
I retired from the Army in OCT2016, and purchased the car as both a retirement present and as a project to start a new hobby that I could work on with my teenage sons. I haven't been able to do quite as much outdoor physical stuff anymore due to a bunch of health issues, so I thought something I could work on in the garage any time of year would be fun. Being fairly OCD in nature, it all went downhill from there.....
The car: 2016 S6, premium plus, but with most of the option I wanted, including the sports package and LED headlights. I was looking for an AWD luxury/sports sedan that could fit my family of 4 easily, but also look awesome and be able to haul ass. I was also looking for the base OEM sound system, as I wanted to learn how to build my own system from scratch.
My first mod: JL10W3 subwoofer in a box in the trunk, using a JL amplifier and an AudioControl LC2i line controller. Definitely improved the bass, but not the final solution I wanted. I still had a ton of research to do, and folks like Subterfuse on here as well as the DIYmobileaudio.com forums were quite helpful.
In the meantime, I got some new wheels and tires (OZracing ultraleggera in graphite, and Michelin PS4S tires) in March of 2017. I liked the 'style' of the wheels, but they were only 20x8.5, and the finish made them look somewhat like plastic depending on the lighting. They were fine, but also not a great final solution:
By April, I decided to go with a an ECU and TCU tune and also purchased APR downpipes. This was my first actual foray into 'modding', and the first time I've physically ever really worked on a car. I studied APR's instructions online, and figured 'I can do that!'. I had been purchasing tools and a jack and ramps, and made sure I had everything required before embarking on that journey. Little did I know that picking that as my first ever project was going to be as painful as it was, especially without a lift. Luckily, the instructions were excellent, but trying to get everything done while crawling around underneath the car wasn't much fun, especially given the difficulty reaching the bolts that attach the downpipes to the transmission. I did it though (and had to mess with it more to put on some exhaust paste to prevent an exhaust leak), and it worked out well. I was able to flash the EPL ECU and TCU tunes from home, and wow! The car really made a transformation into a powerful beast. In retrospect, having to place Vibrant J-shaped spacers onto the downpipes to prevent a CEL is a somewhat ghetto solution, and having the downstream O2 sensors and cables exposed to the elements beneath the car isn't optimal. If I had to do things over again, I'd go with AMS downpipes. Expensive, but well built, better cats in the stock location, and no need for O2 spacers. I may still do it someday, but shudder to think of redoing the downpipes at all.
I also quickly learned the importance of taking pics to help remember where stuff goes when it's time to put the car back together!:
I 'thought' I was happy, but then I saw widebodyfx's build thread here on AZ- and holy shit! You can do that!?!?
Next was adding Eurocode sway bars and endlinks and the Alu Kreuz. None of them were particularly hard, but I needed to go find a set of triple-square sockets to get the job done (snap on tools to the rescue, nobody else local had them, and my car was already up on jackstands)! Again, wow! For such a heavy and large sedan, the car would now turn much tighter in the corners, and I could hit corners much harder and with more confidence. To this day, I tell everyone who will listen that this single mod probably gives the biggest bang for the buck on our cars, although I don't feel the AK adds very much above and beyond the sway bars and end links. This mod is a must on our cars, in my opinion.
Around this time, I decided that I wanted to replace the rest of the speakers in the car. I removed the front center speaker and threw it away. It distorts the hell out of higher pitched sounds. I replaced the front OEM speakers with Focal KX3 3 way speakers. Expensive, but they are fantastic. I also placed Focal KX2 coaxial speakers in the rear doors, and purchased a DSP (AudioControl DM 8-10) to control all the audio coming from the OEM amplifier. While a DSP is the single most important part of a sound system (you can control what frequencies are sent to which speakers, and at what intensity), I still had to use the factory OEM amplifier (for now), because at the time there was no aftermarket solution available for MY2016 and later Audis. Audi went to something called a MOST 150 fiberoptic system in OCT2015 and beyond, and nothing on the market has been compatible with it (until April 2018).
DM8-10 DSP and old sub box:
Focal speakers going in the doors:
The car sounded pretty darn good, and possibly better than the B&O. I was learning how to tune the car on my own, and doing a ton of reading. And looking for my next project.
I went with a few cosmetic changes, and made my first of several purchases through Europrice: Carbon fiber mirror caps and an OEM RS6 grille- mirror caps were simple, thanks to Yeuchau's thread. The grille was more complex, since quite a few tabs on it needed to be dremeled off to make it a perfect fit, but AZ to the rescue, there's a thread for that too! I also decided to get a tow-hook license plate holder from US Millworks to not obstruct the grille or the future intercooler that I was planning on.
CF mirror caps:
new grille with aluminum trim:
Later in the summer of 2017, I decided that I wanted to go for more of a black optics look. I had a nearby Audi-certified body shop swap out the chrome trim for black (in retrospect, I should have sourced the trim on my own- the trim is super expensive through Audi), and to paint the rings black.
I also ordered blacked out badging from TAG motorsports:
By fall of 2017, I noticed some interesting items in the classifieds here, and was both heartbroken and selfishly excited to see that widebodyfx was parting out his car. Those ceramic brakes! Those ecode headlights! Those HRE wheels! My lack of funds! Luckily, Madyspop was brokering the part-out for widebodyfx. I wanted the brakes, but not in the Porsche yellow- unfortunately, another potential buyer had them painted a metallic blue before he ever paid for them and then backed out. Both madyspop and widebody weren't in a huge rush, and they were gracious enough to allow me to pay in installments over a few months until I could pay in full and take receipt of them, and even had them repainted for me close to their original color, just a shade brighter:
I'd been thinking of going Stage 3, and got a little push when I heard that AMS dropped the price of their intercooler to $2k (down from $3k). I went ahead and ordered one, and got another lesson in humility, getting coolant all over the place. But the AMS instructions are also quite good, and in the end everything went quite well:
Towards the end of the year, I had the opportunity to virtually meet other co-conspirators who were looking to go Stage 3 and upgrade to RS7 turbos: kpriv's planning thread started that train for me, and frequent back and forth conversations with kpriv, Ze_Nardo6, and nefkntym convince me to take the plunge. I purchased all the necessary parts and hardware from audiusaparts.com. No turning back now! Luckily, you can go to Audi Erwin online and buy a one day subscription for $35 and download all the necessary documents (shop manuals and such) that give directions on how to do pretty much anything, including replacing the turbos. It took me about 2 weeks, with stuff all over the garage, and the car up on jackstands, (and my wife upset that she couldn't get her car in the garage during this time period), but using WhiteWhiteS7's thread, I swapped the oil separator and the turbos. I also put in new Denso IKH24 spark plugs. I then sold my EPL tune (sadly, they didn't have a Stage 3 tune available yet), and made the jump to APR Stage 3 ECU and TCU tune. Wow! Fantastic experience, and very happy I did it. I learned a fair bit more about our cars, and working slowly, was able to make sure I found all the torque specifications and make sure everything worked well.
Old turbos out!:
New turbos in!:
I now had a Stage 3 S6, and couldn't be happier- or could I? Although I liked the sport exhaust with the APR downpipes, I didn't think it was quite aggressive enough. I knew Akrapovic sounds awesome, but also knew thery were $7k+ and that the downpipes would have to be modified. AWE to the rescue! The AWE touring exhaust with some adapter pipes (all obtained from Xcelerate in CT) were easy to install, look great, and sound awesome. I was little hesitant to have no control valves, but I love the aggressive exhaust notes all the time. Luckily I live in an old farmhouse with no neighbors close by! Around the same time that I went Stage 3, since the headlights need to come off in order to swap the turbos, I was able to purchase ecode headlights from widebodyfx (thank you!), to remove the ugly amber sidemarker lights:
I had messed around with different intakes- I've had Roc Euro (loved the sound, but ultimately sold them, as I wanted something with documented performance and better customer service)- after trying the Revo RS7 intake (which was ok), madyspop again hooked me up, and was able to get me a 2nd gen AWE Sflo carbon fiber intake. Looks great, and has dyno numbers on their website to back up some small performance gains. At the same time, I'd heard about MRC tuning out in England thanks to my Stage 3 co-conspirators, and ordered some custom made turbo inlets, with a much larger diameter than the RS7 inlets, and made in CF. I'm a sucker for carbon fiber:
Speaking of carbon fiber, I ordered both a Neidfaktor carbon fiber rear diffuser and a carbon fiber steering wheel with R8 control buttons, all through Alex at Europrice again. (Alex provides awesome customer service, and although Neidfaktor can be slow, their work is top notch). I also ordered a custom airbag cover, also in CF, and with the rings painted in black, and with a leather center cap through carbondesignz.com They also do excellent work.
The rear diffuser was easy to put on, and the rear bumper doesn't even need to come off:
The steering wheel itself was easy to swap out. The buttons had to be wired to the car, which was an adventure, but with some research, was doable- this is the first time I've pulled out the dirver's side footwell cover and the console cover, as well as the climate control faceplate. Conceptually easy, but cutting into wires in a perfectly good high-end car can be stressful- but not as stressful as changing out the airbag cover! You need to take apart the airbag apparatus in order to do that. Thankfullly, nothing exploded and everything turned out great:
My co-conspirators also pointed out a good idea- since I was running some e85 in my car (about 2 gallons a tank), in order to try to get to 93 octane- you can only get 92 in WA at the pump, it would be a good idea to get a Zeitronix ethanol analyzer. Of course, now I needed to learn how to cut into the fuel lines and not have gas spraying everywhere. Easily done with some fuel line clamps, and easily accessible. The harder part was being able to thread wires through the firewall on the driver's side. Luckily, S4Per's build thread goes over how to do this as part of his laser diffuser install (which I found fascinating and vowed I would do someday!) Great! Now I always have a real time measurement of exactly how much ethanol I have in my tank. Luckily, I have an e85 pump down the street from where I work. I typically run e23-e25%. Car runs great.
Clamping off fuel lines:
The zeitronix gauge:
In March of this year, madyspop reminded me of a set of HRE wheels that were for sale here on AZ. They were the exact style I was looking for, P103, and the exact dimensions, 20x10 with an ET of 40, and even came with a set of Michelin PSS tires on them! They'd been on AZ for a few months, and just had a significant price drop, so yes please!:
Throughout all this process, I'd been working with a local car audio shop, Audio Northwest, to build a custom subwoofer box that could be used to mount the sub in the stock location. Jesse Peterson, the owner, did an amazing job! My JL10w3 is now firing directly into the cabin, and no rattling of the deck, and no random box taking up space on the trunk floor!:
I now turned my attention to the sound system again, but taking a different approach- I felt that sound deadening everything I could in the car would allow for less road noise, as well as a cleaner sound from the soundsystem overall. Looking at JWebb's threads helped push me into action, but my real inspiration was going back to S4Per's build site- he has done all of us a huge favor in documenting every detail of his build. If it wasn't for his site, I don't think I'd even venture a guess on how to sound deaden a car. I decided to go all-out, and spent close to 2 weeks, with various parts of my interior strewn about the garage. I laid out CLD tiles wherever I could (from sound deadener showdown), and used either soundskins (a triple layer of butyl rubber, aluminum, and closed cell foam) or closed cell foam followed by mass loaded vinyl over the CLD tiles. I used the soundskins primarily in the trunk, rear deck, and all the doors, while I used the CCF and MLV throughout the cabin floors.
Trunk complete:
Main cabin done:
Given that I had the interior pulled out and easy access to all the wiring harnesses, I had the bright idea of finally getting around to an installed radar detector and laser diffuser system. I'd been doing research on this for close to a year, and although the ALP laser diffusers are the best on the market to date, I decided to go with Escort's latest Max CI 360 system, because it provides the best integration on the market, has excellent performance, and because Mid-City engineering makes an integration box that allows controls from the steering wheel and displays warnings on your DIS!:
Rear bumper off for radar install:
Front of car with radar receiver and laser diffusers in place:
As part of the install, my 9th grader came to the rescue and 3D printed a control panel (modifying S4Per's design) that fits nicely in the ashtray, and houses the control module and display for my Escort system, as well as the volume control for my subwoofer:
About this time, I found out the Navtv is the first to the market with a digital interface for the sound system for post-facelift cars. Called the Zen-V, it takes the fiberoptic signal from the MMI, preserves al of the MMI functions (Bluetooth, navigation, etc...) and provides a clean digital signal with no noise to my DSP, and most importantly, let me remove the OEM amplifier!:
I've been playing with tuning the sound system some more, and the car really sounds extraordinary. On a whim, I took it by AudioNorthWest a few weeks ago and entered into a regional sound quality contest that IASCA was holding there. I won first place in my division (I only entered as a novice). Although validation is nice, it was more important for me to get some input from some sound professionals on things I could to do improve it even more!
Thanks for reading this far. My hope is that other folks get some inspiration as to what sort of DIY work can be done on our cars. Also, thanks to AZ and its awesome members. I have gone from clueless to reasonably capable when it comes to wrenching and wiring, and the experience has allowed me to assist some friends on their projects as well.
Many thanks to widebodyfx, madyspop, kpriv, ZeNardo_S6, nefkntym, S4Per, and Subterfuse ; their input and support has been extremely valuable to me.
I plan on keeping this car for the long term, and plan on getting lessons for actually tracking it, (I've only been to a quarter mile track once so far).
In the future, some things I'd like to tackle: hopefully a leather dash (I always thought it odd for a 'luxury' car to have a plastic dashboard), and possibly remove my front end clear-bra in favor of a full car wrap with Xpel stealth to give it more a matte black appearance. Other thoughts are adding an Aquamist methanol/water injection system, which could allow me to run a higher octane tune on pump gas, and swapping out my front grille again for one that has a CF surround, since there are some paint chips showing in my current grille trim.
Car as it currently sits:
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