After numerous conversations with various companies have decided to take the plunge and have booked in a month on saturday for the AMD chip, apparently if your car is 1999 or newer you already have the air inlet pipe listed on their website fitted as standard by Audi which means you get 196 bhp, 228lbs/ft torque. Apparently the problem with the older inlet pipe was a taper which restricted air flow at higher engine speeds, this has now been modified by Audi.
Could I also just quickly mention how **** Audi technical support is, it seems they do not like giving out any information at all.
Will keep you all informed of how I get on with the rechipping and post as much info as possible.

I don' hate you John , I'm getting mine next week !!
See 1.8T chip problems.

1) I assume AmD will be socketing the chip, rather than soldering to the board.

2) Can you let me know how easy it is to wip the ECU out, and put the old "stock" chip back in? -* Don't forget this one, this is the crux issue for me *-

Cheers lads,

Alan
'99.5 A3 1.8T MS Silver

I'm sorry, but anyone going to AMD and expecting to get 228lbft out of their 150bhp 1.8T engine is going to be in for a shock.

AMD's road is known to be wildly optimistic. Ive had two cars on their road which have produced loads more than the manufacturers figures, but on other rolling roads give std numbers.

The German Tuners state approx 190lbft on average and this is correct. To check this out get your car chipped and go to a rolling road (Power Engineering or Powerstation for example) and run against an S3. Will you really see that much more torque than an S3.

Please dont go to the pub saying youve got 228 when infact youre nowhere close. This isnt anti S3 as they claim mega torque for the S3 as well. Its just not real world.

Jonathan

This is interesting... Can anyone help
me check this out? Although my A3 is
from 1999, I ordered it in January... got
it in Frebuary... Is there an easy way
to check this? Has anyone upgraded
this? Noticed any difference?

Luis

I ordered mine in Jan 99 and got it in April 99.

Cheers,

Alan.
'99.5 A3 1.8T MS Silver

Ring amd they will tell you how to check it better than I could, but the old one is metal and has a taper on it, whereas the newer one is rubber or plastic without the taper, they will also tell you that it only affects power at about 6000 rpm and doesn't effect the power lower down and to replace it costs around 200 quid, so unless your desparate for 5 horse or gonna race the thing, you don't need to worry about it, but its nice to though isn't it!

I spoke to Amd and they said if you ever wanted to go back to standard settings, for a small fee they would reflash the chip as the standard chip is used, its a bit like flashing your bios on the computer. They don't socket the chip as apparently you can have errors if the ecu is initialised without the vag service tool, these errors are corrected by this specialised diagnostic equipment, worst case scenario is that your car could go into limp mode or have to be towed away to a dealer!

Thanks for the reply John, but...

I for one, being a northern lad, would not want to travel down to oxford to get the chip flashed, so that I can take my car to the dealer to have it serviced.

Maybe a complete spare ECU is the answer.

Cheers,

Alan

BTW, what pipe are we talking about?
The one that links the intercooler to
the engine, or the pipe that goes from
the air filter to the turbo?

Does amd has a site?

Luis

I suppose its how you get on with your dealer, I used to work for my dealer ,so I'm on first name terms with everyone, and they look after me really well, I know that if there was a warranty problem, it wouldn't be, if you know whst I mean! anyway I intend keeping my A3 for several years as it so highly speced up, so I'd like to benefit from the extra ponies now.