I have a 95 90 and have been looking at some 1999 and 2000 1.8t's. I have been lusting for a Turbo again since the demise of my first car.. an 87 5000 Turbo. How has the 1.8t been for you all? In terms of up keep, and Tuning? I would in the future be upgrading turbos cpu and all the other sticky icky.. Just wanted to get all of your advice and input on maybe picking up a 1.8t to be in the turbo game again. How does the 4cyl stack up to the inline 5? Thanks for the help guys.. lay down anything you got for me!

cheers
-Joel

as far as reliability goes. i have 191K on my engine of which 62K has been chipped. the engine is in fine shape and has never been opened. i average 28 mpg summer and 26 winter.

thanks for the reply.. with the stage 1 system is that with your factory turbo? Can you actually feel a good gain in power? I know the inline 5's have a sweet spool up and blow off sound with some upgrades how about the 1.8? Any info you have is helpful thanks alot for the help.

-Joel

35K chipped, no real problems. I can pull at least a car length on my friends 200 (5cyl turbo) by third gear. Decent spool up noise with higher boost, but if your looking for the blow off noise. You need a blow off valve which most will advise against or modify the airbox and install a high flow filter or cone filter and have an aftermarket bypass valve.

i can switch between the two and i feel the 50 hp claim is real. i now have a miltek exaust don't notice that much of an inprovement over just chipped.

youll realy like the 1.8T its not quite as smooth as it has 2 less cylinders. compared to the 5000 w/ 5 cyl once again prob not quite as smooth, but power wise its decent, i think the power to weight ratio of a chipped 1.8T vs the 5000 with turbo 5 cyl, the A4 would take the cake. Just a 400-500$ chip makes a HUGE performance. And yoy had mentioned doing a bigger turbo and manifold too at some point, you can make quite a bit of power. K04 is good to prob 250 hp with EVERYTHING done, APR an PES stage 3 kits are good for 270+ hp, then there is the incomplete ATP kits, good for 300 or so + hp but require more parts and possibly extensive tuning, there is also Dahlback, expensive but complete and reliable. you wont get the blowoff sound unless u do blow off valve (not recomended) or an intake (no real gains, maybe better throtle response?, make sure it has a realy good hear shield) as for longjevity, from what ive read this engine is pretty bulletproof, there are people putting out ALOT of power for ALOT of milse and are still running strong.