Hey all,<p>This morning I took my tqms to a truck weight station. Paid $6 to get the following info:<p>3420 lbs with driver<br>1940 lbs front axle<br>1470 lbs rear axle<p>This car is a 98.5 with sunroof, quattro, sport pkg, manual tranny, underhood insulation, FULL tank. It has CD (non-bose), cargo net, had a CLUB, radar detector, G-Tech Pro, flashlight, couple of maps in it, otherwise completely stock (well, it was debadged:).<p>After I got home, got all the aforementioned non-standard accessories in my hand and measured how much I weighed along with them. Came to 193 lbs, so the car itself is about 3220-3230 lbs.<p>Knowing my total weight, on the way home I hooked up the G-Tech Pro with 3420 lbs weight to measure hp. I prefer this performance measurement as I do not like to tear up the clutch to get a good 0-60. A run consists of a smooth start and flooring the car in 1st, 2nd and 3rd gear up to redline. It was in Houston (almost sea level) 61F ambient temp, medium humidity, 3400 miles on car. <p>1st run: 137 hp<br>2nd run 136 hp<p>Now you 1.8t owners know that the rpm is maintained by the engine between quick shifts (I guess to maintain boost). This results in a significant yank when you release the clutch after shifting up. As 137 sounds a little too high to me, I thought that this yank confuses the G-Tech, so for the 3rd run I shifted up very conservatively (i.e. waited just long enough for the rpms to drop, so the shift was smooth).<p>3rd run: 139 hp (what the heck!)<p>For whatever this is worth, I believe I have a good baseline now I can compare future upgrades to. The only thing I will try to do is to videotape the runs with the tach and G-Tech in sight, so I could possibly derive a hp-rpm graph. I am not sure whether it would work, though.<p>Zsolt

I know some people have a hard time with the Gtech, but I think your tests will at least show the relative changes in hp.<p>What mods are you going to try?<p>BTW, that club is way too heavy...

What I would like is TAP stage gazillion, but that's not what I can afford...<p>I will probably go with airbox and filter mod, Neuspeed chip, later turbo upgrade, a cat back exhaust, 17 rims, and when the suspension is gone or hit the lottery a spring/shock combo<p>This will be enough to match Mr. ///M3 :)

Just chumming the waters. <p>I can't see an intake mod making any positive difference, but we'll see. (the beauty of science)<br>I am most interested in what happens with a better resonator. Borla make an inexpensive stainless large-diameter resonator. But I don't want to cut into my exhaust quite yet, since it is already rusting in less than year (yea, AAdvantage).

Zsolt, <p>Excellent write-up on your quest to get some accurate numbers at the wheels for your car. I'm not sure I'm reading your post quite correctly, but where it states that you shifted quite conservatively... .. I own a G-tech myself, and i'm aware of the "spikes" in HP you can get from fast shifting. Alan Adamson (wherever he went, i have no clue) and I had a dialouge about this awhile ago, we derived that the most accurate way to get HP readings out of the G-tech was to start off the car, upshift to 3rd by, say, 20mph, and then lay out the loud pedal all the way to redline, where the clutch would go back in (and cruise back down). That way, there would be no jerking at all, and you could get an accurate number. If you have time, try that, and let us know what you got :)<p>Edmund Louie<br>98 A4Q 30V<p>PS - i think my car read out 157 when i tried the test that way. . .we ran the same test on my brother's M3 (E36) and got either 208 or 212. . . can't remember. (we weren't too accurate with the weight)