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I have no idea if you guys have "how to" threads, and am in no way interested in trying to teach people how to suck eggs, but i thought a couple of threads regarding car cleaning and common pitfalls may help at least some of you?

 

Not wanting to be boring, but imo the BIGGEST mistake most people make is to assume your products are "safe". For the most part cleaning a car is one of the only, if not THE only time people are systematically exposed to chemicals. They may come in fancy bottles, smell nice, be expensive, but they are containers of synthetic chemicals, period. Its not a huge thing to simply put on a pair of gloves, maybe wear long sleeves, and not spray into the air. The dangers ARE real. Even if we choose to ignore and crack on, at least we make an informed choice knowing the truths

 

Boring stuff over with now ha ha

 

Its important to remember that most of the damage on your paint, maybe even wheels and your glass is caused during the wash and drying stages. Even the really bad scratches you assume were done by a careless passer by, may well have been your own doing. Following a few basic rules will vastly reduce (not totally remove) any damage caused.

 

Firstly is to not wash the car in the sunshine. Its part and parcel of car cleaning, but when the sun comes out we all want our cars to gleam! However washing in the shade or doing it early morning will vastly reduce the chances of your products/chemicals prematurely drying or curing and at best, creating annoying streaks. At worst damaging your car to the extent of needing professional repair. A black car in the shade can hold a great deal of heat, so working quick and rinsing more often as you go is advised.

 

Next is to always remember that your primary aim is to remove as much dirt and debris BEFORE your contact portion of your wash. Simply hand washing the car straight off is a huge proponent in the swirls and scratches caused. What you are doing is moving the dirt and debris around on the paint as you wash, between your wash media and the paint. This acts as any abrasive would, and leaves its own footprint. So before physically touching the car best practice is to use either a pre wash, or snow foam, to break down as much of that dirt as you can. Less is not more at this stage, use plenty of product to make sure the dirt is fully saturated. If all the grime absorbs the cleaning agents, it comes off much more easily. Apply liberally to the wheels, arches and the rest of the vehicle

After this you want to remove said cleaning agents as well as the grime. This is not a "rinse" stage. A gentle rinse wont remove the grime, you need to use the pressure washer and really take your time. Start at the bottom and move slowly, making sure you pay attention to blast out all the nooks and crannies. You are much less concerned with the odd soap bubble, and much more concerned with the dirt. 

 

Example

P1050169 by Matt Rowe, on Flickr

 

After this go ahead and clean the wheels. Now that they have already been pre washed and blasted off its much easier to see if you need a dedicated wheel cleaner, or if soapy water will suffice. Do them one at a time ideally from start to finish, and thoroughly clean off with the PW once again. Doing it this way, if you ARE using a dedicated wheel cleaner, when rinsing the car off later on you can further rinse the wheels to be doubly sure all the chemicals are gone

 

With the wheels done, and the body prepped, its time to use your CLEAN cleaning products. This may seem obvious, but if your buckets and wash media are still dirty from last time, when water is added, you have dirty water! And this totally wastes your earlier efforts. You will want at a minimum, 2 buckets, ideally one of them clear. Half fill both with hot water, leaving the clear bucket as is, and adding your chosen shampoo to the other. Now if you use your pressure washer to top it up, this will froth up and transform the shampoo into a lovely creamy airy liquid. Just dunk the lance in to the bottom and go

 

Example

P1050175 by Matt Rowe, on Flickr

 

Wash in straight lines, a panel at a time, ideally from the top down. (You may want to rinse periodically as you go to avoid streaking). Use only enough pressure to keep your wash media in your hand, so as little as possible. After each panel, submerge the wash media in the clear bucket, and squeeze out a few times to deposit as much of the dirt you just picked up as possible. The 2 bucket method is a very good way to keep your wash water clean. A grit guard in the buckets will help also. Using a clear bucket as the second bucket allows you to assess your pre wash routine. The dirtier the water at the end, the poorer the pre wash routine

 

Example

P1040589 by Matt Rowe, on Flickr

 

Rinsing now. And if you are smart you can use this to get a jump on the drying stage. If you rinse using an open ended hose, not your pressure wash, at about half power and you use a slow steady sheet from top to bottom, a lot of the water will run off in one long sheet leaving only droplets to pat with a drying towel. Not having to use a drying towel means even less swirls will be inflicted. Even better would to be use an inline or ro water filter set up, meaning no drying is required whatsoever. If you have a dark car, not having to dry it, and removing the chance of water spotting completely, will pay dividends long term

If you DO have to dry the car, use plush clean drying towels, apply no pressure, and wherever possible pat the car gently. If this simply wont suck up the water use the "drop and drag" method, hold the towel by two corners at one end, drape it over the panel, and draw it towards you. Turn each time and be careful 

 

Once completed, if the car is done, its done. Dress the tyres or complete any little jobs you enjoy. If you like to wipe the car down with a quick detailer or gloss enhancer, at least you are confident that the paint is debris free and this wont be be picked up. 

 

It sounds long winded, and probably looks it on paper, but when you get used to using this, or any other similar routine it really doesn't "have" to take all that long. But with this small investment in time now you are putting lots of time in the bank for later on, when you have much less polishing to do to remove the marks you inflicted. Its a fair trade, and the car stays looking better longer to boot

 

So in short, use clean tools. Avoid the sun and high temperatures before and during. Remove as much dirt as possible before you touch it. Wash in straight lines not circles to reduce the appearance of "swirls". Be smart when you rinse. Don't waste all that effort when you dry it. Simples. Adjust and arrange as you wish, but stick to the basic rules and the car will be fine

 

 

 

Was up north seeing my mate who is a bit of a photographer.
Pics were taken at Nairn harbour.

GRAE5227.jpg by Graeme Clark, on Flickr
GRAE5231.jpg by Graeme Clark, on Flickr
GRAE5234.jpg by Graeme Clark, on Flickr

I've had numerous PM's regarding specifically a couple of forum users that appear to post for nothing other than provocation.

 

The forum takes time and considerable cost to run and is here for those to share advice and create a community with a common interest, it's not a platform for keyboard warriors to see how high they can p*ss up the next tree or just to massage their own ego's.

 

I'm now in a better position to view the forum more regularly than i have done over the last month so i'll be keeping an eye on whats posted.

 

Going forward if I deem posts to be nothing more than aggravating and posted purely to create reaction I will start removing accounts with NO warning, The forum doesn't need negative people creating atmosphere like a few other forums I could mention and claiming it's "banter".

 

I will over the next few days be reviewing a few highlighted posts and deleting them.

 

Don't say you weren't warned.

 

Thanks

 

Mac

Well a great end to RS3-Fest down at Castle Combe today, huge thanks to all that were able to get involved too.

We've won "Best Audi Event Of 2016" for this years RS3-Fest!

46 cars all lined up in colour order! So many good comments so well done all today and thanks in general to everyone that puts time and effort into posting, commenting etc on the forum.

Hi all,

This weekend our club had a meeting and we built the biggest Audi rings in the world from our 193 club cars 

It´s amazing photos I think     .

Gretting from Slovakia

Audi Club International Slovakia ACIS.

So met up with MacD and Lady C when they were in town and they took some proper pics of my new steed. I'm well chuffed (even if MacD isn't with all of the pictures) so if you want a great job done and like me are rubbish with anything more than an iPhone camera, look no further than our own resident MacD photography.








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ECU Remap

This is undoubtedly the key element for this development phase and where most of the time has been spent.

 

The RS3 uses the Bosch MED 17.1.x ECU family…… without going into a massive amount of detail, this ECU is one very powerful mofo.  The amount of control it can have over how the engine performs is pretty mind blowing.  The art of making the car “sing”, utilising/modifying the appropriate calibrations (there are well over 100,000 of these!) and ensuring you’re not hitting the protection tables (ultimately resulting in power being pulled down), is where the time and effort is needed.  

 

It goes without saying that even from a pure technical and in essence, logical standpoint, a properly mapped ECU should be overall, far better than a tuning box (convenience to one side).  

 

One of the plus sides of mapping the MED 17.1.x is the fact that this can be accessed fully via the OBD port.  I don’t personally know if all current tuners are using this method, I suspect they are to be honest.  The other method (as is the case with the A45) is via a method known as BDM.  The process to achieve this is commonly referred to as a “bench tune”, which effectively means the ECU is pulled out of the car and programmed.  This also makes tuning a bit of a time consuming effort, assuming you need to alter and test different calibration adjustments.  It means you program the ECU (out of the car and you normally open it up); refit; log on road/dyno; pull ECU out and make adjustments and refit/log again - repeat until you get bored!

 

Fortunately the RS3 has OBD programming access.

 

So how is the programming done - put simply a laptop with the programming software is connected to the ECU via the cars OBD port, and the new map file is written to the ECU…. all in situ.  It takes around 10 minutes to reprogram the ECU with each new map file.

 

Enough screens for you?

 

 

TEST 2 - ECU Remap and Secondary Decats

Whilst I’m reporting this as TEST 2, there was a whole process that we went through to get to this point.  This was certainly not the first map that was created (in fact it was the last one of the day), but was where we finished up at the end of this specific session.  If memory serves me correctly we created at least 7 maps, each one altering a single area to see what the effect was, then rolling up the “good” changes with the next change.  Basically taking an incremental approach.

 

 

Summary of Spec

MY16 RS3

Litchfield Stage 1 ECU calibration

Miltek Secondary Decat Pipes

Fuel - VPower Nitro (99 oct)

 

TEST 2 figure achieved was 421.6bhp & 408.7lbft @ flywheel

Comparing this against the stock figure (which is the comparison the graph above shows) we saw the following:

+33.6 bhp +58.7 lbft (peak) over stock

+8.6% bhp +16.7% lbft (peak) over stock

 

I’ve banged on about this before (probably), but in my experience of using most makes of dynos in the UK over the years, I have always found MAHA dynos to provide quite a stingy torque figure…. Certainly in comparison to other dyno makes.  So it’s worth bearing this in mind when you compare figures.  Which is seen here with the stock figures as much as the tuned figures in my opinion.  But it is what it is.

 

TEST 2 - Comments

I certainly know I’ve said this before, but one thing that is very important in my opinion, is to not just focus on peak power figures.  You really need to look at the whole rev range and thus the whole area UNDER the curve to appreciate improvements.

 

Considering this was after the initial mapping session, and whilst the peak figures attained are good, there are higher improvements being seen in the mid range.

 

Looking at the graph you can see that whilst torque is by and large a nice increase throughout the mid range by around +60lbft, the power is seeing increases through the mid range of +50 bhp.

 

To me, for a road car, it’s about torque and mid range grunt.  

 

TEST 2 - Road

Yeah….. That’s different!

 

I’ve always thought the stock RS3 was already quick, which is in part down to it’s power delivery and smoothness.  This map just amplified the stock delivery, whilst retaining the stock characteristics.  This map almost felt too smooth though, however, smooth delivery can mean in reality a quick car!

 

The car was certainly more urgent in the mid range (increased torque) and felt like it was pulling harder at the top end.

 

Being honest I suppose I was expecting more.  Don’t know why though.  Although expectation is normally high when going through a tuning process, but let’s be honest, this map was far from finished.  So I needed to put things into perspective.

 

It felt good and quicker, but just didn’t blow my socks off.  But then will Stage 1 ever do that.  We’re all greedy aren't we!

 

The noise……

 

Initially I didn’t think there was much of a difference on the road, but when you start driving a bit more, you really do notice the bigger growl.  Because the RS3 switches the exhaust flaps dependant on throttle, it is more or less as before until you open it up….. Then it really does sounds awesome.  Something I have noticed is perhaps a very slight drone now at cruise 70-80mph.  It’s only very slight and I can’t say I noticed it before.  It’s certainly a great and cheap mod to make in my opinion.  These engines sound awesome…. These decat pipes just makes it sound that much more awesome!

 

It was agreed to carry on with the mapping development in a couple of days time.

 

TEST 3 - Revised ECU Remap and Secondary Decats

So, the second session of mapping commenced.  First off we took a Day 2 baseline run just to ensure that we were still where we left off on the previous session.  This run was within a couple of BHP of where we were at the end of Day 1 (as per TEST 2), so we were good to go.

 

Again, just to go through the process we followed…. On Day 2 we took the map (currently on the car) from the end of Day 1 and called that Stage 1 v1.  During this session we went through a similar task as the previous session, carrying on where we left off.  During this session we created 9 new maps, although the last revision didn’t make any positive difference so we reverted back to the v8 map from this session.  Litchfield’s had already created 6 new maps prior, and we created 3 additional new ones on the day (using what was learnt during this specific session).

 

We were on the dyno for around 4 hours for this session.

 

 

Summary of Spec

MY16 RS3

Litchfield Stage 1 ECU calibration

Miltek Secondary Decat Pipes

Fuel - VPower Nitro (99 oct)

 

TEST 3 figure achieved was 433.6bhp & 437.3lbft @ flywheel

Comparing this against TEST 2 figure (which is the comparison the graph above shows) we saw the following:

+12.0 bhp +28.6 lbft (peak) over TEST 2

+2.8% bhp +6.9% lbft (peak) over TEST 2

 

Overall Stage 1 Test 3 comparison against stock

+45.6 bhp +87.3 lbft (peak)

+11.7% bhp +24.9% lbft (peak)

 

 

TEST 3 - Comments

Obviously at this stage all I had to go by was the dyno data (and logs), but if you appreciate what a “good” road car dyno graph can look like, this is one of them in my opinion.

 

Two things to point out initially about the graph.  One being the way the car was loaded up for this run.  This is highlighted by the initial shape of the torque and power curve up to around 2150rpm.  This isn’t a mapping issue which has caused this, this is purely because the car was not loaded on the dyno from a low enough rpm.  It’s just the way this one was run (mistake by the dyno operator).  It’s only that initial part of the run that was affected.

 

The second point (and I’m being really nit picking / anal here) is the very very slight dip (it’s probably in the region of 6lbft) in torque from 3-3800rpm.  That is also replicated in the power curve for the same rpm.  This is due to a very minor but further adjustment being needed to the boost control, as it looks like the ECU thinks it’s going to overboost just as it reaches initial peak boost, so it pulls back the boost slightly and then increases the boost again.

 

These two minor things to one side, this is such a smooth curve.  The torque is virtually flat decked throughout the mid range.  The power curve also looks so linear up to peak power, and then manages to hold that peak (virtually) through to the limiter.

 

If you compare the stock torque curve through the mid range, and even the torque curve result as part of the first mapping session, you will see that there is so much more control now in this area on this version of the map.

 

Even without getting the car on the road (which we did when we were happy with map, just to double check the logs on the black stuff), the curves alluded to a very nice driveable map.

 

As before let’s look at what increases have been seen through the mid range…..

 

In parts we’re talking +100 lbft and on average +90 lbft.  With the BHP you’re seeing +80 bhp through a large amount of the same mid range.  Those are some significant increases!

 

Due to time cracking on it was decided to call it a day….. For now.

 

For further context here is a dyno comparison of just a sample of the maps tested during this recent session.  I won’t go into boring detail but you can see differences in the runs which were the outcome of the different maps.  This was all part of the testing / learning process to end up with the final result.

 

 

TEST 3 - Road

Being honest I really wasn’t expecting much of a change on the road from the previous session map outcome.  Perhaps I’d just desensitised myself. Lol

 

I fully appreciate this will be so subjective, but I thought I would just share the feedback I provided back to Iain after I go home.  This is straight up and honest feedback, that was certainly never intended to be made public.  But since this is what I felt / feel, I thought I would share.  

 

“It's jeffing awesome mate.  

 

I've never seen the traction control light coming on so much!!!! lol

 

I was genuinely laughing and smiling on the way home.

 

It's feels like a totally different car since Wednesday's map, which I wasn't expecting.

 

Whilst it's still very smooth and the gearbox just sucks everything up you give it, the way the power comes in (urgency and magnitude) on a low rpm pull is fantastic.  With the A45 it felt you had to properly wind it up (they are pretty much at the same peak figure level now).  With this though, it's much more responsive and instant.

 

You can feel a big improvement both in the midrange and top end since Wednesday.  It feels quite exciting when you keep your foot in, which it didn't on Wednesday.  Mid range feels very smooth.... but it feels like it's pulling so hard.

 

Top end feels like it's giving measurable improvements over Wednesday.

 

I look forward to your further map tweaks!!!! Get mashing that keyboard!!!!”

 

To be honest I’m not going to add anything else.  I could keep banging on about how it feels etc but there is little point wasting bandwidth! lol  

 

For me that’s Stage 1 done and dusted.

 

I intend to get down the quarter mile again this weekend and also carry out some VBOX logging.  As and when I get these performance measures I’ll update this thread.  It will be interesting to see where the car is in relation to my stock performance data.

Stage 2 will begin in a couple of weeks…. So expect more news on that very soon!

Ok you lot.....

Was a pleasure to watch you through my lens on Saturday, great turn out and some great action on the track.

After going through the hundreds of frames shot during the day I have put all the decent ones on my Flickr page, link is here....

https://flickr.com/p...157702222610364

They are a bit ‘samey’ but I was stuck in position and the track time didn’t seem as long as last year, and couldn’t get about as much as I wanted......anyway hope you like them.

If you wanted full size JPEGs for printing please pm me, and we’ll sort that out, you can down load from Flickr and will be fine for Fb and the like, but if you wanted an old fashioned print on real glossy paper a full size image file will be better.

OMR

Ordered an FL car in January and it has finally arrived. Collected it Saturday and so far I am very pleased with it.

This time round I decided that I would have the 'Daytona Lite' with plenty of black bits and red calipers.

After lots and lots of procrastination over the RS4's replacement i kept coming back to what i really wanted.... The RS6!

 

Pulled the trigger last week on this little beauty the day before RS3-Fest and so far it's proving to be a great choice. 

 

Couple of pics: 

 

 

A few mods to come although less than a week in and the badges have been changed along with diamond cut wheels.  Springs probably next. 

Just wanted to wish you all a Merry Christmas from us all here at AudiRS3oc.com

 

Thanks for to all of you that manage to contribute positively to the forum or attend great events such as RS3-Fest as we couldn't do it without you! 

 

We won our first award this year in the motoring press and it's great to see the forum finally getting a little recognition.  We've had a few ups and downs of late however we are well on the way to getting back on track. 

 

2017 will see the return of RS3-Fest at Castle Combe and the newest event "RS3OC Shootout" which will take place in Summer at Rockingham so stay tuned !!!!  

 

Enjoy your Christmas everyone! 

 

 

 

Unfortunately I didn't have time to take any pics having been delayed in getting to the dealership by public transport but today I picked up this;




Big thanks to Roy for meeting up and he has a heap of photos on the car. Had the journey back home to get to grips with it and one of the immediate things..... the brakes are SO much better. Makes a good noise as well[emoji41] and to top it all off;



It does similar mpg to the '3 and only used 2/3 of a tank from Bexley to Newcastle!


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This is the day I bought it car looking really run down.

Stripping and rubbing down process.

Down to the gel coat.

Before the rub down.

Who's this Mush?

The NARDO dart!!! 

 

After the spray

Finally getting it back together.

On the trailer waiting for a new interior, roof etc. 

 

Final result

After recent detailing job

 

I'm almost half way through editing my pictures as i've been mega busy today but the rest should appear tomorrow evening all being well.

 

Here's the link:

 

https://www.facebook...71667034&type=3

 

And a few to give you an idea:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Some piephone photos from collection.

 

 

 

 

Seen on Facebook

Chuffed to bits with my Detailing/Protection so thought i would just upload a few snaps   
Love the beading already just from drizzle, also how the Gloss is clearly visible in the light but can also look very flat and more aggressive under a cloud.