Should You Buy a Salvage Audi B8 S4?
I Bought Two Audi B8 S4s Without Seeing them First to Take Racing
OK, I must have a problem and I cannot stop myself! I can’t remember exactly how, but earlier this year, I stumbled across the B8/B8.5 3.0T Supercharged Audi S4 platform and concocted a crazy plan to purchase a couple of them to race. You might have seen my other post on the subject. Well, after finally resolving all the issues with liens and titles, here they are!
Audi B8 S4 Common Questions Answered
This series of videos intends to answer many of the common questions I saw when researching the platform. This includes:
- Should I buy a car without a sports differential?
- B8 or B8.5 Audi S4?
- Are they good track cars?
- What can I do to improve braking on track?
- What are the best performance tires to use on the Audi B8 S4?
- Should I worry about purchasing an Audi S4 with over 100K miles?
- What are the common maintenance items that need to be done on the B8 Audi S4?
- How do I carbon clean the intakes on the B8 Audi S4?
- How to hunt down a parasitic battery drain on an Audi S4?
- Should I modify my supercharged Audi S4?
- What is the best suspension setup for the Audi S4?
- …. and many more
Should You Buy an B8 Audi S4?
I did not delve into this in the video, but so far, I am impressed. The platform is very capable and comfortable. In the past, I have driven a variety of cars, from the Mazda Miata to a Ferrari 458 Speciale. Now, while the S4 cannot compare to something like the 458, it has certainly piqued my interest and rightly so.
In doing my research, I could not find any other platform with as much opportunity for tuning from such a robust starting point. The video touches on the briefly, but from what I have discovered, these engines are quite robust!
How Does the B8 S4 Compare to the RS5?
My 2013 Audi RS5 still has under 30K miles on the clock, but it is stock and a high revving V8. It is unfair for me to compare the experience there to the 2015 B8.5 S4 shown in the video. Why? Because the S4 had been heavily modified and was previously totaled. My initial experience driving the car ~600 miles from Milwaukee to Kansas City wasn’t the best, largely due to the terrible exhaust the previous owner had installed (never, ever, ever put a straight-through exhaust on this car!).
However, the car is growing on me. As I start to set things straight, I find myself connecting with it more and more. To be continued!
One fascinating thing to note, though, is that while they likely have different software tunes, the transmissions and differentials appear to be the same and share many identical parts. Good old Audi.
Video: I Purchased Two Audi S4s Sight Unseen to take Racing!
