This build was originally posted on Audizine starting November 2022, but after Google drive changed their directory structure and broke the pictures, twice, I decided to host the content myself.
I’ve wanted a B5 S4 since I was a sophomore in high school. It was the first ‘realistic’ fantasy car I ever aspired to own. At the time though, the closest thing I could afford was either a 1.8t or 2.8 A4. I almost pulled the trigger on a 1.8t in 2007, but instead, I ended up getting a 1997 Volvo 850. That got me started down the Volvo path, which ultimately led to a career in the performance automotive world. I’ve been a self employed tuner/fabricator in the Volvo scene for almost 10 years. I’ve had a few fast dailys, but for the past 3 years my fastest car has been a stock ’05 XC70. I thought about manual swapping and modifying my XC, but I knew that no matter how much money I sunk into the car I’d always have to worry about the AWD system. On a whim one snowy morning, I searched Audi Allroad on Craigslist. Two hours later, I was driving a 2002 Allroad home ![[cool]](https://www.audizine.com/images/smilies/cool.gif)
The car is super clean – no rust, very well maintained, near flawless interior. The front air bags were replace with Arnott units. The timing belt and water pump were just replaced. The car sat in front of my house for 6 months, and in that time it didn’t lose any height. The previous owner did a bunch of work to get it ready for his girlfriend, but discovered a coolant leak on the driver’s side turbo feed line. Since my plans for the car already involved removing the motor I didn’t care.
My plan is to build a fast, reliable daily. I want to do all the work/modifications at once, and when done, have a car that behaves just like a stock car, but quicker. My goal is to get close to 500WHP on E85 and maintain all the pleasantries of a factory car. Initially, I was hoping to get the car to a ‘stage II’ before swapping turbos. I thought I might be able to repair the coolant leak without pulling the motor, but after I pulled the downpipes I realized both turbos were shot. I decided I might as well just pull the motor and get started on the whole build.
Before I pulled the motor I replaced all the brake rotors, pads and upgraded the lines to stainless steel. I had a set of Wilwood 6 piston super light calipers and two piece rotors from my old daily that I decided to swap onto the car. Converting them was super simple as all I had to do was mill some caliper mounting brackets and re-drill the rotor hats.
I have a new set of rotors ready to go on, but I need to decide on the slots I want to mill onto them. I was thinking about the 4 rings, but wasn’t sure if that would be too tacky.
The rotors are 330mm, which is barely bigger than stock, but I cut almost half the weight vs stock. When you compare that to 17z or 18z setups in which people are adding unsprung weight, I think that’s pretty good.
