BAWC Forums

This is a follow up to the purchase thread here: http://bawcforums.org/vbb/showthread.php?t=34083



I'm trying out something new here. This isn't going to be a 'project' thread or a build thread. It's just an ownership/maintenance thread. The engine in this car is effectively impossible to mod for power unless you're willing to drop $8-11,000 on a supercharger. That's not happening. The car is a blast to drive, it rides beautifully, and it's plenty fast enough (on par with a stock VR4). I'm not going to screw that up. On the plus side, this car requires very little periodic maintenance. The spark plugs need to be done at 55k (the car has almost 58 on it) and since I don't have any proof that they were done, I'll probably do that soon. The engine runs on a timing chain (4 chains actually) that don't require maintenance. Factory oil change intervals are 10,000 miles. That's good, since it needs 8 quarts.

Any 'mods' I do are going to be cosmetic in nature. I eventually want to get an exhaust for it, but that's mainly for the sound. Every exhaust I've seen for this car is pricey, so that's not happening until I sell the Stealth and the TD05 setup I recently removed from it. The few things I've bought so far have all been paid for by selling 3S parts.

I've got my eye on a Fast Intentions exhaust.

http://www.youtube.com/v/zfYu7Kc2HOo[/youtube]

First thing I had to do was deal with the smoke/ash smell mentioned in the original post. It wasn't nearly as bad as the Texas CarMax store made it out to be, but it sure wasn't good. I sprayed a pretty liberal amount of Ozium through the car, and I replaced the cabin air filter with a Wix activated charcoal filter. 2 weeks later, it's virtually gone. I had Vira's sister get in the car for the first time last night, and she couldn't detect anything. We'll see how it is once the weather turns hot, but this is really encouraging so far.

In the near term, I've done a couple cosmetic things, and a couple 'livability' mods. I was going to get some snow tires for it, but now I'm glad I didn't. KC hasn't had any snow worth mentioning all winter, and I doubt we'll get any before the year is out. I'll just drive the Focus if we do. It has Blizzaks.

I did however get some OEM rubber floor mats. They were surprisingly affordable at $64, and even have S5 logos on them.

The other thing I got was grocery hooks for the trunk They're useful for holding your bags in place.



I also removed the CarMax front plate, and the sticker on the trunk.





I'll probably replace the rear license frame later, but it's ok for now. I'm a little ticked that there's holes in the front bumper piece when Audi makes a filler piece specifically for front plates. I don't know if that was CarMax's doing, or a previous owner. Vira's Mazda has the same problem. I could replace the crossbar, but I'd rather install an RS5 style grille even if I didn't have this problem.



One thing I noticed even before I bought the car is that one of the MMI control buttons was badly chipped. So I picked up another control panel off eBay and got that swapped out.









There was a guy on the Audi forum selling a bootleg copy of the 2014/2015 navigation map DVD. I picked that up, and ran into a surprising little problem. My DVD drive was locked.

Audi does this to prevent the discs from getting stolen during shipping. But the original dealer was supposed to unlock it when the car was delivered. There's two solutions to this. Pay the local Audi dealer $100 to unlock it, or buy a VCDS (aka VAG-Com) tool. You can guess what I did....

I bought three of those exact hooks on eBay (Audi reps). Havent installed them yet because I'll have to remove the rear deck carpet to get it right.

There's no carpet in the top of the trunk on my car. Not that I care, but it did surprise me a little

I meant going in from the top, to make sure I'm not hitting any wiring. Mine came with those flat metal backstrap things to put on the other side of the metal panel to screw into.

If you guys want all the technical details on the HEX-Net VCDS tool, you can go here: http://www.ross-tech.com/hex-net/

The short version is that this replicates about 90% of the VW/Audi dealer level scan tools. The only things it can't do are reflashes, key coding, and removing component protection (locks certain modules to a specific VIN)

You can use it to diagnose and reconfigure all of the different modules in the car. Things like unlocking the DVD drive, or adding options that your car didn't come with. For example, if I wanted to add the front parking distance sensors that the newer RS5s come with, I could install the parts and then reprogram my parking controller to work with them.

The old Ross Tech cable was USB, and required Windows to run their software. I'm used to that from the Mitsu days. But this new interface is WiFi based. You can connect any device with a browser, and do all of the functions that the Windows based software did. It's amazing. I really, really wish we had something this capable for the Mitsubishi platforms. We're stuck with clunky crap like EvoScan, and 25 years later people are still begging for a way to reset airbag lights. It's disgraceful. Especially for cars that are as hacker-friendly as Mitsubishi's.

But back to my car. The first thing I did was a full scan of all of the modules in the car. My car has 27 individual computers, and multiple lesser parts that can still identify themselves on the data bus. Like the MMI control module I replaced...it was able to report its part number, name and hardware revision during the scan

This was a little scary though. This came from the tire pressure monitor:
I've been having an issue with my left rear tire leaking. That was the most recent low tire fault, right down to the time, date and conditions present when the fault occurred

I've got an appointment with CarMax on Monday to look at it. Cost to me: $0

God that exhaust sounds gorgeous :d rool:

That my friend is one good looking car.

[quote=""Jeff V.""]But back to my car. The first thing I did was a full scan of all of the modules in the car. My car has 27 individual computers, and multiple lesser parts that can still identify themselves on the data bus. Like the MMI control module I replaced...it was able to report its part number, name and hardware revision during the scan

This was a little scary though. This came from the tire pressure monitor:
I've been having an issue with my left rear tire leaking. That was the most recent low tire fault, right down to the time, date and conditions present when the fault occurred [/quote]

Your warranty is now void.

My car now has everything I could ask for. It did Bluetooth for phone calls from the factory, but not music streaming.



I managed to score one of the OEM Bluetooth kits. These were discontinued a few years ago. It was pricey, but worth it. There are kits that rely on an Apple to Bluetooth bridge to trick the car into going into aux-in mode, but I would have had to run power and ground wires to my interior fuse block. I wanted a clean, OEM install.



It took almost 90 minutes of firmware updates for the various entertainment components to get to where I needed to be, but it was worth it. Interestingly, the MMI firmware updates run from the 6-disc CD changer in the dash.



So now my navigation is up to date, my entertainment system is up to date, and I've got streaming music via my phone (mostly Pandora). I've only got a couple very minor cosmetic issues to resolve, and it'll be perfect

Cool!!!

Can it do other things like display text messages from your phone or Talk to Text?

It's got some voice command stuff that I haven't played with, but there's no SMS integration.

The really recent Audis have all of that, plus cellular data connectivity and integrated Google maps. I could retrofit that system, but the cost would be outrageous.

This is plenty for now. The only other system I might retrofit is the front parking aid system, but only if I can do it on the cheap. I've already got the rear camera and distance sensors from the factory.



It's not anything I'll be looking at any time soon.

I would kill for having Google Maps as nav instead of the built-in. Wish I could stream that from the phone. That and bluetooth music would be nice.

Very awesome!!

-John

[quote=""alienviking""]I would kill for having Google Maps as nav instead of the built-in. Wish I could stream that from the phone. That and bluetooth music would be nice.[/quote]

Google Maps TRAFFIC. UGH!

I saw this at the Chicago Auto Show this weekend. It's the same color as my car. It must have been done through the Audi Exclusive customization program. I'm pretty sure that they discontinued regular use of Sprint Blue back in 2011.



All the other A series cars were silver, and the S and RS cars were red. It stood out nicely

How is your data thing working? My cable comes in tuesday, going to try and program a few things with the android app then.

Oh, you mean my Ross Tech tool? It's great. The wifi aspect of it is awesome.


I needed to build a channel map for my body control module. I'll explain it in detail later, but in a nutshell, it had to do with seeing if my car can support LED taillights without generating 'bulb out' errors.

To do that, I needed to use the Windows desktop app. (Channel mapping isn't supported in the cloud/tablet version yet) Rather than sit outside in the cold, I hooked up my cable in the car and let it run. The cable automatically hooked up to my wifi, and I was able to run the diagnostics on my laptop from my kitchen

I wish the Mitsu community had a tool half this good.

I paid $25 for a complete interior LED kit, no bulb out errors.

It's possible to do the taillights via resistors, but if I can do it via coding, that's much cleaner.