AWE 700 kit review

eclou · 2008-03-20 15:44:15

I have always been of the philosophy that mods should complement a car and not try to adversely change the nature of it. To date all of my mods have been chosen carefully to reflect such a decision. Since this is a car driven and enjoyed by my wife as well, any degradation in drivability would be met with extreme prejudice and spousal anguish. I have chosen AWE as a tuner because I like their approach to tuning. Their goal is a complete balanced project while retaining stock or better than stock drivability. Onto to the review: I:Components: The 700 kit consists of the larger VTG turbos, larger intercooler cores, larger throttle body, larger intake plenum, headers, exhaust, and ECU programming. The craftsmanship of the components is top notch. Everything is at the level of factory finish or better. Fitment is perfect with no monkeying around. A friend of mine who is a master Porsche tech helped put in the plenum while I worked on the intercoolers and he made the unsolicited comment that the fitment of the pieces was remarkable. He is used to much "looser" tolerances in tuning products. II:Installation: If you can install your own exhaust you can do this whole kit. I actually installed and reinstalled the kit twice and total install time I would place at about 10 hours for 1 person. No specialty tools are required beyond some male and female torx sockets and some PB Blaster. All bolts and nuts are accessible by normal sized human hands. I would rate the procedure at about a 6/10 in the scale of difficulty. 1/10 as checking your tire pressure manually, and 10/10 being an engine rebuild. Basic procedure involves 1)jack up car with supports 2)remove rear wheels 3)remove rear fender liners 4)remove tail lights and license plate 5)remove rear bumper 6)unbolt intercoolers with brackets as a unit 7)move heat shields out of the way to expose turbos 8)remove turbo hardlines and ducts 9)unbolt nuts from turbo to exhaust and header 10)remove headers 11)loosen exhaust 12)remove turbos - remove diverter valves and oil reservoir and swap onto new turbos 13)remove air box and filter 14)remove y-pipe and disconnect IAT sensor 15)remove throttle body 16)remove plenum 17)reinstallation in reverse of above III:Impressions: I have been a little bit hesistant to post my impressions because it is simply going to sound like an AWE sackride. However I will parlay the experience to date as openly as I can. Idle, throttle response is all indistinguishable from my stage II which was better than stock. There is no hesitation whatsoever, and no noticeable lag increase. Engine noise is unchanged as is the exhaust note. Throttle tip-in is all the same, so no new clutch techniques are needed. The only thing necessary is increased vigilance when mashing the throttle. My car was fast, especially with the race program with the stage II. I never felt any lack of power. This new package increases that intensity by 100% it seems. I am realizing that I have to look far ahead in traffic because your reaction time is going to be tested with this kind of power. I don't think that this car can be fully appreciated on the street at all. The boost builds so quickly that it shocks you. Full boost comes on by 2500 rpms or less it seems, but it is hard to say for sure because you don't have time to glance down at the gauge. I will get some GPS timing done soon but it does appear to be producing an appreciable jump in power from before. BTW this is all on the pump gas - I have not even tried the race mode yet! I will be posting more installation pics later