As some of you know, I now have the Stage II AWE clutch and flywheel kit, and I'm about 900 miles into the 1000 mile break-in. Tonight after giving the car a vaccum and wash I decided to take a quick spin to attempt some launches. The problem is, I have no idea how to even go about it with the new clutch...any ideas??? I know some of the other 1.8T and S4 guys have some strategies.

Everytime I tried I would get the revs to ~3500 slowly let out the clutch till it began to barely roll then tried to dump it. The result: the revs would just drop down to 1500-2000 and I'd get a crap start w/ jerkiness. I know I wasn't too hard on the clutch because there was barely any burnt clutch and I tried not to ride it much. Keep in mind this clutch is substantially more touchy than the stock 1.8T one. This past weekend I took my car over to a local European repair/tech shop and the mechanic had a terrible time with shifting the thing, and he had to have driven hundreds of cars in his career, he even said it was more difficult than VR6 VW's with performance clutches, which seem like they would be similar.

I've greatly adapted to normal driving and it really is not that much of a hassle there, but what about when I wanna have a little fun, please help.

 

Even my stock clutch is very hard to launch, with quattro, you don't get any wheel spin, especially on dry pavement. Have you tried turning the ESP off? The best i can do is get it rolling a bit, then hammer it and it doesnt jerk as bad. If you watch the topgear vid of the M3 versus the S4, the m3 smokes the tires, and the S4 slowly rolls at the start then, pins it. I guess, just play with it for a while, see what works.

 

The perfect launch with Quattro isn't horribly difficult, but it will take you a few times to get it down. My method is to rev the engine between 3000-3500 rpm's, and let the clutch out right to the point of engagement (but not past it, so the car is still stopped). I then wait until an upswing in the RPM's between those two points, let the clutch quickly out to the sweet spot while almost flooring it it, and then pop the clutch all the way while increasing the throttle to 100% (it's only in the sweet spot for a tiny instant, just enough to prevent a bog).

I'm not sure if the low end torque of the S4 makes launching easier, but obviously launching once the car is rolling doesn't really do much good, since you'll we worse off in the 1/4 mile or a race. I haven't launched this S4, only my previous one - with 275's on all 4 corners I think I'd snap my tranny of halfshafts

 

Thanks for the replies guys.

Jon - No manual ESP override switch on my car. I don't know if there even is any type of traction control, I think quattro is my TC.

GoWide - Thanks man, this is actually what I was going for but you cleared up alot of it. The only problem is with the limited amount of miles that I have with the new clutch, I have not perfectly found the sweet spot and put it to memory. In everyday driving, if I take my time, it's all smooth and I can find where it catches, but with accelerating from a stop I just kinda let it out slowly for now. I'll work on this but probably after the 1000 mile mark, Thanks again.