Originally Posted by CornersWell

I have had both the DRC and Torque Converter failures.

I'm riding on the DRC (Mk. II) replacement from Audi, which rides strangely to me (lots of rear bounce and a weird low-front & high-rear stance). It is NOT confidence inspiring. I'd honestly be very interested in comparing rides with you, at some point, if you keep it. I was looking at the KW v3 set-up, which my shop can easily do. The Stasis/Ohlins package was $$$ and is NLA, anyway, AFAIK. Trick, though. I've worked with Penske on our race cars, previously, and I thought I might go that route, but even more $$$$$.

The general consensus was that the DRC, when working properly was the best set-up "mix" (comfortable enough for the street, but firm enough for performance), but it's a real challenge to get it right, apparently. And, given the fact that you need a special bleed tool, Indy shops just don't have them. Techs at Audi dealers probably don't see many of these and wouldn't know what to do with the tool if they ever did.

The TC failure ended up with a rebuilt unit, and it's been knock on wood, since. BUT, it still doesn't drive like it did before the TC failure. Nothing wrong with it. I've not done an ECU or TCU upgrade, btw, but am considering Nubcake's ECU tune.

For anyone interested in this car (and I'm sure those who are will do their homework), these are the two BIG fails. Once addressed, these cars seem to be solid, but they are getting older. Just small stuff you have to live with when you're talking an almost 20 year old car.

CW

Originally Posted by WANNAPAN

Amazed at how current it looks.

I Googled and was shocked at how fast it was especially for its age. 0-60 in mid 4's?? Any idea what the tune does?

If my OCD wasn't in full effect I would love to have one.

What a reasonable price to get into a specialty car market and keep the family happy!!

Originally Posted by CornersWell

Plenty of tuners, back in the day, offered for the RS6 (Sportec, APR, 034, etc.). Seems there were a couple of ways to get bhp and torque up. The highest bhp figures I ever saw claimed for ECU tunes were in the 550bhp range. Which represented a ~100bhp gain. I don't necessarily buy that, and I think people saw significantly less at the rear wheel. And, there were a LOT of guys who said, they wanted to get it up much higher (think 700bhp or more) and it ought to be easy to do. But, without doing new turbos, I don't think it was possible. The re-engineering alone would be impossibly expensive (because it's a very tight engine bay), so I think most of these projects were abandoned. But, IIRC, the basic tunes were in the ~50bhp range. So, ~500bhp at the crank. Assume ~15% loss in the transmission.

CW

Originally Posted by AWD

These are such cool cars. They definitely don't build them like they used to.
A wonderful, enjoyable analog driving experience. Kudos how much service and documentation you have. Looks like a wonderful example. GLWS.