Need to enhance your sense of listening to? Buy a automotive and begin tinkering with it. Never has there been an ear extra delicate to the faintest of sounds than one belonging to somebody with a modified automotive. Every rattle, click on, thump, and whistle is amplified to the nth diploma with the concern one thing may be unsuitable. Sometimes, although, the sounds are loud sufficient for anybody within the automotive to listen to.
The people at AutoTopNL obtained an opportunity to take an Audi S3 8L — constructed from 1999 by means of 2003 — onto the speed-limitless highways of Germany’s Autobahn. Under the hood is a turbocharged 1.8-liter 20-valve four-cylinder that made as much as 222 horsepower in inventory trim. Per the video, this one is an earlier mannequin with 207 hp, nevertheless it’s been modified to a good 300 horses with 325 pound-feet of torque.
The first freeway pull sees the S3 run from 62 mph (100 kph) to 134 mph (215 kph) in 18 seconds. It will not cling with Bugatti Chiron, however for a small 24-year-old hatchback, that is not unhealthy. It sounds good too, emitting a pleasant growl full with a deliciously chirpy blow-off valve between shifts. Highway site visitors foils the following couple of runs, although we finally get a transparent stretch that sends the needle to 240 kph (149 mph). Importantly, the speedo was nonetheless climbing steadily when the motive force lifted. Clearly the Audi has extra to provide.
Before the motive force is ready to extract this S3’s true potential, issues go south. The subsequent pull is reduce brief virtually instantly by a loud bang. From the angle of the video it isn’t clear the place the sound comes from, however the driver instantly lifts the throttle, upshifts, then takes it out of drugs whereas coasting onto the shoulder. A fast name for backup brings a BMW on-scene for a tow off the freeway, the place the AutoTopNL workforce discovers the reason for the issue: An intercooler pipe has blown itself off its connection level.
Fortunately, it is a easy repair, and one we suspect many forced-induction followers are accustomed to. The video ends with the crew making use of gaffer tape across the hose for a brief repair. So whereas an enormous bang on the autobahn isn’t a very good factor, this journey actually may’ve ended a lot worse.