Content > Masa's Audi A3

During the winter 2005/2006, and especially towards the spring of 2006, I got bitten quite hard by the infamous tuning-bug. You know, the one that somehow changes your brain chemistry and induses a near coma-like state where costs become a non-issue, and all that matters is the next upgrade. Clearly the original plan to keep the A3 at a nearly stock level and as a purely daily driver was going down the drain just as fast as my bank account balance began sliding towards the red.. As always, the fever starts with the small stuff, looking like you still have the situation under control. This time was no different.

One of the first things about the stock setup of the A3 I noticed on the track was the suspension behavior. The A3 was bought with the S-line chassis upgrade option, so it was no suprise that straight away it was quite drivable. For a beginner driver that is. At -25mm, the S-line chassis sits a further 10mm lower than the regular Sports chassis, and comes with slightly stiffer ARB’s as well. The ‘ring is however quite unforgiving, and almost immediately displayed one of the stock setup weaknesses – quite easily identifiable even to a complete rookie.

Hard braking from high speeds (150km/h +) felt, well, unstable. The rear would start wobbling, at the lack of a better word, and you actually had to make steering corrections to keep the car going straight. That’s atleast how it felt, it’s entirely possible that the car might have also corrected itself, but clearly this didn’t feel “right”. As other S-line owners also reported similar issues, I was convinced that I wasn’t simply imagining it.

So – clearly an upgrade was warrented! Being a beginner still, and not wanting to blow my entire budjet on the first upgrades (See! Somehow I already knew that this was only the beginning..), I quite early decided against a full-blown coilover kit. Sure, one would have propably been great, but I doubted whether I would have actually had the skills to have been able to benefit from the additional advantages. Reading good reviews of much cheaper alternatives helped to finalize the decision.

In the end, I ended up purchasing a set of H&R springs (-35mm), and a new stiffer rear ARB, also by H&R. The stock S-line shocks were kept for now together with these new components.

First impressions once these were installed were, honestly and somewhat slightly surprisingly, really great! The setup kept the car at a near-stock-feel when driven on the roads and the city, and at the track, changed the feel significantly towards the better. The instability at high speed braking was gone, and the rear ARB upgrade had additionally significantly reduced the understeer nature of the chassis – although, to be honest, a lot of the understeer still remained. I ofcourse expected benefits from the upgrade, but the actual end result was far better than I could have wished for.

Even now, looking at retrospect at this upgrade, I have to say that cost-improvement wise this has been clearly the best of all the upgrades so far. During the last year, with over 150 laps of various tracks, I never really felt that any further upgrades of the suspension would have helped me to be any quicker around the laps. There’s a chance that I’m wrong, but I’m happy as long as it doesn’t feel like that