I can now understand why people dislike Audi engineers.
Thankfully I kept that wheeled frame, from having a Boss 302 V8 and gearbox on it to using it to put the 964 body on for paint and now this big lump.

Exciting times, Nigel.

Well this has been hit hard in 2025. Have decided to outsource the project to John Kanters. He is far more suited to this than I and I am glad for it.

Happy new year!

Thank you, you maybe right re: the fuel usage. It probably doesn't help when my commutes are short as well.

I've not had one of these but that fuel consumption sounds about right for a 2.5L car. Dialling back the tune shouldn't affect cruise and light load fuelling. A tuner or the dealer should be able to flash it back to stock if it does have a tune on it.

Hi there,

Looking for some advice please as I'm unsure how to progress. I have a new to me 2017 Audi RS3 that has had some work done. Obvious is a cat back exhaust that wasn't resonated but now is (just prior christmas). It has also had the air box upgraded, so I'm guessing it has been tuned to some degree but just not sure how much. The piece of the puzzle  I'm thinking about is that's pretty thirsty at 13ltrs per 100kms around town and 9ltrs per 100kms on trip so I would like to dial that back about make it less thirsty particularly on a roadie. I enjoy the performance so I'm not trying to kill that totally, just looking for some balance. I'm thinking that one option is a factory reset which would blow the tune away or option 2 tuning house for a less aggressive tune? Contructive feedback welcome, cheers in advance!

test PCV and also smell oil, does it smell like fuel or oil?

Next up on the list of things to fix that it will probably fail WOF on:

-Look at sorting the steering column thats kept the car from driving for the past ~3 Months
-Repair/Replace/Remove Rear muffler, it has 3 different leaks in it which would of been present at last warrant, but were definitely looked past.
-Potentially different headlights, the current ones are cheap LED ringed ones which dont appear to direct the beam, so unsure if they'd be legal?
-Look for rust, there's a bit that have been poorly covered/hidden by a previous owner, nothing too major (I hope) but want to be sure before I put a lot more time into this car.

In the spirit of building this car on a budget, I found some cheap lowering springs on the marketplace, albeit for a MK3 Vr6/GTI. I was going to make them work with different top spring hats and top strut mounts, but unfortunately I wasn't getting a good height setup with them, as well as them not being captive, so have decided to get rid of them.

My dad happened to have some Mk2/3 Based lowering springs which he's sent to me and I've got those sorted.
Had to replace the rear bump stops as somebody in the past was using Yoga Mat cut into circles as the rear bump stops... The bump stops I sourced appear to be slightly different to the standard ones, but fit the same and are the same height, so they should work fine. I intend to either go with coilovers or a proper spring/shock combo later down the line, so these will do for now.



Got the new springs installed and really happy with how they're sitting.



Have a bit of rubbing, up front, but the tyres on these wheels are too big for a mk2 anyway, and I'll look at giving the front a little bit of a clearance if need be.

Also gave the new wheels a bit of a mockup, they should fit really good, potentially could need a small spacer in the rear just to even up the fitment.

Picked up some cheap BBS RS Replica's in 15x7 et15. Offset is pretty aggressive on them but after giving them a trial fit they should fit pretty good.


They're in pretty average condition, faded gold paint and lots of clearcoat failing all over the wheels, so I'm stripping them fully back and will be repainting/polishing the lips.



I was having big issues with sanding back the clearcoat between the fake bolts, but found out they're quite easy to remove. I managed to damage a few while taking them out, but have since found they're readily available on Aliexpress, so I just took to the rest with a drill and took them all out.



Have started giving them a pretty good sand, getting most the imperfections out and they're already looking much better than originally.