If you still own a G1 kit

If you still own a G1 kit, I would strongly recommend you take off you serpentine belt and inspect your pulley bearings. Grab the pulley and wiggle it side to side. If you do have free play in it, replace them! Mine still spun great by hand, but they were on their way out. Make sure you inspect your serpentine belt as well. Mine were due for replacement at 23,000 miles.

The kit was developed by Tony Ricci at Performance Engineered Systems, www.pes-tuning.com, in New Jersey. The kit started development in 98. As the story goes, Tony originally saw a niche market for the 2.8 30 valve engine and decided to develop something for it. After about a year and a half, the PES kit was released. He has logged many hours on his own car, doing the testing, and running under various conditions. He wanted a kit that would not effect the car's longevity and reliability but still offer impressive horsepower and torque gains. I believe he has achieved this.
The kit uses an Eaton supercharger with custom machined brackets and hoses. Eaton is a fantastic supercharger company, making superchargers for manufacturers such as Jaguar, Mercedes, and Buick to name a few. The software (chip) was designed by Garrett at GIAC. Everything you could possibly need to install the kit is included, bolts, tie wraps, etc. It also comes with a very nice manual with tons of pictures and instructions anyone could follow. It is obvious a lot of time and thought went into the kit.

click left picture for more pictures

THE PROS OF THE KIT

THE CONS OF THE KIT

The engine now puts out 280 bhp and 260 lbs of torque. Quite a big step up from the stock figures. 0-60 times have been estimated in the low 5s. My personal guess is 5.5 just by looking at the figures of the '00 S4 which has slightly less hp and torque. Needless to say, the car is quick. I ran head to head with a Porsche once and was able to keep up. He managed to pull slightly ahead, but not by much. Keep in mind my car is heavier, burdened with Quattro (if that's a burden :)
The car can also be returned to it's stock configuration without a trace which is nice to know. It could come in handy if you want to sell your A4 without the kit in the future, etc.

Probably the biggest on my list is the noise. The supercharger does have a whine to it, which is apparently normal in many superchargers. The noise is more noticeable under acceleration from a stop. Once you are cruising, the noise quiets down quite a bit. At highway speed it is barely perceptible.
The other downside is the kit does require an after market exhaust. While some may not view this as a con, and I necessarily don't, it is an added expense of getting the kit. The other downside is that with an aftermarket exhaust, noise level will increase as well. It will free up some back pressure and increase exhaust flow; which is recommended by Tony.
The last significant downside to the kit is that it does cause the car to run more rich. You will notice black soot on your tail pipes. Under full acceleration you will see a touch of it expel from the exhaust.

When it comes down to it, I do NOT regret what I have done to my car. The extra power is really a blast to drive. It really makes the car feel the way it should. The extra power put behind quattro really makes the car jump to life. The car now demands at least the factory sports suspension or an aftermarket setup. I was happy with the factory sport suspension until I rode in a buddy's car that had the Eibach/Bilstein setup. It does firm the ride up a bit...but we'll discuss that in another section.
The car now REALLY pulls. The first thing I noticed was how much more torque the car has. The delivery of power is also very smooth, linear. There are no hiccups or hesitations in the engine, it pulls all the way to redline. Another nice facet of the supercharger is that it is void of lag like a turbo. I have instant boost at anytime. And speaking of boost, it only puts out a modest 5.5 lbs of boost.
For everyday driving, the car is loads of fun. I don't have any knocking, detonation, etc. It is smooth. Oil temp and water temp remain unaffected. The car has pretty much retained most of it's stock characteristics except those I mentioned in the pros and cons section. With the added power, you can really feel quattro work even more you come around corners and punch it hard. It's sooo much fun :)

I was the 1st owner of the kit that lived in Texas, let alone the first owner who also bought xenon lights. The kit requires you to replace the passenger side headlight cover (on the backside) with the one that comes with the kit. This allows proper clearance for the K&N filter that replaces the stock air box. Well, this wasn't as easy for me with the xenon lights. While the size of the light was similar, it wasn't an exact match. Also, the custom light cover is flat. On the xenon lights I couldn't lay a flat piece of material over the back of the light because of the electrical connector on the back of the xenon bulb. So this left me with trying to design my own backing plate. I originally went to a local machine shop to see if they could design one. They could, but for a price around $300 not including anodizing. Scratch that idea...so I toyed around with other ideas. Kurt Williams mentioned we might make one from carbon fiber, but I ended up making one from sheet aluminum at a friends metal shop. It isn't pretty, but it was cheap and it serves it's purpose. I sealed the plate against the headlight with some silicone to prevent water seepage. The K&N air filter is now pushed to side slightly due to bulge in the plate. It hasn't posed a problem yet, but in the worst case scenario I will have to replace the filter ever so often because of the increased stress on the filter.

THE ANECDOTES

The kit has also risen a lot of speculation over what it will do the reliability and longevity of the engine; rightfully so as well. Now for those of you who are very familiar with Audis, and especially with the durability of Audi engines, you should know this will not pose a problem. The supercharger only puts out a modest 5.5 lbs of boost, which is almost half of the chipped 1.8T A4s. The 5 cylinder Audis ran even higher boost pressure, modified ones running safely at 18 psi, some even higher.

I also live in Austin, Texas. It doesn't get much hotter than it does down here. I've had no experience with knocking or pinging on the street. The track is a different situation. I did get pinging when the oil temp got close to 250 under WOT. The kit doesn't include an intercooler which would probably cure that. I ran a higher octane gas last time at the track and that got rid of pinging. Tony Ricci didn't design the kit with an intercooler for a few reasons 1) Price - the kit already cost enough and he didn't want to drive the price up more. 2) Fitment issues - To fit an intercooler, one would possibly have to fit a custom bumper on the car.

I've gotten quite a few questions in the past about the kit. If this remaining portion doesn't clear
up any remaining questions, please email me so I can update you and this site.

To the left is a pic of the kit on car with the normal DOT headlights. That headlight cover shown here is the one that comes from Tony. To give you a point of reference, this pic is taken from above and the engine bay is toward the bottom of the pic.

Right - The custom made plate. Notice the bulge in the plate for the connector. The K&N filter is pushed slightly to the side as well. The goopy looking stuff is the silicone. Click the picture for some more shots. Click the pic to the right for more pics of the cover.

Important Update!!! -- Brad Billut has found a K&N filter available to fit with the xenon lights with no modification. Check out www.audiworld.com for pics of it.