-- efpierce
A friend of mine just got back from the Netherlands and he has it in his head that he wants to take his pristine Audi A6 and beef up the stock motor to put out well over 600 HP and then take it racing! You read that right, he wants to take his bone-stock 2.0 liter turbocharged engine and push it to its limits to squeeze very last bit of power out of it that he can, take it to the racetrack and be competitive. It is something that I can do, that’s not the problem. The problem here is doing it safely so he doesn't end up throwing his engine away due to a major internal failure.
The Audi engines are very sturdy designs that can handle a lot of upgrades if done correctly. With this Audi project, we will be looking at new engine internals, a bigger turbo and some other modifications to make it all work together. After hearing his ideas, my first call was to MaxSpeedingRods in the UK. They are the people that know how to get these things done and they have always been very helpful.
They told me that there was a right and wrong way to choose the proper connecting rods for our project and they really opened my eyes as to what I did and didn't need for this Audi engine build. Today I am going to share with you what I learned and maybe help you make the right choice when buying connecting rods for racing.
There are many different types of connecting rods available today; from stock, aluminum, 4340 forged and 4340 billet. The ones that you will want to use for racing applications are the aluminum or the forged connecting rods. Why aluminum and forged over billet? First off, aluminum connecting rods are the best choice for racing, if you don’t mind spending a lot of money and changing them out often. I like the forged rods because they are much stronger, last longer and can really help your engine produce power.
Connecting rods take a lot of abuse inside a race engine and you want to buy only the strongest, highest quality connecting rods you can find. I am going to use Max Speeding Rods’ High Performance Audi S3S4 A4 A6 TT & VW Golf MK4 GTI Passat Jetta Seat Beetle Skoda H-Beam Connecting Rods for this project as they will do the job and last much longer than any other brand available.
These forged H-beam rods are affordably priced and come in many standard and light weight designs. You can usually find them in a wide range of lengths and weights making them perfect for almost any racing application you can think of.
Speaking of length of a connecting rod, the length can make a big difference in the performance output of your race engine. You may have to sacrifice piston size for connecting rod length and or connecting rod length for piston size and there is also the reliability versus horsepower factor to take into account. You can figure this all out on your own or you can trust the knowledgeable professionals at Max Speeding Racing to help you get the right parts for the right application.
Max Speeding Racing carries a comprehensive line of connecting rods for many applications and they can also provide you with many more performance racing parts, engine parts, turbocharger, coilovers and more. Visit their website today and see what they have for your next project.
