New owner, first Ford.

[Spanners]

Hello from Minnesota! My wife and I just bought our first Ford, 2015 Taurus SHO on Saturday. Prior to the SHO we spent the last 12 years in a variety of Audis (A4, S4 4.2l, A6 2.7T S-Line, Q7 4.2l), which made my wife a bit spoiled. She's a hard sell and the Taurus won her over. Just here to learn and see if there are any modifications I can make without voiding the warranty.

 

[MNRubyRed2013]

Welcome to the growing Minnesota (and Western Wisconsin) group of SHO owners.

 

[SHOdded]

Welcome, and congrats on your new ride! Did the right thing by making sure the wife was impressed Once you have put a few thousand miles on it (say after first oil/filter change), and have had a chance to iron out any kinks, bigger mods can follow. In the meantime, at the most, I'd say to put in a CAI (looks/sound only) or a dropin filter like K&N/AEM/AFE etc.

 

[Spanners]

Thanks for the welcome! I spent the last couple years listening to her tell me the A6 was my car since she just hated it. It's a bit of a relief that she actually likes the SHO.

I figured the airfilter would be first, it's the most innocuous. I was looking at low impact tunes to get a small boost in HP, but I seen that the car keeps track of ODBII access and some dealers are picky (no idea about mine yet, they seem nice enough, but the topic of retuning never came up).

 

[markathome]

Welcome, and congrats!
Talk to your service manager and get his take on a tune. Some dealers are very tune friendly.
So far, in general, even with 4x tunes, folks are having no issues. The difference in power, response, and drivability is night/day.

 

[Spanners]

Taking the car in on Friday for the extra undercoating and paint treatment. I'll check with the service advisor then. Thanks for the info!

 

[rubydist]

if your experience with Audi was typical, you are going to love actually driving your car rather than having it the shop. welcome!

 

[TDS-MN]

Welcome aboard, from another Minnesota member. My SHO story was similar to yours, this being the first Ford I've had. My wife drives the SHO most of the time during the week, so I really do look forward to chances to take it somewhere when it opens up. We have both really loved every minute of owning the car, well except for those loan payments.
I have not really explored much as far as Mods go, I'm more concerned about keeping the warranty valid, I haven't had something like that covering any vehicle since the early 90's. So far we've had a couple small issues but the service department at the dealer has taken care of them all without any hassle.

 

[Spanners]

The only problem child among the Audis was the 04 A4 and most of his issues were once we were into the extended warranty (23k worth of repairs).

I'm very concerned about maintaining the warranty. If the service advisors are in any way hostile to mods, I'll be holding off.

 

[Welcome2thesuperSHO]

My GF has a 2001 Audi A6 2.7TT Quattro with a mild tune. That car is way more high maintenance than she is. We have $100 bet on a race. I just got my '14 SHO today and I'm a bit worried, I have driven her it moves extremely well for a 14 year ride with 150k miles. Every time something breaks it gets upgraded. Changing out many parts to include front suspension, motor and drive parts on her car has shaved 10 years off my life, worse than smoking.

 

[Spanners]

The 2.7T is an exceptional engine. it can easily reach 400HP without losing reliability. The weakest point of the car is the automatic transmission. At around 3300lbs. it's quick too. If that car's been continually upgraded, you should get it dynoed.

 

[Welcome2thesuperSHO]

Not until after we race..........

 

[Devin]

Welcome! Are Audis really that maintenance intensive? I've heard stories but never knew any owners

(edit: autocorrect fail)

 

[Spanners]

Not really, but when something goes wrong it tends to be expensive. They maximize use of available space so things are really tight in the engine bay. So it's more labor intensive and if you don't or can't do the wrenching yourself you're paying someone else. Plus things start to go wrong after 100K fairly regularly. my A6 was at 134K and it was just becoming a money sink for me.