I bought a 2004 Audi A8L with 54k last week and I have already had several
problems. After 3 days I had an ignition coil go bad. $300 to fix @ audi dealer.
MMI screen and all controls have gone blank once already and the transmission
seems to shift oddly. Exterior light warning comes on for right front of vehicle
but there doesn't appear to be a light out.

Last night I had the car idling after driving for 20 min. and when I stepped out
of the car the radiator fan was extremely loud. Not making an odd noise just
very loud. Much louder than many other vehicles I have owned. Does anyone
have the same noise from their vehicle? Any known issues with the fan? One
week of ownership and I am nervous and thinking about going back to a Mercedes.
Thanks!

 

even mercs go badis the fan the AC or engine cooling, when you say stepped out was the engine running and was it overheating and do you have any other issues?

 

All i can say is im sorry you got the 04 A8, its the first year that body A8 was out and it has more bugs in it than you can believe. The 05+ A8 has much less problems, but man its still way better than a mercedes [:'(]

I would say the fan is bad.

 

wow this is scaring me. i just bought an 04 A8L with 55k on it. one owner car. california car. but reading this maybe i should have bought the extended warranty. But I do have the cash to pay for repairs and the finance guy...i wasa finance guy for ten years also btw....the finance guy started at five grand for the warranty and dropped it to three grand for three years to 100k on odo. I just couldnt buy from the guy once he knew i did his job for ten years and he tried to rip my head off on extended warranty....maybe i should call my credit union and purchase a warranty.

 

No, the vehicle is not overheating and i believe it is the cooling fan since it is
mid-winter in new england and I'm not running the AC. It seems the fan is
almost always running and it is obnoxiously loud. I think I will bring it to the
dealership.

 

I have the same car with 76000kms on it. I just got the car back from the stealership. My 3rd gear was really rough and the transmission was sluggish in gear changes. They replaced the tranny fluid and filters and its perfect now. Covered under the extended warranty. Took them all of 3 days 2 get 'er done though.

 

Hello
I've just joined the forum (I live in England) looking for an answer to the exact same cooling fan issue you mention. They appear to be running all the time after the engine reaches operating temp (after 5 miles journey or so). It's only started doing this recently (I've had the car two and a half years, it is a 2003 D3 4.2). I've taking it to 2 different dealers on 3 occasions but each time they tell me "no fault found, car is functioning normally" yet the fan noise is WAY TOO LOUD to be normal. Any further news that you can share on this? I'm now planning to get an indenpendent specialist to look at it. One other thing I've noted is that the fans run for 2-3 seconds after turning off the ignition.

Thanks.

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2003 D3 4.2

 

So here is the issue and answer to the problem I posted. Soon after posting this thread
the vehicle began overheating. Somewhat erratically. I'm not a mechanic but my first
guess was thermostat. Ridiculous that a thermostat would go at 50k miles. Paid $130 to
a dealer to tell me "they think it might be the thermostat". Ridiculous. The car will display a code if your shoes are dirty but it didn't set off any codes for almost blowing the motor.

Audi wanted $850 to replace the thermostat because they have to remove
the timing belt to get at it. The loud fan noise is the high-speed cooling fan which
was always running to compensate for the bad thermostat. I spoke with a head Audi tech at
another dealership and he informed me that in the 4.2 engines the thermostats are garbage
and always go bad. He told me that when they replace them they do not put an A8 thermostat
back in the vehicle. They install an A6 thermostat for the 2.7 liter engine. This thermostat
fits the 4.2Lbut the body is smaller and much more reliable. Opens at the same temperature.

I bought the A6 thermostat ($26 wholesale price) and had a local shop install it. It took less than
two hours with two guys, one to take the timing belt off and hold the cam in place and the other
to slip the thermostat in. No retiming. Oh by the way, not only do they have to remove the timing belt but also had to drop the front bumper to get in there. Unbelievable. Picked the car up an hour later and ran it through its paces (beat the ever living S out of it). Problem resolved for $250. No overheating and no loud fan. I have owned Mercedes S500's, SL500's, BMW 7 series, and even BMW and MB dealers won't screw you as badly as Audi. Poorly designed vehicles that are difficult to work on. Probably never buy another. Well maybe the R8.

 

wrobo
Thank you very much for this- I really felt like I was losing my mind on this fault. It's particularly annoying when it seems so obvious what the fault is yet all the Audi techs do is look at fault codes and like you say, so much as sneeze in the car and it logs it yet a fault like this fails to get a mention. I also feel like this A8, with all its good points, is too complicated for its own good and a few times I've had the front bumper removed to replace some sensor or other. I'll try again to get it resolved - now had about 3 months of this nonsense on top of other minor but annoying faults.

Thanks.

 

For anyone else looking at this threadI can confirm that the problem with my car's high-speed cooling fanscoming on all the time is also the thermostat. It took almost a whole day to diagnose, with the Audi mechanicsreplacing various other temperature sensors first.

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2003 D3 4.2