I have been doing tons of research looking to buy a station wagon. I found a 2001 Allroad with 2.7L turbo engine and this car sounds so awesome, but I couldn't afford $10K to replace the turbos (I read that's the cost on another thread). On the other hand, I'm in love with this car. How likely is it that the turbos will blow? BTW the gentleman selling doesn't seem like the type to modify or beat on the car, and neither am I, so it should see somewhat gentle use.

 

I know the thread you're talking about...the "Common Problems" sticky that makes a blanket statement about how at 120k miles the turbo's going to blow out (like clockwork, the post seems to imply) and costs $10,000 to fix. I just bought a 2005 Allroad 2.7T with 80k miles and I had a great independent shop that only works on BMW, Audi, and Volkwagen check out my newly purchased ride.

I got a bit worried too, so I mentioned that forum post to the longtime Audi-specific mechanic that's also the co-owner of the shop and he said that's not necessarily true. It's all about how well you maintain the vehicle, specifically the gaskets and seals and how hard you drive it. He also said there's cars that have over 200k miles that still have the original turbo working great and there's cars where the turbo's blown out at 60k miles. He also said that a new turbo costs about 5k, maybe with labor you're looking at 6-7k. I'm not an Audi mechanic myself but that shop's been maintaining my BMW for 5 years now and they do a great job, so I tend to believe what he told me. Take it for what it's worth I suppose.

 

A pair of turbo's for my 03 All-road, 2.7, can be had for $1000 plus shipping. Not Audi brand, 12 mo warranty

2003 Audi from TurboChargerPros

Still need a good mechanic

 

Make sure those aren't Chinese knockoff turbos - there are a lot of those around and they fail within a couple months of install. The K03 turbos that Audi uses unfortunately are probe to shaft seal failure, causing oil leaks and eventually turbo failure.

To the original poster, the allroad is available with the sweet 4.2L V8 as well...

 

My mechanic advised me to make sure that the oil was kept fresh, and to never let it run low. He claimed that as long as I do that, I should never have an issue with the turbos. 148k, so far, so good.

 

Based on what I've seen in 6.5+ years in the Audi world, I'm gonna kinda **** in your scrambled eggs and say that I think your mechanic is going to turn out to be wrong on this one. I've been involved with turbos for basically the last 20 years. I've never seen a failure rate on them like I have with the K03 turbos on these cars. Before Audi, I was up to my ears in the boosted Japanese cars (300ZX, Supra, RX7, etc), and they never had failures that approached how common they are on the Audi. Hell, my ZX was boosting almost 18psi on stock T22s for probably 40k miles of their 236k miles and had zero shaft play, oil leakage, etc. unfortunately, turbo death on these cars is a fact of life.