Took my A3 to the dealer today complaining about the AC not always coming on when I crank the engine. This has been going on for a few weeks and all I've had to do is cut the engine off and re-crank it to get cold air. The dealer stated they couldn't replicate the problem, which I believe, but I've now learned there is an A3 AC compressor problem know to AUDI. As my situation turned out, the service advisor left the car running for me and when I got to it, the AC was blowing hot air. Of course, I went straight back to the advisor and got his attention. The car is still at the dealer awaiting a new compressor. Anyone else experienced this problem? BTW, 32,000 miles. Much too early for this type problem, and, I suspect, the dealer attempting to delay this repair until the car was out of warranty and on my buck.

 

They were a hand full of compressors that were bad there is a thread out there that has all the numbers out there on the ones that were bad

 

My 2007 lost it's compressor a couple of months ago at 20,000 miles. My dealer was good about it. Took two days to get fixed as one part was out of stock.

 

Mine is fixed now. I had the new compressor and it was replaced with the new compressor manufacturer. My concern is the early failure rate for the previous manufacturer and the current one. What do I do out of warranty? Just pay the bucks?

 

Just had the same problem happen to me. Just hit the 30000 mile mark this morning and like clockwork the AC stopped working. I found that if I turned the temp **** to 80 then it would kick on and then I could turn it down to LO again. Took it to the dealer and of course couldn't get the problem to replicate with them looking at it. The service guy was very cool though and gave me a loaner for the weekend and told me they would work to get the problem resolved for me. Way more than I was expecting when I went in there this afternoon.

 

Mine was replaced around 25k. Interestingly enough they left this off the service invoice.....

 

Saw this post http://jalopnik.com/5282571/audi-r8-supercar-teardown about what it takes to replace the AC compressor on a R8. I still want one!