I recently purchased a used 2006 A4 for my daughter to use. She brought it over for me to look at today because she had some braking noise issues over the last few days. I took the car out for a test drive and had the clutch do something I have never experieinced. I shifted from first to second then heading to third, it got a soft feel to the clutch peddle and would not do much. I pulled the car off to a friends drive and looked at a few things, but could not see anything specific. I decided to see what I could get the car to do, started fine and coule get it into first gear, but could get the car to only move very slowly. I decided to try to get the car to make it the 1 mile to my house. I could get it moving and shifted through the gears, but could not get to go above 20 MPH in third gear. I did get the car to my drive.

Any thoughts on what I can check? The car was used, and did not have an owner's manual, so I have no real clue where to check for anything on this car. Any assistance I can get on troubleshooting this problem would be greatly appreciated.

I am sure glad this happened when I was driving the car rather than my wife or daughter!!

I heard back from the repair people. The clutch assembly and flywheel were burned nearly beyond recognition!! Of course, all of this happened about 3 weeks AFTER the manufacturer's warranty expired.......

We purchased the car this summer for our daughter's use. The car was originally put into service as a lease and sat for quite some time before we purchased it. According to the mechanic I talked to about the issues the car had, he said the problem were probably caused well before we bought the car, and that it was bad enough that it may have been close to a fire, due to the slippage that numberous times..... I have a feeling that it was driven improperly in heavy traffic (since the leasee was from the Chicago area), the leasee hammered the heck out of the car (a combo of 2.0 liter turbo charged engine and the 6 speed manual) or the person who had it initially was not experienced with a manual transmission OR they really did not care about the car since it was on a lease to them.... In any case, it is an expensive lesson for me.