Hi everyone,

I am looking for some help troubleshooting the low oil pressure problem on my A4.

I have an A4 1.8T (2000) that I bought second-hand about 7 years ago. Although driving it has been a pleasure, I have experienced most of the common issues described here (oil sludge, tie rods, control arms, timing belt, etc) and spent quite a bit in maintenance of this car (in excess of 12K).

About 3 months ago, it had the MIL come on and after some troubleshooting my mechanic told me to ignore it as it was related to fuel-mixture being lean and he thought it was due to faulty MAF sensor which is expensive to replace. However, after a couple of months, the MIL problem disappeared only to be replaced by a new problem…

Now, after I drive the car for about 1 hour or so, or if I push the engine too hard (for example, try to accelerate very fast to overtake someone), the oil-pressure light comes on. I goes on and off for a few times and then comes on permanently if I continue to drive. I also noticed that there is a loss of power when I try to accelerate rapidly, the car doesn't get the expected thrust immediately. The oil-level is fine and my mechanic initially suspected this might be related to sludge and suggested flushing the engine with an oil additive during the last oil change (last week), unfortunately it did not resolve the issue. Now he's saying that I might be looking for an expensive repair as he's not quite sure what the problem is and would need to spend few hours diagnosing it. This is really frustrating as I've reached a point where the money I'm spending each year on this car in maintenance is exceeding what it's worth… Can anyone advise on what might be the problem here so that I can ask him to focus only on those things?

Also, if someone can provide a recommendation for a good Audi mechanic in Toronto/GTA, that would be great. I have a feeling (based on the past repairs) that my current mechanic is not very familiar with Audis and I would really hate to take it to the dealership.

Thanks!

 

I have a 2001 A4 Quattro 1.8T. I bought it a couple years ago and I had a problem with the low oil pressure light coming on as well. As soon as it did I did an oil flush and oil change at Jiffy Lube. After the oil change the light would still come on but less frequently and then it stopped for a couple months. It then came back on again, at which time I did another oil flush and oil change with synthetic oil. And then after a few days it went away and hasn't been back for over a year. So for me I was able to get rid of it with a couple oil flushes and using quality synthetic oil. I don't know if that will help you or not but I hope it works out!

 

Thanks for sharing your experience. I have been using synthetic oil myself ever since I've had this car and I too experienced some improvement following the flush/oil-change last week - there were no more warning lights while driving short distances locally. However, the relief was temporary and the problem returned as soon as I took the car out for a longer drive (3 hours or so). The warning showed up after driving for about one hour and I had to just ignore it and continue driving. Since then, it's been particularly bad - now it shows up within a few minutes of driving. Unfortunately, it doesn't look like something that might get fixed by a couple of flush/oil-change cycles...