Hello, my name is leo and im new to the site. i currently own a 99 mercury cougar with basic mods. My friend has a 1997 Audi A4 1.8T quattro. he wants to sell it for 4500 but i offered him a trade with my car. I love audi and german cars. Tommoro, i will be test driving his car and he will be test driving mines. Is that model and year, a reliable car? I am also looking for perfomance in this car. I have read that it comes with 163 BHP? what are common problems with that model, if any and is there alot of mods available for it? Thanks alot for the help [8D]

 

Try searching for answers to some of these questions.

I have the save model/year. The stock performance is not great, but the car is highly moddable. With basic mods it becomes much faster.

I absolutely love mine.

It depends on how many miles are on it and what he's done to it.

4500 sounds like a great deal, provided its not all fukked up.

Get all the service records from him, and search around the forum, you should be able to find the common probs pretty easily.

I'll give you some of the basics:

look for t-belt replacement, tie-rod ends, suspension (shocks, control arms), and good general maintenance history.

 

You didn't mention whether or not its a manual.

If its an auto, you may want to keep looking.

 

Oh im sorry, its Manual with 94K miles on it.

 

Ask him what kind of oil he uses and what octane gas he runs.

The car is designed for 91 octane, so most likely he should be running 93 because that is easier to find. The car does run on regular 89 but at lower horsepower. If you buy it and especially if you are going to mod it, you will need to run 93 octane.

Audi's are known to have sludge problems in the engine especially on the 1.8T. Using a full synthetic oil like Mobil 1 or equivalent and changing it around every 5k miles will help keep this from happening. When you check the car out, open the cap where oil gets poured in and see if you can see any sludge buildup.

The timing belt hopefully was changed by 94k miles, but if not, you need to have it done like the week you buy the car. Its an involved repair that can be done yourself if you are up to it, but otherwise figure on ~$800 - $1300 for this repair. If you don't change the timing belt and it snaps, you will have several thousand dollars worth of damage to the engine. Recommended belt replacement is around 65k - 70k miles.

Ball joints bite. Tie rod ends and control arms can become a problem around 80k miles and up. DIY TRE are $100, control arms are maybe $100 a piece, but you can buy all 8 for ~$550 and install yourself.

Then you may want to do a tranny flush, coolant flush, and brake system flush so you know its all right.


Ok, those are the main problems with Audis around this year. It looks a little scary, but if you work on cars a little bit, the repairs really aren't that tough. I recommend you find out how much of this has been done, how much you have to get done, and figure that all into the price of the car.

As long as it was well maintained, the Audi will be a much nicer car than your Cougar, and you are getting a good price on it.





Stock hp is around 150. Luckily you can chip it for $500 and get the hp up to about 200. The road to 300hp gets much more expensive though. Do a search on mods, you will find there is a lot you can do. It all depends on your bank account.





Post back what you find out about the cars condition and we will see if its worth getting.