what if it's not a bearing...is there a way to diagnose what could be the noise?

 

no just pull the pan and find out what going on, if there was low oil pressure, and the car wasnt shut off, damage can occur very quickly, in a matter or seconds

 

I've driven up to 10 miles with that blinking light. But the engine sounded fine - no ticking or clicking noises. No roughness or vibration. It still does other than that little whining noise.

 

jesus, this thread is like a nightmare...

if i were going through this i would have made a play date out of pulling my engine...

 

Just because the light has stopped doesn't mean the pump is ok. Mine came on, I turned off the car, started it back up again and the light went away for a week. Next time it came on I made sure to get it over to the stealership. Dude, DONT DRIVE THE CAR if the light is on and the engine/pump is making noise. Its probably a bad pump, clogged with *$&@ty oil residue and not able to get enough into the engine.

If your light came on, there may not have been basically any oil in your engine and so you could have fried many internals. I was lucky and caught it before I fried my engine, it took two engine flushes, new pump and pvc piping and 10 hours of labor. Expect probably around $1500 for parts and labor, labor being the biggest factor.

You need to drop the pan and find out how bad your pump is. I'd replace the pump at least (2-300) just for peace of mind if nothing else. You may have engine damage but won't know that until you take the engine apart. If you don't take care of your engine now, you will be posting in a few weeks saying how you hate Audis blah blah blah out $5K looking for a new engine.

Listen to TomRitt, he has rebuilt a few Audi engines and has blown through them too. He knows all when it comes to this stuff. Good luck - I have already been through this experience.

 

Thanks guys...I'll be dropping the pan today to check it out. I'll let u know what I find! (keeping my fingers crossed)

 

I think we all already know what your going to find!!! S_L_U_D_G_E

 

umm the 6 letter word that means death[:@]

 

Yep... hopefully you haven't been driving around on that failed oil pump for too long or the inside of your engine will look like chicken you left on the BBQ for too long - black caked on film.

 

Ok, just finished dropping the oil pan. There was a little bit of sludge( silt looking black stuff) at the bottom of the pan. It didn't completely cover the bottom or anything, just spots here and there and they were were thin - no build up or anything. The pump looked fine and the insides looked really clean - no sludge on walls and NO sludge or gunk on screen at all. The pan was new looking - not brown or anything. Screen was perfectly clean and so was the pump. I was expecting a whole mess in there but things looked really good. BUT, when I put everything back togheter and put the same oil back in - the low oil pressure came right on after running for about a minute. How do I tell if the pump is bad? It doesn't seem to be making any noise and just from looking at it - it looked fine. I would think that since the screen was perfectly clean then there shouldn't be a clog anywhere further up the engine. I just don't want to spend a bunch of money replacing the oil pump and having the light come right back. I changed the sensor so that shouldn't be the problem. What else could it be?