We were going to buy an older A4 for a DD to work and back until we saw A6 prices were nearly the same.

I've always been an Audi fan and actually prefer the older body styles to the current ones.

I'm looking at a car under 12K, preferably under 10K. 2.7 TT....I'm no stranger to high mileage cars and never am bothered buying one but I just need to know what to look for and what to watch out for.

I've seen cars from 60K miles to 120K miles.

How does the suspension hold up? Sway bar links, control arms bushings, etc....are the ball joints serviceable or do they require a whole new arm? Do they sell bushings seperately or again only in an arm?

Turbo replacement....if I find one with turbo's going can they be rebuilt or only replaced?

If I'm buying a car with 90K what should I insist be done before purchase? Timing belt, water pump, etc.

I have a 2 post hoist and I do all my own work.

For the things that are really required are they tough to do? Do they hide other problems? What I mean is if I find a car that needs a timing belt and other items is it a lot of work compared to getting a killer deal on the car? As I said I have a hoist and a good assortment of tools. I've done engine swaps, trans swaps, tons of chassis and suspension work. I have a 2000 Corvette that I road race during the summer.

Are there any differences in the AWD systems? Are they all open diffs, does the sport package give you a diff in each axle?

What do look for and what to avoid?

Thanks!
The car seems to represent a fantastic value based on all I've seen.

 

Wow! for a minute there I thought I posted this! My name is Eric C. too

Try this man. It will answer all your questions and put all of your concerns to rest.

https://www.audiforums.com/m_468139/tm.htm

 

Thanks...we're taking off in a few to go look at a car.

Think we found a good deal. 95K, A6, AWD, manual, 2.7. New turbo's, water pump, timing belt, EGT's, etc....basically everything listed. The interior looks absolutely amazing.

The guy told me the control arms needed to be done he could hear a squeak when turning. He had the uppers already, just not on the car so he said he'd work with me on the price.

Not a big deal to do them myself.

There was one problem with the car....its green....the price is right, the car seems to be perfect, the guy is a mechanic....he ever said he would have sold it if it were not green.

It has the 16's, with 17's and some chrome it would look a lot better.

But for the price I can live with the green.

 

Yep sounds good. If you are a pretty skilled at DIY stuff I would say go for it. I am not and my car has found its way to the shop pretty often. Now that I got the suspension work doneand what not it runs great! I love the car and its a blast to drive!

 

Well we bought it.

The guy had receipts for everything, new turbo's, timing belt, timing cover, EGT, and the list went on and on. The upper control arms started to squeak on him last week so he bought the arms, all 4 of them, we'll put them on this weekend.

He told us how good of condition it was and he was right. After a 180 mile trip home the car is great. The front sways a bit due to the UCA's but thats easy to fix. Got 27mpg measured on the way home. The only options it was missing was NAV/Sport package.

It needs sway bars, I got a lot of motion going through some of the backroads. Too much body roll and the steering is WAY too light for my tastes but hopefully I can make some alignment changes to tighten it up a bit.

Picked it up for 9,500....think I could have gone lower but honestly I almost felt bad buying it at that price.

It was a fantastic deal and very happy with the purchase. Just some small suspension work, a DP, and a chip.

 

Good thing you are good at doing your own work. Hate to tell you the issues I had, putting on 114,000 miles on my 2.7t. Don't feel bad. I was happy to get rid of mine for $9000. I even had the Certified warranty till 100,000 miles, but it didn't cover everything like I was told. They look good at higher mileage but soak up your money. I still didn't learn my lesson as I bought an 05 4.2. It has been a much more reliable car up to the 50,000 miles I have on now. We'll see what happens in the next 50. I hope yours is better than mine was. One thing to know is poor handling and vibrations are generally tires and or brakes. I never got over 25,000 from any brand of tire. They will look good tread wise and they will shake like hell, and wander all over the road. New tires, new feeling vehicle. Brakes like to warp too. They are very nice cars to drive when they are up to par. When not you'll be cussing them.

 

agreed ... if you scratch its back itll scratch yours ... but dont actually scratch it ... and i dont really think itll scratch your back but you get my drift lol ... my dad had an audi 100 orig eng n trans with 180k and all he did was oil changes and recommended maint.

good luck man post up some pics!

 

A car is a car...its mostly the same parts in different spots.

If you never got more than 25K from a set of tires what kind of tires were you running? How was your driving style? What did you consider to be the determination of when you needed a new tire? If your brakes would pulsate what was the runout on the rotor? The runout on thehub/bearing unit?

With the A6's front suspension setup any problem with the bushings in the multiarms, not to mention variances in the bushings themselves could lead to a poor front end alignment. One single part could have eventually caused all of the issues you had. I was told ahead of time all you could set was toe but forgot that fact. Without some GREAT tolerances your alignment will change everytime you swap out parts.

Once you take the voodoo out ofthe way a car works its not tough to figure out where the problem lies. The bigger issue is that most dealerships/service centers throw parts at a car and never determine the root cause of an issue. Most shops will just keep replacing rotors rather than checking runout or other area's that continue to cause it.

Changing pads/rotors is no biggie. I race my Corvette and go through sets of rotors and pads like people go through oil changes. Its the price that comes with extreme duty use. Before I swapped to new poly bushings in my suspension I would seperate the bushing from the arms.

My A6 wanders a bit at neutral, but tightens up in cornering so I know its a bushing somewhere and thats getting fixed as soon as I get the other car off the hoist. I picked up new rotors but they'll warp again if something else is causing it.

I've owned over 20 cars and never had a lemon....I've pushed cars behind their limits and had to address issues but considering I've daily driven cars from 300hp to 700hp I've been extremely lucky with them but a lot of that also comes from addressing problems before they happen and root causing possible future problems.

If your having tire issues where are you buying tires? What brand? OEM's get A tires, those are the best of the best. Dealer stores(Goodyear, Firestone, etc) get B stock tires, and finally Wal Mart and the discount houses get C class tires. I buy C class Kuhmo MX's for my Corvette but it is not a sensative vehicle. On my RX7 which was sensative to which way the wind blew I had A class tires.

Buying the same tire that came from the factory on your car and then buying that tire from Wal Mart you don't get the same tire. All tires are tested for roundness, balance, evenness, etc....those that are most in spec goto the OEM's and the farther out of spec they get the farther down the food chain they get shipped.

Same with rotors, $30 cheapos will warp where $100 high ends may not. Does that mean you always buy the pricey ones, no...I buy the $30 throwaways because I break them on the track. The ones I picked up for the A6 today were mid grade. I'll see how they last and determine from there.

 

You'll quickly find out how an Audi eats tires. I think the quattro just wears on them harder. Contis, Pirrelli, BFGoodrich, Michelin I have tried everything on the C5 and around 20 thousand they just go to crap and start shaking bad. You could road force balance and by the next week it would be back. An Audi C5 is very prone to imbalance issues. If it gets a speck of mud on the inside of the wheel, it shakes damn bad. More often then not, a belt would go bad in the tires by 25,000 miles and they would not be round anymore. The brakes in mine would always be warped at 25,000 also. Solid rear rotors in my eyes were junk and had over .030 runout, the new C6's are vented all around and haven't warped in 50,000 miles yet, still glass smooth. I consider myself a easy driver that runs more highway miles than city. Lets just say that prior to owning an Audi, I had cars that the tires would go 65,000-80,000 miles easy. Not so with my Quattro. I can only get 30,000 miles from tires on my new C6 chassis too. At least it won't break the belts in the tires, it just wears them out fast. I get my tires from the Tire Rack all the time. Have never heard about a,b or c grade. I know the stock tires I had on the C6 didn't last 25,000 miles. Had alignments done often on the old C5 and it was generally in spec until a arm went bad or something. Audis are very touchy with suspension and alignments too.

 

Considering you cannot align the C5 chassis at all except for toe I guess it would deppend on the cost of tires versus getting it truly fixed.

Is it all 4 tires or just the fronts?

Getting a car decked properly out of the factory with how they set the car up is difficult and I'm sure the alignments vary quite a bit. You'll have bad cars and good cars but most will fall within the tolerance.

If the cost of tires and mileage because too great you could always take it to a chassis race shop and have them adjust the subframe itself. My Corvette thankfully aligned to my specs that I wanted but if not we loosen the cradle bolts and move the cradle around to get it to align properly.

Nota cheap job. A good race shop will charge about $350-400 for a job like that with out corner weighting but if your chew up $600 sets of tires every 8 months its worth the investment.

There doesn't seem to be an inherent design problem with the A6, just not much in the way of deviating from the stock setup with replacement parts and aftermarket parts.