well, i am sorry you have had such a bad experience...

I just think Audis in general are a PITA (taking off the front end completly to change a water pump is retarded)... I do my own fixing/maintanance which thankfully save me a lot of $$$... and headaches with the dealer

I agree with NH_USA... go to an indipendant shop that deals with imports... in my opinion any mechanic can fix a car... they all work the same, with the same componants that also work the same no matter if its euro,jap,amer.... especialy now that all they do is pull codes and replace.

The car is out of Warranty anyways... Trust me If I can fix my issues on my audi,, an independant shopwill do right by you. Just price shop

 

Hey folks, checking back in after a long hiatus away from the board. I'm currently converting the family to all Audi's so I need to start posting more, lol. As way ofre-introduction I manage a large car fleet that contains manyVAG products as well as 23 other models, so vehicle maintenance is sort of my thing. Let me start off by correcting quite a few misconceptions that have been floating around here.

The mileage AND age of the car are important to consider when discussing maintenance issues. An older low mileage car that has not been properly maintained will have just as many issues as a very high mileage car that has not been maintained. The OP's issue is a common one. She has a 6 year old car with ONLY 36k miles on it. Regardless of the mileage, the car is still 6 years old and things will begin to fail.Most maintenance reccomendations are based on mileage and this is agreat disservice to an auto owner. I honestly do not think that the Audi dealer is trying to screw her in anyway. In fact an older car with very low miles is more of a maintenance concern than an older car with high miles.

Given the low miles on the car, it probably rarely sees the highway and spends most of its time cold starting and driving in stop and go city traffic. This causes excessive carbon build up on valves and other parts. If she was only changing the oil every year or so, the additive package in the oil was not being kept up to date and was unable to clean out the build up, especially if she was using whatever off the shelf oil the quick lube provided. This situation can easily cause many things including, lost power, sluggish response, fouled plugs, lower MPG and even engine failure.

***an aside on oil*** Conventional (non-synthetic oil) does break down over time and loses it's lubrictation properties. That is why it needs to be changed every 3 months / 3k miles although 6 months / 5k miles is still OK. Synthetic oil never breaks down and therefore never loses it's lubrication properties. What does break down is the additives and detergents in the oil that clean the motor. The additive package is generally exhausted on most synthetics between 5k and 10k miles, but they also naturally break down by heat cycling, so the 6 month rule comes into effect. The job of the filter is to capture large particles as they pass through the motor. Even if you run a good"10k mile synthetic"like Amsoil you still need to change the filter every 5k milesor 6 months or it will become clogged and useless. If you read the oil bottle most reccommend drainingthe oil, changing the filter and putting the old oil back into safely achieve the higher mileage ratings they advertise.The lesson here is to change your oil every 6 months or 5k miles. Oil sludging is a seperate issue all together and is mainly caused by engine design, not oil. The 1.8T is susceptible to sludging as it "whips" the oil into a froth at high RPM. This frothing causes the oil to break down faster and begin sludging. The extended maintenance interval reccommended by VAG led to the issue being greater than it could have been and by using 3 month / 3k mile change intervals you can avoid sludge altogether on a 1.8T.***back to the topic at hand***

What happened here was that a poorly maintained car with excessive build up that generally ran poor quality oil got topped off with a higher grade detergent oil. This oil than went to town and started breaking down all of the build up in the motor. On top of that an extra "flush" was also done. Now you have introduced a lot of grime into the oil system. To do it right you would have needed to drive the car a lot and change your oil several times over this process to clean it all out, every500 milesor so. That didn't happen and so the gunk most likely clogged an oil galley that fed the cam's and they are probably about to sieze.

So, there is nothing wrong with your Audi, per se, it was just never properly maintained. The dealership is most likely not trying to screw you as to the actual failure, but you may find a cheaper deal somewhere else. You are really looking at two options:

1. Have the car repaired and in the process get it thoroughly cleaned out (oil system, coolant, fuel, etc.). You can then begin a proper maintenance regimen and the car "should" be fine.

2. Sell the car and get whatever you want to replace it. Just make sure you follow a much better maintenance regimen this time.

In my opinion I would sell the car.

 

Thanks again, one and all.

Just a few things... The first 3 years/3 oil changes were done at the dealership as it was still under warranty. The4th and 5th were done with Royal Purple at the Kwik Kar.I was toldby them that RP was a great synthetic oil and very popular.

I thought I was following the recommendations of the manufacturer. I don't agree that this car was not properly maintained. I live in Houston, so about 75% of the time you want to go anywhere, you have to hop on the freeway. Although this famous Katy Freeway, top speeds reach 30 MPH on a good day. [:@] I did work 5 miles from home, whick is why I don't have many miles on this car.

I really hate to learn that I'm the one that 'broke' this car.I always thought it was mileage that was important for maintenance. They really should put that in their manuals.

Again, thank you all so very much for everything. I don't know what I'm going to do right now. I could just cry. I love that car, and money's very tight right now. We also have a 1969 Firebird, and the 1994 Firebird that's dead in the driveway for a total of 3 cars we can't use. We're getting by on my son's new cheap little Kia Spectra. Good grief, how sad is that?LOL.

 

I feel your pain, I had to get by on my girlfriends 1992 ford taurus for a while.

Oil changes seem to be a big controversy, so I'm not going to even begin to try to throw my opinions into the mix (not to mention I'm not qualified to do so)

What I do know is, taking your car to an Audi Stealership is a mistake. A big one. The stealership in my area is one of high reguard and they have screwed me over many a time. Mybutt still hurts from being bent over for a$5k transmission job on a 2 month old car with a 3 month powertrain warranty, not covered because "I dont know how to drive stick"...

Take it to an independant mechanic for whatever you decide, just make sure thats a trustworthy mechanic (I see one was reccommended by someone, I'm in VT so I cant help there)...

 

You might want to open up the air filter box and check to see if it is clean, and not filled with debri which could plug up a small drain hole at the bottom of the box. Whatever gets past the air filter will cause dirty oil. How often was this done?
The climate in Houston is hot and humid, so you don't want dirty water collecting in the air filter box.
Weak spark coils could cause incomplete combustion in a few cylinders, so checkeach sparkplugfor fouling. Ifany are fouled, then try switching the sparkcoils and clean the fouled plug. A bad head gasket could leak oil intoone of thecylinders.

 

For de-sludging an engine many recommend AutoRx, you can learn more on the BITOG forum. Personally I would avoid Royal Purple, they market like snake oil salespeople.

 

Any de-slugging will mess up a motor........
Small oil passages get plugged!

Don't let it sludge-up in the first place.....

 

As the old saying goes, prevention is better than cure.

Oh, and sorry to hear of your Audi troubles.

 

I'll make a very strong recommendation and do not use Royal Purple, I know it's fine for some applications, but for general street use, I find it's way too thin of an oil. You can generally get good deals on Castrol Syntec, and use a quality filter, Bosch, Napa Gold, Wix (Napa Gold is made by Wix), or the factory filters. If you check some of the Audi tuners/online sites, you can get some good deals for buying a case of filters at a time. Since you said the car is an '02 and you've only put 36K miles on it, you should be changing the oil twice per year minimum. I would imagine that even your normal driving is probably not enough to flush the contaiminents out of the oil and burn off any moisture. My wife drives her '01 A6 2.7 only about 3 miles per day, so on the weekends we mostly drive it, and drive it hard to allow it to burn off the impurities, water, etc. that build up. I use Castrol Syntec and either Bosch or factory filters, I still change the oil every 3 to 6 months regardless of miles or use. It's just a safe move.

Also, it definetly sounds like your dealer is screwing you, find a good Indy in your area to work with.