exactly wat it say has any body done it themselves im a pretty good mechanic ive done alot of things this just scares me a lil its not yet time to do it but almost supposed to be done every 75k to 80k? thanx in advance

 

very hard to do. Have to remove the front end to gain access to it.

 

so i should pay a shop to do it

 

The difficulty depends upon how mechanically inclined you are and whether or not you have to tools and equipment needed for the job. There are some really informative technical articles on AudiWorld.com that give great explanations and really good pics to help you along. I'll include a link. Go to the site, click on resources and scroll down to tech articles...clicking on the engine option and then simply choose the article for your model. Hope this helps.

http://www.audiworld.com/

 

basically same thing as TTC5, this is the actuall link, its bookmarked for me so Il put it up...
http://www.audiworld.com/tech/eng.html

 

I have a 2000 A6 2.8. I had to do mines about 1 month ago. I've worked on cars before and am pretty mechanically inclined, but I would not consider myself a mechanic.

I'd give it a 6-7 out of 10. I did alot of research and found a write up on it on one of these forums. I followed it and it wasn't a problem. There were a few differences though.

As far as removing the front end, once you start working on it, it's actually pretty easy to do. It's not that involved at all.

I did mines in 2 days. I allowed myself one day to get it apart and and the second day to put it back together. I took my time and didn't spend all day on it just to keep my frustration level down.

The one thing I will add is that I'd STRONGLY recomend getting the cam gear tool AND the crank shaft tool. I spent a little over $500 for the complete kit from ESCTuning. It is entirely possible to do it without these tools, but the peace of mind that it gives you to know that it is set perfectly is priceless.

I did not pull the cam gears, I left them on. I figured that sice I had the cam and crank tools that odds were that I'd get it set corrctly without needeing to pull the gears. I was right! I'm not telling you to not remove the gears, I'm just telling you that I didn't and it worked out great.

The main problem that I had is that when I removed the front end or more correctly, put it into "service" position, I assumed that it would swing open to one side leaving the whole front of the motor open to work on. Well that wasn't the case....You will actually be sliding it foward allowing you more room to work instead of swinging it open. When you remove the bumper, there are 2 long bolts (like around 6-7 inches). You use those long bolts to space the front end (radiator support?) out. In other words, the front end bolts in from the front. You remove the original bolts that hold the front end in place, put in the longer bolts (from the bumper) and slide the front end out on those bolts. It gives you alot of room to work with.

Once I actually got half way through the job, I decided that I wanted more room to work with, so instead of having 1 long bolt on each side of the front end with it being slid fowrd on them, I put both long bolts on one side, then I swung the opposite side of the front end open and rested it on a chair from my dining room table. I'm not sure if that makes sence to you, but if you decide to do the job, you'll understand!

Other that that, there were not other special tools that I needed, just a set of metric sockets, torx bits and allen head bits. You'll also need and adjustable wrench the can open atleast 1 1/4 inch and a torque wrench. I think that's about it. I might not remember all of the tools, but they are not hard to come by.

If you have anymore questions, I'll be glad to help out as much as I can, just let me know!!!

This is the actual write-up that I followed:

http://www.audiworld.com/tech/eng.html