I think I may have killed my Audi today. It is a 98 A4 with 2.8 and Tip (160k miles). I was heading home from Nashville. I was driving on the interstate and came to some slower traffic next to a big wall and I could hear a weird noise, like a bad plastic rattling noise. I though maybe I picked something up in a tire and went to pull over and I had lost power - engine was still running by the tach, but no power. Barely got to side of road (lot of traffic). I do not see a puddle of fluid or anything under the car. I was kind of wondering about a timing belt, but not sure if would not have made a worse engine noise as I thought these were intereference engines. Any ideas what I can check to narrow it down? Trying to decide if it is worth fixing.

Shane

 

Broken CV joint? If the joint separates completely the differential sends all power to the wheel with the broken axle and the car goes no where, feels like the car is in neutral. If you jack up each wheel (one at a time), and can spin the wheel and tire with the transmission in park if you have an automatic trans or in gear if a manual you've found the problem

 

Thanks Mark - hope your option is the correct one!

 

Had similar symptoms on my 93 Audi 90. When the innards of a CAT go bad they can rattle. If they overheat and partially block the CAT, you're running on 3 cylinders when under load. So at idle when you don't need much exhuast flow, it seems OK. But under load you've pretty much got half a motor.

 

I tried to start it as I figured if the belt shredded while doing 70, it was toast anyway. Sounds weird, like it is not turning anything

 

Is the engine running, and just not producing any power, or is the power not getting to the ground (like the car is in neutral), or is the engine not running at this point?