looking to purchase a 98 a4 v6 quattro with 73000 miles. Have only owned japanese cars and do not know about the reliability of other makes. I was wondering what kind of issues arise with the a4 being 10 years old with the amount of miles it has. What should i look for before i buy the car? What are typical problems that i should be award of?

 

I love the Related Threads

 

start your reading here:
https://www.audiforums.com/m_700266/tm.htm
It was put in the above post, because it is commonly asked and there is no need to waste time re-typing it for everyone.

 

does any one have any experience buying cars from carmax. Should i buy from them and private seller or a used car dealership other than carmax. Are they really trustworthy in selling good quality used cars like they promote? Do you think that the problems with the bushings and tie rods mentioned in the newbie guide would be inspected and if there was something wrong can i trust that they fixed it? Are they reliable in their inspections. Since it has 73000 miles i guess i will need to get a new timing belt and water pump along with other belts. So i can purchase the belts and water pump for 300? If i were to take it to a dealership does the cost in the guide include parts?


Common Problems

Common problems on A4's are timing belt, control arms, tie rod ends, oil sludge, and sometimes wheel bearings, window regulators, abs module, and the sunroof. The timing belt tenioners in 97-99 models were a bad design. If you have a pre-2000, its better to do it sooner (60-70k miles) if it's never been done because of the crappy tensioner. Post-2000- You can wait an extra couple thousand miles but i would do it around 80k. If the timing belt snaps you are pretty much f*cked. It will most likely push the pistons up and bend the valves and other nasty stuff due to being an interference engine type, unless you are really lucky and didn't get internal damage. The former will require an engine rebuild. While having your timing belt changed, you also might as well change the water pump and a other belts. The best way is to buy a kit from renn-art, pure motorsports, or ecs tuning (our sponsors found in the Audi links.) Currently, purems has the cheapest kit. If you do it yourself it will run you roughly $300, or, you can get a local tuner to do it. A good price is around $600- $700, and if you take it to the stealership, it typcialy runs between $1,000 and $1,500!! Oil sludge is more of a problem for the 1.8T than the 2.8. Just make sure to use fully synthetic oil, and use the larger OEM updated oil filter (for the 1.8t.) Change it every 3-5k miles and you won't ever have to worry about this. For B5 models, the bushings and overall design are just no durable enough to go longer than 80k miles (sometimes less.) For the tie rods- it's just a bad design by Audi that tends to fail within 80k miles (for B5's) The sunroof can be troublesome in most A4's. It is usually one of two things. You either need to clean the contacts (DIY-http://www.audiworld.com/tech/elec.html) or you need a new relay switch.