Hello everyone.

I'm looking at buying a (basket case?) non-running A4 and need a little bit of advice as I'm not too familiar with VAG products in general.

Now, I'm no stranger to German cars (certified BMW mechanic in a former life) or to basket case projects, this would just be the next one in a long string.

The car in question is:
2001 Audi A4 avant 2.8

The description is scant, but it sounds to me like he was having some overheating issues, maybe did the water pump which didn't fix it, over heated it bad and now it doesn't run right. This sounds like a classic case of blown head-gasket to me.

I'm going to look at it Thursday after work, and bringing some tools to at least do a compression test to verify my guess.

But, I literally have zero experience with these cars. Since it's a non-runner, it'll be hard to do any real drive train testing, but more generally, what are the trouble spots I should be looking at in this car?

Thanks,
Jason

 

How did it go?

Blown HG would be best-case imo. Warped/cracked heads/block would be worst, but there are plenty of engine-swap threads, depending on what you want to do with the car.

Since it's a 2.8 there's not a ton of modding you can do so plan on it becoming a daily/reliable car.

 

Yeah, not interested in a lot of modding, would mostly be my wife's ride so reliability is key...she DOES love the power of a Turbo though.

The car turned out to be a complete bust. He told me that's he's been having ongoing over heating issues and has been throwing a ton of parts at it, T-stat, housing, expansion tank, water pump, heater core. Sounded like it might have been loosing coolant too?

Anyway, cooling issues aside, it turns out that something went wrong with the starting system, so you can't start it with the key (Not even a click from the starter), but you can push start it and it runs fine.

Okay, maybe still head gasket, or radiator, cooling fans, whatever -- cooling systems really aren't that complicated. A no-start? Whatever, a day of methodical troubleshooting should get you there.

The thing that made me walk was that the car was overall just trashed. Every body panel had at least one big dent or major scratch. The rear hatch was full of rust-bubbles around the window, hood bent and rusting, tires were dry rotten and worn out. The interior was marginal, look like it has been smoked in, drivers seat was torn, overall the leather looked dry.

So, I took a pass. $900 for something that should be put out of it's misery. Not that much more gets a decent car. But hey, you never know unless you look!

 

why did you even post this question? DOA. Let's stay serious here. thanks

 

??

Thanks for the helpful on-topic response!

 

sorry about that. It was wonderful story telling, but I just don't see where it helped this community. I didn't see any specific questions asked, any codes posted, etc. The car you describe is a project for someone who already knows all about audis and welcomes a major project.

 

I think he was originally asking for help in what to look for on an audi since he didn't have much experience in them. He wanted to know common faults/issues to look for. Since nobody responded before he went and looked I just asked how it went out of curiosity's sake. Also I live in Seattle too so I'm always interested in cheap fixer-upper audis or part cars.