May have been ripped off, but gotta deal with the problems now either way.

Got a good price on a seemingly nice 1999 Audi A4 2.8 Quattro, 150,000 miles, brand new tires less than a month ago, timing belt, water pump, associated gaskets changed ~20,000 miles ago....came with all service records. Outside is in ok shape, interior is nearly perfect still....though it had a couple quirks, one with the turn signals, one with the radio. Came with a carfax which was clean, no accidents, no reports, I am 3rd owner, serviced regularly.

Travelled ~40 miles to pick the car up, all was well aside from the aforementioned quirks on the interior, no radio kind of sucked but whatever. Drove it to work 2 days with no issues at all.

3 days since then, burning oil smell in the cabin, especially when the heat is on. leaving a little oil on the ground, the smell seems to generate from the oil finding it's way onto the catalytic converter/exhaust.

Yesterday, driving it and made a left turn and suddenly a grinding and creaking from what sounds like the front drivers side area, it's continuing to do this during most left turns.

Bad luck or ripped off, looks like i'll be dumping some money into this thing for stuff that seemed to be done already.

 

Home the first day I cleaned it up, was a horrible mess inside, and fixed the turn signal issue thanks to this forum.
Was able to fix the radio reception issue the next day, which solved both quirks I was having inside. VDO? is all garbled and hard to make out anything it says....haven't looked too much into that yet though as the oil leaking and noisy front end just popped up.

 

At least tell me it's drivable under these conditions still with the oil leaking on the exhaust and clunking grinding left hand turns.

 

The burning oil smell is porbably your valve cover gasket.. There is a pretty easy diy you can follow to replace it.

Im not really sure what your turning left issue is, generally cv joints are dependent on direction of turn but I havent heard them make a noise like you are describing (it is generally a ticking noise), I would put it up on a jack and see if you can see any torn ball joints/ anything else amiss.

 

If you're doing valve cover gaskets, do the cam chain tensioner gaskets as well. And check your crankcase breather hoses. If they're clogged they will cause the valve covers to start leaking again.

 

Thanks for the start and suggestions guys, I really like the car!