First off, I'm new to audis and cars in general. I'm 18, I had a 90 civic wagon awd up until two weeks ago. I've always been attracted to audi's and decided to save up for one. I picked up a very well taken care of 93 90sport quattro. I got a pre purchase inspection and there were some things wrong with it. But they did keep stressing the fact that this car was well taken care of.

Okay, well here's the list of thing's they said I'm gunna have to fix within the next 3 or 4 months.

*the valley pan gasket has oil residue and it may need to be replaced
*there is rust in the coolant system and needs to be flushed
*right side of the rear differential axle is leaking
*the "oil pan is leaking and main front seal??" (I have no idea what the question marks mean but that's what they put on the invoice)
*the left rear stabilizer bar end link needs to be replaced
*and they couldn't tell me anything specifically but the brakes on this car are crazy touchy and there's no inbetween on them. Like, you can't feel any pressure building up and once the brakes grab, they grab hard. They said it might be a brake booster but couldn't tell me much more.

All of this is going to cost me a little over a grand if I take it to a shop.
So this brings me to the reason why I posted this.

Is there anything I can do on my own with my dad? He knows somewhat a lot about german cars and could help out a lot.

 

depends on how experience you guys are with cars. If it was my dad and i we would be able to do that entire list and then find more things wrong, but my dad was a self employed mechanic for 30 years. ...

You cxan very easily flush the cooling system out, just drain all the antifreeze out through the petcock and then hook up a garden hose to the cooling system somewhere for a few minutes(make sure you give it a place to drain from too!, and run the heater as well), then re fill it with antifreeze and your done...

i dont see any reason why you cant do the valley pan gasket, i'm not sure whats involved with it on your car however.

Stabilizer links are no problem as long as you've got a set of jackstands

hope this helps..
-Dave

 

thanks man, that gives me a little hope. my dad's pretty experienced with cars but not neccessarily with german/european cars. but i'm trying to get my hands on a repair manual for it but all i can really find is little cd-roms and i'm not trying to go run inside to my computer everytime i need to double check something and then back out to the car.

also, if anyone may know where i can get hooked up with one, that would help a lot. but until then i'll keep looking.

and thanks for the help/response dude.

 

you can get the haynes manual for about 25 bucks, but if you want the real thing, i'm sending you a pm with the email of someone who was selling one for about 50 bucks

 

hey man thank you. i just sent him an email and am waiting for a reply. this will help out a lot.

 

dangit dude, the guy had the manual for the 84-88 5000's. i'm still looking for one though so if anyone sees this and has one, pm me

 

hey, sorry about that man, i kinda had a brain fart there.I'll keep lookin though![sm=type.gif]

 

*right side of the rear differential axle is leaking --Is the diff leaking or is it the actual axle seal that leaking?
*and they couldn't tell me anything specifically but the brakes on this car are crazy touchy and there's no inbetween on them. Like, you can't feel any pressure building up and once the brakes grab, they grab hard. They said it might be a brake booster but couldn't tell me much more. --Are they spoungy? Did you check the brake fluid levels? or try to rebleed the lines to make sure there's no air in them?

 

my dad was saying that bleeding the brakes might help with that problem, but we haven't tried it yet.