Hey everyone, I have 02 a4 quattro automatic with the 1.8t engine. Last week my oil light flashed on and by the time i got it to the shop it was already ticking. After researching i realized i was a victim of oil sludge. I wish i could have prevented it with fixing the oil screen. Anyways, the mechanic took it apart and i looked at the cams and they were starting to get worn from not getting oil. My question is instead of trying to find a whole engine and replacing it, can i get a new cylinder head, flush the engine, change the oil pick-up and be good to go? I have done alot of researching but have not found a straight forward answer as to what i can do. Thanks in advance! Any help will be greatly appreciated

 

That would be a start but I would have the bottom end redone also. You do not know how much damage has been done to the connecting rods, bearings and cylinders. Plus it will clean all of the oil passages out.

 

if it were mine i would just do the whole engine, because lets say you have 100K on the engine, and you redo the top end, now the top end is basically returned to new but the bottom end still has 100K of wear on it. it wont be long until the bottom end starts knocking unless you spend the money to redo that too and i think it would probably be cheaper to just replace the engine. a good way to look at this is having someone run a marathon then giving them a 50 LBS backpack and telling them to run in again, they arent likely to make it, i have put new cylinder heads on cars for customers when they have declined doing the bottom end and it has never ended well.