I recently purchased a 2001 A6 2.7t. The night that I had bought it the check engine light came on when I accelerated to about 65% WOT. I took the car in yesterday and had a full service check done on it. What came back was somewhat disturbing. Basically, both O2 sensors are faulty and need to be replaced and a code for the torque converter being bad also came up. What the shop told me is that they are not exactly sure which issue if not both is keeping the check engine light on. Now, this is the sticky part. I have a warranty on the car that covers 100% parts and 50% labor for 4500 miles or 3 months, whichever comes first. Now, in the disclosure of the warranty it states that all components must be broken down for inspection by the warranty adjuster( 8 hours shop time) to confirm a faulty part. If, the part is not faulty then I will be required to pay the shop labor charges as it will fall under the "diagnostic" category. To the best of my small amount of mechanical knowledge, the torque converter's purpose is to lock out and put the transmission into overdrive for a 1:1 ratio. At 70mph, the car is reving at 28-2900 rpm. This doesn't seem like an abnormal rev range for that speed but, I have only had the car for four days so I really don't know. I have also heard from this forum and other sources that these cars are notorious for the torque converter going out so I would hope that it would go out during the warranty period to save me a lot of money but, if its not bad then I really don't have $1800.00 to pick up the tab at that point. What should I do? Are there other symptoms of a torque converter going out? Is there anything that would cause this code to pop but be false? I really need some good advice.

Thanks in advance for any information and advice

 

the shop that told you that it was bad should have done a stall test see if they did. because its easy to blame the torque converter when it might be something else just take a look at some of the symptoms:

bad gas milage, rough shift engagements, poor take off and acceleration, vibration, engine stalls, poor hill climbing, poor passing gear, engine overheating, engine wont respond to gas pedal in nutral, slow rev with rough spots in rpm

these are some of the things a bad tc can do. so if you have a combo of these i wouldnt worry and get it warrentied. but since it has a tc light id say your pretty safe.

 

I will definately check with the shop to see if they did the Stall test. based on the symptoms that you listed, the car is doing none of those things. It seems to accelerate well to me but i haven't driven a lot of these cars to discern. Thanks for the info.

 

Hardly any of bad things stated apply in your case.
There is TSB in that regard.

What are the DTC you have.

Last=> move the thread to A6 forum end read the many posts on TC....

 

Have the codes reset and see if they return.