I have had a horrible time with my 07 RS4. It has about 20K miles on it.

First off, in the begining of July, my suspension failed, and they had to replace it. I had to wait two weeks for the parts arrival and installation.

I drove my car for about 1 1/2 weeks and my check engine light came on. I dropped it off on July 25th. It took the service about two weeks to figure out what was wrong and stated I needed a new short block. They then had to haggle with Audi to get the block ordered and shipped to the dealership. It is now October 5th and I have just recieved notice my engine has arrived. It has been over 65 DAYS! I have not driven my car essentially ALL SUMMER!

I now have to trust a dealership to disassemble and reassemble an engine that I know they have not worked on. I hope to god it doesn't leak or fail.

Apparently, there were a few blocks that were manufactured incorrectly, and have failed. It had something to do with the coating process. It is an 84k car and I feel I have not recieved the service commiserate with the price. I have a feeling if it was an R8, they would have flown the block over on a learjet in a week.

Has anyone else had an issue with this kind of failure and service?

Thank Goodness it is all under warranty.

 

Although I feel your pain, I respectfully disagree with the assertion that you're experiencing a failure of service. I say this only to ease your sense of frustration. I agree that those failures that early on are not to be expected, but the DRC is a well known issue, like it or not. As for the block, when you buy a limited production, highly strung speciality car, it comes with the territory.

On a limited quantity car, parts availability will always be an issue. As for waiting on a new short block, same thing goes. I can also sympathize with the techs taking so long to analyze the problem. In troubleshooting, you start with the easy likely problems first and work your way down the list. A coating problem on the cylinder walls is waaaaay done the list.

My main point, don't sour your opinion on Audi, yet, because of this. I think so far you're being taken care of reasonably well. As for the learjet, for the price difference between an RS4 and R8 they could easily afford it, so maybe it built in to the price on the R's.

Good luck in your repairs. I wouldn't be bashful about speaking with the dealership's President/Gen Mgr and expressing your desire for only the best tech's to work on your car when the time comes, for nearly 100 large, seems reasonable to me.

 

Hell, I do that with my A6. Thats crazy having to get a new block in a brand new car, specially since its a 84K brand new car. Good luck with your repairs!

 

Flaking coating isn't anything new. BMW had all sorts of problems with their 4.0 liter V8's loosing compression due to the Nikasil coating flaking off. It's ashame that the bugs still havn't been worked out. It doesn't sound like your dealer is dragging their feet but rather Audi has poor supply for their RS4 engines, which is common in low porduction high demand vehicles.

I recall when the E36 M3 first came out one of the first cars we sold came in a couple weeks later missing an oil pan, 6 quarts of oil, and an engine that was seized. The customer had to wait 6 months until BMW AG pulled an engine from their production line and air freighted it to the dealership.

I had gotten so bad the insurance adjuster caled the parts manager every morning as the rental car bill was almost as much as the repair.

 

Part of my many frustrations are the following:

If this is a known issue, why haven't any blocks been sent for storage in the US? As far as I know, half the RS4s produced worldwide are here.

My concerns are also is that the best guys are supposedly on it and the block has been delivered close to two weeks ago with not a peep from them about how it is coming along. The dealership has not once informed me about the process etc. unless I call first, then they get back to me. I have asked for Friday updates and have recieved none.

My second concern is that aside from routine maintenance, not anyone there has stripped and rebuilt this engine before. You could even be the best guy, but you should know that even with the best manuals/online access and help lines, nothing prepares you for the real thing until you do it.

I do not want to chase little glitches again and again until it is back to normal.

It is hard having my "best car" sitting in the shop for about three months, and missing out on all the nice summer driving I had planned.

That is extreme frustration in a nutshell.

 

Im having the same issues with my BMW motorcycle. They had issues with the early 2007 models, like too short of piston skirts causing severe piston slap, and ABS faults, causing you to lose all braking power, which BMW swore could not be possible, but as of last month, now they are?... But they dont want to just give you the updated engine, they want you to live with a noisy POS for a while untill it actually fails, or in the ABS case, kills you. Someone from the F800 forum is actually taking legal action against BMW for denying issues that he suspects they knew about. Dont know if it will do any good but we will see.

 

Great news! After 14+ days of assembly since the block arrived, there is a problem with the ECM. Delayed at least another 7 days while awaiting shipment. It is approaching 90 straight days at the dealership and over 100 days in the shop over the last 4-5 months.

Great car. Audi for life in the shop.

PS I hope to god it wasn't the ECM in the first place.

 

DAMN! What dumb *** audi dealer is doing this to you!? What a bunch of block heads. It took me only two days to build the RS4 block. We had a similar failure of a check engine light but it had a spun a bearing later and blew a hole in the block. Hope your dealer gets it done right, its a pretty complex engine/management system.

BTW, it actually has two ECM's, a master and a slave. A lot of diagnosis problems occur because the technician isn't trained enough.

 

You should check out your state's Lemon Law. In Michigan, you would be due a full refund.

What did they give you for a loaner?

Bob

 

^ Lol, yeah, what kinda loner car do you get when your 80k car is out out of commission for months?