Happy / anti-catastrophic thread

[Sijones]

Just read this on another S4 forum and I think it's a great idea!

I guess it's the nature of forums but there's a lot of doom and gloom and general horror stories around various catastrophic failures of our cars and I must admit being a new owner of an S4 a large part of me does wonder why I made this choice!

Consequently it would be nice to hear some of the success stories of cars that have reached higher miles with little or no issues, after all they really are awesome cars and I'd like to think that the majority of cars age without life-changing failures! So if your car has made to to 80k + miles post up your details, including what you have done to keep it in top shape.

Simon

[linkman72]

Well Matey mine only has 77k on it but I am ready to change timing chains which is a biggy ( but lets face it I have only seen 2 examples for sale where this has been done so its inevitable I guess ). I did however look at an example with 164k on it that had been meticulously maintained by its owners ( x company car ). We worked out it had had 44k worth of petrol in it and it had over 15k in receipts for work done so they do last well. Problem is with cars starting at 4.5k its likely new owners will be skipping big jobs like that and bodges start to appear

[Sijones]

"Getting ready to change the chains" - have you got a permanent rattle that doesn't go away?

[linkman72]

not yet but I dont intend to let it get that bad, I am having a flush and oil change first but I would rather change em than find a new engine

[marv]

Timing chains don't need to be replaced on an interval basis. They only need to be changed if something goes wrong with them (like a permanent, bad rattle - which is normally the tensioners anyway, not the chains).

Regular replacement of the engine oil with decent stuff should be all you need to do.

[Sijones]

Yup, that's what I heard, you don't need to proactively replace the chains or tensioners unless you have a permanent rattle..

[RoyalMile]

"...its likely new owners will be skipping big jobs like that and bodges start to appear"

This is so very true, these are superb cars and can be a joy to own for those who are realistic about the full cost of ownership. It's telling when you view a car with a mixed bag of budget tyres and no recent service book stamps.

I paid top dollar for a one-owner model with zero respraying, but there's no guarantee that the first owner treated the car well and spent money on it when required. I think the B6 is still one of the best looking Audis - clean and classy and compact. I've done 20k in my B6 and it's now up to 93k. In my one year of ownership, the car has been serviced by Audi dealers.

As recommended by folk on this forum and elsewhere, I took the car off long-life servicing and keep the revs below 3k during warm-up. I know I'm not alone here, but I found the switch from 5w30 long-life oil to 5w40 fixed-interval oil resulted in a marked reduction in start-up chain rattles. Perhaps that's wishful thinking and the broken bits just got flushed out with the last oil change!

I have a 5k contingency fund ready for a timing chain service, I'd rather not spend it but it's there if I need to. It's good to remember that tensioner/guide failure rarely results in a wrecked engine - it's just a lot of labour to fix it. And then there's the money we won't be spending on timing belt replacements.

[linkman72]

Like I say I am getting the system flushed and the 5w 40 added but what I was trying to say is I bought the car expecting to pay for a big job on the chains and knocked the price down accordingly.

[Jocky]

Currently at 89k, no known problems but have done the usual aux rads and leaky valve cover etc. It hardly uses any oil, has no start up rattle and was also on a longlife service schedule until I got her at 58k!
If you are not getting any start up rattle I wouldn't worry too much, there is a lot of scare mongering about this platform, if you look at the info. on Audizine you would wonder how there are any of these cars left on the road, however if you look at the poll results on similar threads there are only a handfull of cars that have had any issues and I'd hazard a guess they had a hard life and weren't very well looked after. If you've ever seen inside these engines you would know that they are properly engineered.
This is without a doubt the best car I have owned, performance, comfort, reliability etc. the only downfall is fuel consumption and I guess you can all relate to that! People that moan about bad handling are people that cannot drive a 4WD properly, if you step out of a BMW then it will feel like it understeers but if you've come from a Scoobie/Mitsi or other 4WD performance car you will feel right at home (apart from the weight). Oh and did I mention the sound, you have to have an aftermarket exhaust, the only downside being you want to be behind your own car.

[BlingBling]

+1 to the above.

[dan101smith]

Apologies if this has been covered elsewhere, but on the start-up rattle - someone mentioned to me that there is a software update that cranks the engine over a couple of extra times before it starts, to allow the oil more time to reach the top of the engine.

Is this right? If so, who does it?

[Ian_C]

I have never personally head of that

[Sijones]

Apologies if this has been covered elsewhere, but on the start-up rattle - someone mentioned to me that there is a software update that cranks the engine over a couple of extra times before it starts, to allow the oil more time to reach the top of the engine.

Is this right? If so, who does it?

That's sounds like a fantastic solution...simple and free..

[dan101smith]

A guy I bought some alloys off mentioned it to me (he has a B6 S4 too) but I didn't think to ask him where to get it done.

[Sharkfan]

We have a 2004 S4 cab that we bought on 44k miles-ish with a little start-up rattle.

We discovered it also sips a little coolant with the culprit being the aux radiator, and a very occasional sip of oil

I changed from the longlife service 0/40 oil to a 5/40 oil and instantly cured the cam-chain rattle and oil consumption, and instead of a very costly aux rad replacement (with no guarantees of how long it would last) I have got through two 5l containers of coolant, in nearly 30k miles.

Other than that the car has been perfect - I have replaced the original battery as it was losing charge quicker during the colder weather and it has eaten through a set of pads all round and some front discs - all replaced with OEM. We thought about changing it but it does everything so well - even the alcantara and leather seats look great.

The only two thing that bug me are;

1. a lack of aux input and bluetooth; it has the CD and cassette headunit with the inbuilt 6 CD changer. TBH I have been arsing around with other projects instead of getting on and changing it.

and

2. The tiptronic gear lever changes gear the wrong way; i.e. forward is up a gear instead of down. I have an E39 BMW that had this set-up and by simply swapping over two wires in the gear lever assembly you can reverse this weird set-up (later BMW's have the correct orientation). Is there any simple and easy way to reverse the tiptronic lever orientation ?? The steering wheel paddles are the correct orientation.