Looking for help - B6 S4 gear change problems

[caiss4]

Took advantage of the good weather yesterday and went for a run to the south coast. In mid- overtake tried to change up to 5th from 4th and the gearbox absolutely baulked. Eventually managed to reselect 4th. Spent the rest of the journey trying to work out what was going on.

Under gentle acceleration everything seemed to be normal (typically revving to about 3k rpm before changing up). Any moderate or hard acceleration and it seemed that the clutch was inoperative. It was difficult to deselect a gear and very difficult to engage the next gear without serious gear crashing.

Double de-clutching seemed to make it worse going down and no noticeable difference going up.

The car is a 53 plate B6 with 35k miles. Whilst the car is driveable I'm concerned that continued use might cause damage. Anybody got any ideas?

[Ian_C]

Likely to be clutch cylinder / return pipe? Had affected numerous V8 S4s and RS4s. Would explain why you are pressing the pedal and the clutch is not releasing.

Ian

[caiss4]

An update. The car was at the local Audi dealer today for diagnosis. No confirmed outcome - the recommended result is a gearbox strip totalling 11 hours and £1400 just to see if the problem is in the gearbox.

Sounds like I could end up with a bill upwards of £2.5k. Not sure the car's worth it but what do you do? It's not worth a great deal with a dodgy 'box. Looking for good ideas? Anyone want a low mileage S4 with a problem?

[Ian_C]

What? Has a V8 S4 or RS4 never set foot at the dealer before?

Would put a fiver on it being a clutch related issue that is preventing you disengaging drive. Fella on here who lives near me in Milton Keynes had similar issues with both his 2007 RS4 and previous 2004 S4. Clutch cylinder and return pipe were the remedy on the RS4 I think. The manual box itself is pretty strong - in fact I cannot remember hearing of any failures? Christ I am no engineer but I certainly would not imagine this to be a box issue - especially not with just 35k on the clock!

Where are you? QST Haywards Heath, APS Brackley, MRC Banbury and Unit 20 Ellesmere Port are probably the four most respected specialists. All of them would be able to recover a vehicle I would imagine.

Also check the gear linkage itself. Did hear a while back that the gear linkage was upgraded very early in the V8 S4s life. However, I never checked myself to see if this is actually true. 53 plater highly unlikely to be an early build model - these cars are only built to order, and any early build demos would have been registered the moment they arrived at the dealers on an 03 plate. Recall it would lock the car in gear - first second or reverse maybe?

[caiss4]

Ian_c, thanks for your follow up. I haven't had a chance to talk with the techies at the dealer yet. I'll do that tomorrow morning and try and sense whether they've exhausted all other possibilities and are confident the fault lies in the gearbox.

I managed to drive the car 60 miles today with little problem; just the occasional baulking in the upper gears. Around town it was fine with perhaps a noticeable mesh going 2nd to 3rd. And of course giving it some stick meant that disengaging, say, 4th to upshift was 'difficult' with a corresponding baulk going to 5th. I guess I could get use to it but I can't help feeling it's something that will only get worse.

Looks like I'll be on the phone tomorrow to these guys in Brackley!

[wolf02]

Saw this post and it reminded me of a problem I had with my clutch last year.
I had the same intermittent problems, eventually the clutch gave up the ghost and "welded" itself to the flywheel with a total bill of 3k to replace the clutch and flywheel (Audi dealer, NEVER AGAIN!!).

Mine was intermittent then catastrophic fail on the way to work, i found it hard to engage higher gears, or when pushing hard in lower gears.
I managed to limp the car home but the revs were slipping from then on, when it failed the clutch when hard and couldnt select a gear until the car cooled down.

Hopefully yours isnt that bad but the symptoms sound similar in some ways. (FYI mines an 03 plate but with twice the miles).

[Ian_C]

Looks like I'll be on the phone tomorrow to these guys in Brackley!

Ed and the team are a great bunch. Certainly go with their recommendation of replacing the dual mass flywheel like-for-like if you 'open her up'. The flywheel costs like five times as much as the clutch plates, but it has to be done properly.

Ian

[caiss4]

Ian_C, looks like I'll be heading Brackley way in a couple of weeks. Thanks for the tip. I'm just hoping I come out of this being able to keep the car!

[Ian_C]

Fingers crossed!

Ian

[caiss4]

OK, so first the good news. It isn't the gearbox!

Now the bad news. It's the DMF, clutch plate and slave cylinder (plus the small matter of an oil leak from some part of the camshaft timing mechanism).

Apparently after a quick test drive Ed and the team were sure it was the clutch so off came the gearbox.

The DMF had too much movement in it and the clutch plate was broken in two. The slave cylinder was also looking dodgy. It's still not clear what the chain of events were that caused the problem but I'd hazard a guess that the ease of (over)movement from the DMF tore the clutch plate apart when I was doing the overtake.

So now it's just a case of hiding the cost from SWMBO

I'm just left feeling really disappointed that firstly the Audi dealership could not diagnose this at all and still charged me an hour's labour 'for diagnosis' and secondly this car, in 7 years of ownership, has run up £3,000 of bills replacing parts that I would not have considered consummable in 35k miles (3 auxilliary rads and this lot); it's still running its original brake pads by comparison. So much for Vorsprung durch Technik; more like 'profit by poor engineering'.

[Ian_C]

Unfortunately hiding a 344 bhp 300 lb ft V8 in the front of an ordinary looking saloon leads to a few compromises. DMFW and clutch sadly need to be viewed as a running cost. Agree on the aux rads mind! Glad the gearbox is okay at least.

The oil leak will probably just be the rocker cover gaskets - been an issue with the 4.2 for years, affected a mate years ago on a 96' A8 4.2.

You say the car is on the original front pads - that's pretty impressive - you owned this from new / nearly new per chance?

Ian

[caiss4]

Yes. Bought it new in 2003. It hasn't had a hard life (on the brakes at least)!

[Ian_C]

Must admit I always try and engine brake - stops the wheels getting caked in brake dust so quickly as well as saving brake pads and discs. Having said that, brake pads are cheaper than clutches.....