Possible dead engine :( edit: new engine on way :)

[Rs4mar]

Hi,

I'm new to this but thought I'd put a post up and hopefully get some feedback.
I was driving my rs4 last night and all of a sudden I heard a noise, then the engine died and I noticed a lot of smoke in the rear view mirror. So I managed to roll into a lay-by and parked up, got out and noticed lots of smoke coming from under the car. I popped the bonnet but couldn't see anything, so had a look under the engine and all the engine oil was on the floor .
Managed to have the car recovered to my local Audi dealer but not expecting to hear much from them till Wednesday/Thursday. I'm no mechanic but I'm pretty certain it's gonna be something serious, just hoping my warranty covers it. Anyone else had something similar to this happen or have any ideas what might have caused this? Would be much appreciated, thanks

[Madmonkee]

Oil cooler pipes gone? Driver side puddle of oil?

[RIV]

Oil cooler Pipes gone? Driver side puddle of Oil?

+1 was thinking the same, let's hope the engines not buggerd, just had mine replaced it's an important thing to check!!!

[Rs4mar]

I was driving at about 60-65 when it happened and by the time I pulled over the oil was completely covered on the underside of the car and on the rear bumper, the puddle was so big it was hard to say where exactly it has come from, with it being bout 10 o'clock last nite its impossible to see anything from the top or the underneath of the car. I never knew about the oil cooler pipes until today so ill be checking them out ASAP, I'm hoping that the engine cutting out when it happened may have saved it but more realistically it could've seized from the lack of oil. My fingers are tightly crossed for a positive outcome.

[adsgreen]

smoke likely to be the oil hitting hot engine parts - quite lucky not to have a fire.
does sound like oil pipes and should be obvious once the undertray and bumper is off.

Did you not get any oil pressure warning light or oil level warning?

What we really need is a couple of valves that can shut if the pressure on the inlet and outlet cooler pipes is different (within a tolerance) and then isolate the cooler.

Or a slightly less <beep> cooler design.

[Rs4mar]

I had no warning of it at all just a noise like something fell off and the engine cutting out straight away. There was so much smoke I actually thought it was on fire but yes very lucky it wasn't. I checked the oil level 2 days ago and it was about 3 quarters and it was serviced about 3000 miles ago so I know the engine has been running good. The thing I don't understand is the engine cutting out and won't even 'turn over' now? Is this something the ecu would do?

[Madmonkee]

I would like to think as soon as you had pressure loss the ecu shut down the engine to ensure no terminal damage can be caused. I don't think an engine will seize as soon as its oil source gets depleted, it "should" continue to run for quite some time.

[Madmonkee]

Not advised to run like this of course

[Rs4mar]

Thx for all your advice, I'm hoping to hear from Audi on Wednesday with some news so I will keep u all updated.

[adsgreen]

I would like to think as soon as you had pressure loss the ecu shut down the engine to ensure no terminal damage can be caused. I don't think an engine will seize as soon as its oil source gets depleted, it "should" continue to run for quite some time.

very true.
You find that the bearings generally fail first and you get a very noticable knocking noise.
Think back to when Clarkson was driving a Masserati Merak and how it sounded like a bag of nails before it grenaded.

On the flip side, I've never seen a car engine auto shut down due to loss of oil pressure based on a sensor.

Just done some googling and yes, there are some makes and model that shut down the fuel pump in the event of no oil (guess is that no oil could be an accident).

[Rs4mar]

This is before the oil issues

[Rs4mar]

And another one

[cherub72]

Last time I had my car serviced by the stealers they said there was a recall notice on the oil pipes because of the way they were routed and did a load of work on them for free. If you've just had a service they should have picked up on that if it applied to your car. I'd be having a few words with them

[RIV]

Thinking back to when my car had this so called recall,all they did was cable tie the pipes away from each other, this was done to mine nearly 4 years ago

[adsgreen]

Last time I had my car serviced by the stealers they said there was a recall notice on the oil pipes because of the way they were routed and did a load of work on them for free. If you've just had a service they should have picked up on that if it applied to your car. I'd be having a few words with them

Hahahahahahah.
The tsb says 'cable tie out of the way to prevent rubbing'

"Loads of work"