Some good news about camshaft wear...

[chancha]

Reading all this about replacement camshafts makes pretty depressing reading having only just bought my RS4. However, to date does anyone have a definitive number of cars affected so far on this site and what are the numbers of owners who have had a look and all appears ok? I suppose Doug or Grizz would be the men to answer part of this question....

[S4INT]

There isn't a definitive number, but suffice to say it will be a only be a small percentage of of the 400-odd RS4's brought to the UK, and an even smaller percentage of S4's. Last time I asked Doug, they had done around 20 cars (S4's and RS4's). QST claim to have not replaced any yet.....

It doesn't seem to be as bad as the Audi 2.5 V6 diesel engine which had camshafts made of chocolate. I'm lead to believe poor case-hardening was the cause here, and is a likely factor in the 2.7 V6 petrol engine too.

[TopBear]

375 bhp vs 265 bhp

Nonsense. By your reckoning then, my 460bhp car should have eaten its cams in, what, 25k miles??

My car had done over 100k, at least 60k of which were at 460bhp before its cam (1 lobe) wore out.

I've been following this thread with interest and wondering what the "good news about camshaft wear" was. It seems that the "good news" is that YOUR car hasn't suffered YET, and I am glad for you.

There is no common theme here; this affects standard cars as well as modded cars, and low mileage cars as well as high milers.

Its more likely that the RS4 cams were manufactured at the same time using similar materials and heat-treatment processes and for some reason (sub-standard materials or poor hardening) are more susceptible to wear than S4's.

I couldnt agree more!

Post of the month

[S2tuner]

Same here, coming to the conclusion that modified RS4s eat their cams more than non-modded ones, or even more than S4s is absolute nonsense. For the record, we have seen unmodified cars with cam wear and very low miles on them... So Neckarsulm, be glad your cams are good FOR NOW, because you don't know what might happen tomorrow.

Mihnea

[rtd]

so were're saying that the cause of the cam issue is sub-standard material and production process when audi made the cams? if this be the case could there have been a phase in the prodcution of the cams etc. when audi used a dodgy batch i.e later cars may have better cams? or say cars built within a specific time period? furthermore, is there not some form of recourse back to audi for this?

[Contigo]

I'd imagine ALL cams manufactured will be affected and it's just down to things like MAF and frequency of oil change as Doug mentioned.

I agree, if this has affected say 10% of all the RS4's (surely 40 cars have suffered this?) then we have got to have a caee against Audi?

Did we ever get anywhere with that metallurgist analysing the hardening material etc.?????

[rtd]

I'd imagine ALL cams manufactured will be affected and it's just down to things like MAF and frequency of oil change as Doug mentioned.

I agree, if this has affected say 10% of all the RS4's (surely 40 cars have suffered this?) then we have got to have a caee against Audi?

Did we ever get anywhere with that metallurgist analysing the hardening material etc.?????

hi contigo, i think it might be worth looking into this with audi, because its been proven that mapped and none mapped cars have suffered with this issue.

[S4INT]

I think you will be on very shaky ground bringing this up with Audi. Firstly, our cars are approaching 9 years old and secondly, as soon as you mention the word "modified", they would have an instant get-out anyway.

[Contigo]

But you don't need to mention the word modified as it's clearly happening on standard spec cars.

[TopBear]

so were're saying that the cause of the cam issue is sub-standard material and production process when audi made the cams? if this be the case could there have been a phase in the prodcution of the cams etc. when audi used a dodgy batch i.e later cars may have better cams? or say cars built within a specific time period? furthermore, is there not some form of recourse back to audi for this?

Well no chance if your looking for cash back....
Some of the early cars are fast approaching 10 years old now, and given many factors, such as unknown history, and the fact that they have been fixed without Audi examination, will mean they will just walk away.

That said, when I had my cam issue, I did approach Audi Customer services (even though I didnt have an Audi warranty), and banged the drum with them and eventually they did accept that cams wearing out at 75K wasnt acceptable, and actually offered to pay some 'goodwill' towards the repair cost.
That said, Audi insisted the car needed to be repaired at an Audi dealer, and on balance the higher costs of doing this (even considering a preferential Audi labour rate) still negated the cost of having it done at MRC.

[S4INT]

But you don't need to mention the word modified as it's clearly happening on standard spec cars.

Unless you were to start a class action against Audi on this issue, each claim would be looked at on a case by case basis. Even if you didn't mention the word "modified", it wouldn't take them long to work it out and that would give them all the ammunition needed to blow any claim out of the water.

That also assumes that you can overcome the issue of the car being 9 years old, i.e. 6 years past the original manufacturers warranty expired....

At the end of the day, its a kick in the balls (and the wallet, I know!) if your car suffers camshaft wear, however you have to be philosophical and accept that Manufacturers warranty their products for a set period of time for a reason - they can't provide blanket cover for failures indefinitely.

[chancha]

so were're saying that the cause of the cam issue is sub-standard material and production process when audi made the cams? if this be the case could there have been a phase in the prodcution of the cams etc. when audi used a dodgy batch i.e later cars may have better cams? or say cars built within a specific time period? furthermore, is there not some form of recourse back to audi for this?

Well no chance if your looking for cash back....
Some of the early cars are fast approaching 10 years old now, and given many factors, such as unknown history, and the fact that they have been fixed without Audi examination, will mean they will just walk away.

That said, when I had my cam issue, I did approach Audi Customer services (even though I didnt have an Audi warranty), and banged the drum with them and eventually they did accept that cams wearing out at 75K wasnt acceptable, and actually offered to pay some 'goodwill' towards the repair cost.
That said, Audi insisted the car needed to be repaired at an Audi dealer, and on balance the higher costs of doing this (even considering a preferential Audi labour rate) still negated the cost of having it done at MRC.

Good post topbear... by getting Audi to acknowledge that the issue is unnacceptable is a start and from our point of view might be a bargaining tool in getting them to stump up for cams etc at cost price etc. I think however this would only be the case if enough of us made a song and a dance about it

[roi354]

On a slightly different note, I seem to remember years ago that either piper or kent used to do camshafts on an exchange basis or were even able to re-profile yours to whatever spec required. Maybe they could offer a service that might be significantly cheaper than complete replacement at dealer prices?

Just a thought

Rob

[audiboy]

The RS4 that i have just bought has had cams replaced inc followers at 73k miles, car was serviced on Longlife (until then, now has proper oil in it). Its a common problem with Longlife oil in general. Have come across a few 2.5 TDI's with the same problem.

[Contigo]

Proper oil? I've been using Quantum Synta Gold for the last 30k miles, does that count?