German carnage pics

Glenn · May 20, 2009

Aside from the engine taking a dump, the A6 has been the most reliable car we've ever owned. ;-)

I talked to a few German repair places for the low down on what happened. Without boring everyone to death...the coupler that holds the filter housing the block is small. It could have been an issue with it not being seated all the way when Deter (I picture a dude in a while lab coat wearing gloves, using a torque wrench in "newton meters") installed it on the engine assembly line. Chalk this one up to "shit happens". Sometimes you're number comes up for that one in a million deffect. Someone has to be that "1".

We bought the car used with 29k on the clock. It's a 2002, so the factory covereage is long gone. IIRC, that's 3 years or 36k.

I thought about throwing the turbo'd 2.7 in there...since the engine was already removed....:idea:

Marc · May 20, 2009

Eh, the 2.7TT was a great engine to drive, but the bearings in those turbo's had a funny way of unpredictably crapping out. And that's a 3k+ job to replace with labor and parts.

Glenn · May 20, 2009

Marc said:
Eh, the 2.7TT was a great engine to drive, but the bearings in those turbo's had a funny way of unpredictably crapping out. And that's a 3k+ job to replace with labor and parts.

They came from the factory tweaked just about to the max. Problem was, the plumbing more often than not developed issues and lead to overboosting. In a typical German engineering, you needed to pull the entire engine to get the turbos. They should have just put bigger turbos in there from the get go.

Marc · May 20, 2009

Glenn said:
They came from the factory tweaked just about to the max. Problem was, the plumbing more often than not developed issues and lead to overboosting. In a typical German engineering, you needed to pull the entire engine to get the turbos. They should have just put bigger turbos in there from the get go.

Well, bigger turbo's would've meant more lag, and the engine already had plenty of that, despite have two in parallel.

I believe they only ran about 9-10 psi stock, and a lot of people do play chicken with them and turn them up into the high teens... I think probably some of the failures result from not letting them cool down after use... you can buy turbo timers for them (gReddy makes one I believe?) however I had the advantage of a long driveway, and the 30 - 45 seconds it took to drive from the road to the garage I think was enough.

And there are still a lot of people that think the K03's were just plain prone to failure... some inherent design flaw. For some reason the bigger K04's don't seem to fail and anything close to the same rate...

deadheadskier · May 20, 2009

My favorite Audi and I just saw one earlier today was the All Road. Wonder why they got rid of it. Seems like the perfect compromise between SUV and Wagon.

Marc · May 20, 2009

deadheadskier said:
My favorite Audi and I just saw one earlier today was the All Road. Wonder why they got rid of it. Seems like the perfect compromise between SUV and Wagon.

Didn't sell. I think the price was too high... more people went for cheaper alternatives like volvos and subaru foresters.

marcski · May 20, 2009

deadheadskier said:
My favorite Audi and I just saw one earlier today was the All Road. Wonder why they got rid of it. Seems like the perfect compromise between SUV and Wagon.

Marc said:
Didn't sell. I think the price was too high... more people went for cheaper alternatives like volvos and subaru foresters.

Is that true? I never thought lack of sales was an issue....I always heard that it was because they came out with the Q7. ??

drjeff · May 20, 2009

marcski said:
Is that true? I never thought lack of sales was an issue....I always heard that it was because they came out with the Q7. ??

That's what I heard from the dealer as my wife was mooving out of her A6 - the Q7 was meant to be the replacement for the Alll-road. In retrospect they probably should have rolled out the Q5 1st and then the Q7, but they apparently decided to make a bigger high end SUV than the folks at BMW - and I'll just put the Porsche Cayenne in its own class

Johnskiismore · May 20, 2009

Nice fix on the bumper!

jaywbigred · May 20, 2009

hammer said:
I was just talking to my mechanic yesterday and I asked him whether I should buy an Audi, BMW, or Infiniti. His basic comment...Audis are troublesome, and BMWs are better but they are very expensive to maintain.

He also mentioned that he's had customers who bought their BMWs after the lease was up because it was cheaper, but once the cars get about 80-100K on them things start breaking.

Between that comment and what I've read here (an engine fried at only 46K miles?), I think I'll be looking at the Infiniti. Real shame...the Audi and BMWs I test drove were nice cars...

Love my 2007 G35X. Just turned 2 y/o in April. 30k, barely any probs. Did have one belt go, was not an expensive repair. Compared to my Touareg, I prob spend about 80% less on maintenance and repairs. And the thing is a rocket, more HP (306) than I should be aloud to drive. Also, when I packed it with amenities, it was still 80-100 cheaper per month (lease) than the Audis and BMWs i priced out.

I used to say over and over again "Life is too short to drive the same car twice." I now am changing my mind. Good chance I'll go for a G37x when the time comes. Had one as a loaner on Monday, and it was like driving my car after it had spent a year getting fitter at the gym. V. nice.

marcski · May 20, 2009

jaywbigred said:
Love my 2007 G35X. Just turned 2 y/o in April. 30k, barely any probs. Did have one belt go, was not an expensive repair. Compared to my Touareg, I prob spend about 80% less on maintenance and repairs. And the thing is a rocket, more HP (306) than I should be aloud to drive. Also, when I packed it with amenities, it was still 80-100 cheaper per month (lease) than the Audis and BMWs i priced out.

I used to say over and over again "Life is too short to drive the same car twice." I now am changing my mind. Good chance I'll go for a G37x when the time comes. Had one as a loaner on Monday, and it was like driving my car after it had spent a year getting fitter at the gym. V. nice.

My buddy has the 35x and enjoys it as well. Does anyone have any first hand beta about the new Acura TL SHAWD?

Marc · May 21, 2009

marcski said:
Is that true? I never thought lack of sales was an issue....I always heard that it was because they came out with the Q7. ??

Well, look at it this way... why did they spend all the money to design and build the Q7... much more of an SUV than the Allroad was. It wasn't because Allroads were flying off the shelf.

Glenn · May 21, 2009

drjeff said:
That's what I heard from the dealer as my wife was mooving out of her A6 - the Q7 was meant to be the replacement for the Alll-road. In retrospect they probably should have rolled out the Q5 1st and then the Q7, but they apparently decided to make a bigger high end SUV than the folks at BMW - and I'll just put the Porsche Cayenne in its own class

I'll x3 that. I'm pretty sure they replaced the AllRoad with the Q7. The AllRoad was a cool car with it's adjustable suspension and whatnot. However, my personal jury is still out on towing with a German automatic transmission in a car based vehicle. Anyone ever look at what's involved at a simple trans fluid and filter change? Regawddamneddiculous.

I like the new Q5. I think they did a really good job with the design. The "Identity Theft" ad campaign they have out now is really well done.

I hear ya on the K03's Marc...not much love for those out there. I still dream about buying a 1st gen S4 and building it up with a bunch of stuff from APR. That's one of those lottery dreams. Nead the big garagemahaul with the lift in it first.

drjeff · May 21, 2009

Glenn said:
I like the new Q5. I think they did a really good job with the design. The "Identity Theft" ad campaign they have out now is really well done.

.

If I didn't have 5 grand plus of GM Card $$'s that I was worried about loosing in the near future, there was a very good chance that my garage would have had both a Q7 and a Q5 in it right now

That was a mighty fun test drive that I took in the Q5 a few weeks ago.

On a seperate Audi love fest tidbit. Just found out that one of my good friends who is an insurance agent in RI, just bought a brand spanking new '09 Audi S4. I most definately will be finding an excuse to go visit and get a ride in that vehicle (preferably on a curvy lightly trafficed road through the "hills" of Western Rhode Island)

German carnage pics

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