A6 Avant Alternator Issues advice please

[PaulAFC84]

Morning Gents,

I was out on the weekend when the car lost all power, showing alternator fault, before losing all systems. In the garage, got a call quoting £850. The main question I have really at the minute, for anyone with a similar car with similar is are there many more expensive issues to come? Or should this be the turning point to start looking for another car? The car has been great, still in great condition, 123k miles, but I’m just concerned at having many more expensive issues on the horizon. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Many Thanks,

Paul

[Steve Q]

As it's 10 years old you could start getting additional bills. I'll assume it's diesel and as such the other big bills down the line could be injectors, dpf, egr and turbo. 

[PaulAFC84]

Thanks for your reply Steve, yeah it’s a 3.0 tdi, it’s been a great car as I mentioned, this is probably the major outlay in cost, in all honesty, apart from the consumables. I am just slightly concerned at what could be next. Hopefully it will be ok for the time being.

[Stevey Y]

1 hour ago, PaulAFC84 said:

Morning Gents,

I was out on the weekend when the car lost all power, showing alternator fault, before losing all systems. In the garage, got a call quoting £850. The main question I have really at the minute, for anyone with a similar car with similar is are there many more expensive issues to come? Or should this be the turning point to start looking for another car? The car has been great, still in great condition, 123k miles, but I’m just concerned at having many more expensive issues on the horizon. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Many Thanks,

Paul

Hi I ran my car up to 270k the biggest problem is the DPF cooler inside the DPF itself this becomes blocked with adblue crystals and fails, the parts are not that expensive but the labour is as you have to remove the front of the car to get at  it, never had the alternator go but multiple rubber hoses and cabin sensors failed all expensive parts, if its a manual the clutch parts are £1500 or DSG if you can find anyone to touch it run at about £3000 all in, as you say lovely cars but you will need deep pockets to run one. 

[Steve Q]

1 hour ago, PaulAFC84 said:

Thanks for your reply Steve, yeah it’s a 3.0 tdi, it’s been a great car as I mentioned, this is probably the major outlay in cost, in all honesty, apart from the consumables. I am just slightly concerned at what could be next. Hopefully it will be ok for the time being.

You're welcome. Steve raises a good point about the dpf cooler. He's very knowledgeable on the c7 as he ran one for years. 

[PaulAFC84]

1 hour ago, Stevey Y said:

Hi I ran my car up to 270k the biggest problem is the DPF cooler inside the DPF itself this becomes blocked with adblue crystals and fails, the parts are not that expensive but the labour is as you have to remove the front of the car to get at  it, never had the alternator go but multiple rubber hoses and cabin sensors failed all expensive parts, if its a manual the clutch parts are £1500 or DSG if you can find anyone to touch it run at about £3000 all in, as you say lovely cars but you will need deep pockets to run one. 

Thanks Stevey, much appreciated. I’ll have to see how this repair goes and go from there. Do you have any idea when the DPF becomes a problem or is it one of these things that could happen at any time?

 

[Stevey Y]

5 hours ago, PaulAFC84 said:

Thanks Stevey, much appreciated. I’ll have to see how this repair goes and go from there. Do you have any idea when the DPF becomes a problem or is it one of these things that could happen at any time?

 

Hi just read the earlier post properly [my fault] if its the 3.0 engine and is not running Adblue you should not get the problem I described the v engines suffer more with EGR valves and swirl flap failure, the way to combat this is buy a bottle of Wynns EGR cleaner and add that to the tank every month, with regard to upcoming faults it may be wise to get a scanner such as OBD Eleven so even if there is no EML that will tell you about oncoming faults, thats how I discovered the p2002 fault for the cooler, its worth scanning every couple of months so you can clear all the one time only faults these cars throw up which keeps the various control modules clear, all the other problems I mentioned will still apply, auto gearboxes need religious oil and filter changes every 40k otherwise the oil becomes acidic/burnt and will terminate the box, manuals are more forgiving with just an oil change every 60k.

Steve.