Stevey Y

Hi did you do the adaptation of the new EGR valve?, my idea would be glow plugs as you mentioned it stats with easy start, apart from that I would be looking at the fuel metering solenoid on the fuel rail as if thats playing up you don't get a code. Steve.

Hi thats why the A6 I have has leather, and yeah they do tend to think its the firms vehicle, this is how stupid it gets with the younger idiots a group of girls one night going Clacton from where I am based they were quoted by the company £100 when we got near the drop the one sitting next to me tells me I have to do the job for £50 or she would call the police and tell them I groped her, I told her that I didn't care and the firm had her credit card details so either way I was going to get my money, when I dropped them she stood outside the car screaming to anyone that was listening that I had assaulted her, of course the drunken knight in shining armour arrives and calls the police who were there in a jiffy, the bad news was that the whole episode was recorded on the CCTV in the cabin, her dad turns up all angry until he found out his daughter was about to get nicked for false accusation and bilking, he then brokers a deal with the officer who asked me if her dad gives you £200 cash will you drop the charges, I kept them sweating for five minutes and then agreed to it. I after that came to the conclusion that they are all untrustworthy scum until otherwise advised, if you are going to get this car you will need CCTV as that proves any abuse or damage, they don't like it when they are caught out, other than that I hope your new car attracts the better clients from the area you work and I can vouch for the Audi durability. Steve.

Good skills Gareth, you will now be equipped for another 160k by which time we will all be past caring and if still driving it will be a golf buggy and have Greta Thunberg as a pin up, those that cant afford a £50,000 reasonably priced Audi all electric will have to content themselves with magazines like What Cart and Classic Pony even practical Cart owner, which will show you how to grease up wooden stub axles and replace timber sides on your pony and trap. Steve.

Hi before condemning the turbo try giving it a good blast with Lucas turbo and ego cleaner which is simply sprayed down the air intake pipe while the engine is running that should loosen it, my money is on a worn EGR valve which won't normally show up a code until knackered but is still capable of leaking extra gas which in turn eventually clogs the turbo and kills the cat. Steve.

Hi, your licensing officers must be very understanding, my mate has a Mercedes estate and had a run in last year with a drunk with a broken bottle who did not want to pay the fare, in the drunks opinion why should he give the driver seven quid when the driver could obviously afford a car like that, the end of it was my mate flattened the bottle man and stayed put until the police arrived, guess who got nicked and guess who got the five star treatment in an ambulance, my mate got suspended for six months right at the start of the lockdown, no great loss for three months, I have also owned three contemptible buckets and covered over 800,000 miles between the the three of them, all Fords and must have gotten most of my more lucrative jobs with a bit of wit knowledge and good looks, not the bucket, and the one experience based con elusion is they have no real respect for cabs and when it comes to throwing up in them it won't matter if its a Dacia or a Maybach the end results the same. Steve.

Why would you buy an A8 for a cab, unless you do a lot of airport work with civilised customers the usual drunks will kick it to pieces they have had a go at my entry level Avant but the upside is my mate owns a VAG breakers. Steve.

Hi get the car plugged in and diagnosed so that you have the codes for whatever is wrong, other than that it could be a sensor,EGR valve, sticky turbo vanes, DPF, the list is endless and without codes I wouldn't care to speculate. Steve.

Hi, is there a lot of blue smoke from the exhaust when you accelerate, if not I would get the car checked for major oil leaks before condemning the engine, the only other thing it could be is one of Audis famous loose engines which I have no doubt some of the members on here have come across. Steve.

Hi unfortunately the fact remains that wider bigger wheels wear tyres a lot quicker than say smaller wheels with higher ratio tyres as because of the appalling roads in this country the lower profile tyre has nowhere to go when rapidly compressed so it either deforms to absorb the impact which causes severe stress to the tread area or bursts and hammers the rim, this negates the whole point of the tyres being pneumatic and makes the tyre manufacturers a small fortune which recoups some of the money they had to spend to get the car manufacturer to use their tyres. Steve.

Hi they look like redundant connectors for an old disc driven sat nav or a disc changer, check the history of the car as if the MOD owned it or police it could have been linked to a coms system, either way its nothing to be alarmed about its just a bit of a mystery. Steve.

I wish you luck with it Moog and Lemforder are both excellent brands with a reputation for durability as they only use high shore rubber, with regard to the ban I can see where you are coming from, I have not been banned by the missus yet but my body is doing it for her as after changing my front brakes disc/pads last week I was as stiff as a skinheads boot for about two days after. Steve.

Hi if the new doors are different electrically the one thing you can be sure of is its very, very rare for them to change the fixing points for the modules etc as that would create a massive re tooling cost, so in theory the originals should fit even if the connectors different, anyway 10/10 for effort and persistence. Steve.

Hi Don to be totally honest if it was an old Euro4 engine I would say buy a blanking plate but with the amount of gas flow monitoring going on with the system on the Euro6 engines you may well end up with lots of lights up, the VAG replacement valves are not that pricey compared with most other car manufacturers such as Ford or Vauxhall, last one I bought for my old Ford was £450.00 and that was cheap compared with the dealer price. Yes they are a pain but when you consider the valve is only open a fraction when going slowly around town and shut when accelerating and cruising at speed you wonder what the point actually is, the biggest villain is the crank case ventilation as this feeds engine oil vapour into the system which when it mixes with the gas from the EGR forms that black tar like crud that blocks everything up, worse still because of direct injection the crud sticks on the back of the valves where as the old system injecting via the inlet manifold would always keep the inlet valves cleaner as they were always in a cloud of hot diesel vapour. Steve.

Hi Don as long as you substitute all the components from the original doors you should be fine the main thing is that it all seems original to the body control module, a bit like a re shell but on a far smaller scale. Steve.

There you go Clifford, just shows you that you are never to old to learn, it helps if you know a bit about what you are fixing, you should treat yourself to a youtube video of the last national Alfa day some of the cars on show are some of the cars are seventy years old and still in fine running order. Steve.

Hi all the existing door modules are coded to the car therefore if you reinstall the original looms the body control module won't know the doors have been changed. Steve.

Hi the transition from metal to cast arms was bourne of a need to reduce weight and gain economy as far as I know they are not interchangeable, therefore if I was in your position I would and wanted something more bullet proof I would keep the existing arms and buy a power flex kit or similar, get the arms rubbed down and painted then fit them the bushes are in two halves with a stainless steel spigot that pushes down the centre and are easy to fit. I fitted these to my wife Alfa 147 years ago and they outlasted the car, I also fitted them to my last Mondeo on the rear trailing arms which are notorious for splitting the bushes my old car before that had four sets in 300,000 miles so the last one got power flex the first time they need changing and 200,000 miles later they were still like new. Yes they are expensive but they are the sort of thing you only buy once, fit and forget I think is the term used and the benefits are sharper handling and very much reduced tyre wear as the neoprene they are made of deforms more progressively than high shore rubber and the bushes are impervious to any chemical you throw at them. Steve.

Hi Don I am really pleased for you with a bit of persistence and using the right equipment you have saved yourself ££££££ and not had the discomfort of listening to the teeth sucking build up of a dealership technician winding the bill up. It makes me laugh when I am told that diagnostics can be the route to buying unnecessary parts, not if you know A how it works B why it works in this case you removed the dodgy sensors which dug up the root cause the DPF, I can thoroughly recommend an additive to use every fill up which not only gives better MPG and power, its called Hydra Maximus I get through about a litre every two months but as a private car owner one litre will probably last a year or so, it keeps everything clean and makes the soot particles smaller therefore less regeneration. Keep up the good work and save yourself money these vehicles are the same as any other diesel but much better built. Steve.

Hi Don, I had a look on my system but dear Audi only list the sensor as one part which includes the bracket and the pipe they don't list them separately, the pipe only has clips on either end so logic says measure the inside diameter of the pipe and if need be replace it with the same gauge silicon pipe, thats what I did on the boost sensor pipes on my last Ford, the only place you could get the pipes from was Ford for £104.00 the pair so I used aftermarket silicon pipe £13.00 they outlasted my ownership of the car and 160,000 miles. Steve.

Hi Don, also check that the rubber hose between the MAP and the manifold is not blocked as I am informed that it is wise to change the hose with the MAP I will try and get you the part number for the hose. Steve.

Hi Arron, after owning three diesel cabs equipped with DPFs and having covered 750k between them I have got a pretty fair idea of what goes on, they are all different the worst one being my 2.2 Titanium x sport Mondeo, one night I was late going to Gatwick for a pick up so I had become stuck on one of our local B roads, so the car had just started a regeneration I threw a left up a side road, there was some poor soul on the grass verge on the corner letting his dog take a leak, as I looked back he was completely engulfed in a large cloud of whitish grey smoke, basically three days worth of ash, the car normally did this on the motorway in small puffs when accelerating it was quite spectacular in slower motion, the exhaust pressure is high on the motorway which evacuates the ash, same pressure when booting it up a side road. Steve.

Hi if you can get the original AUDI part number and plumb that in to eBay or similar that will probably throw up a lot of branded parts made by other manufacturers, your garage is correct in what they say the EGR is supposed to shut off under hard acceleration as the engine needs as much fresh air as it can get but the cheap valves leak exhaust gas in to the system at higher revs which pollutes the air fuel mixture thus you have a contaminated compressed charge which won't burn well hence no power, the by product of this is you will eventually kill the cat and turbo as they were never designed to run like that. Steve.

Hi its quite normal its the DPF clearing its ash load, the smell is quite normal as well they all do it, its less spectacular on the euro six engines but noticeable all the same. Steve.

Hi Don if you can give me your milage and the codes that came up this time, I suspect that where the MAP/MAF situation was ongoing the car probably needed a regeneration which would be declined as the MAP/MAF not communicating would be classed as a major fault so the whole lot goes into default until the problem is cured I personally would give the car a forced regeneration after first clearing the codes [otherwise it won't do it] and see what occurs after that, did you do the adaption of the new MAF, I don't know what diagnostics platform you are using so am flying a bit blind. Regards Steve.

Hi you won't need vagcom to bleed them its as you say start at the furthest but I can highly recommend bleeding both at once as they will be on separate diagonal circuits so if you bleed them as a pair there is less chance of air swapping from one circuit to another. Steve.