Stevey Y

Hi Ryan bear with me as these are pretty new to me but the principles remain the same, had a study up on the VVT system its the same as most manufacturers these are electromagnetic devices that use controlled oil flow to advance or !Removed! the valve timing via the camshafts, other manufacturers just the same thing but a more complex valve system like BMW the VANOS system, when these fail they cause performance issues, sluggish engine performance not a partial shutdown or other peripheral problems, vet units either work or don't and seem to have their own set of DTCs. So if you go back to your original post changing the oxygen sensor was a good shout as thats pretty close to the recommended milage change interval anyway, the glow plugs again good housekeeping, but subject to the latest scan information my money is still on the G40 sensor as its not talking properly to the G28 sensor, swapping readings hence the term correlation in other words the G40 is supplying G28 with no plausible information, anything to do with engine sensors will affect the engines ability to start a regeneration forced or otherwise. We need to know what engine code you have and the BHP of your engine, mine is 190 BHP CNHA engine, they seem to build virtually the same engine but with different horsepower and engine code denominations if I can find where G40 is hiding I am sure that may well be the answer the timing cannot slip. Regards Steve.

Hi Ryan, Boredom is a terrible thing, I have been sitting in the car playing with the laptop whilst waiting, right there appears to be two choices depending on which engine you have [usual bullocks] but the good news is they are not big bucks to buy, the downside is the diagram showing the sensors is showing them in a large white area with no indication of where they go, very frustrating, but I was talking to my mate who installed my VCDS and driver and he pointed out that the part no you want for the sensor will be in the description of the fault, that narrows it down and why did I not remember that, must be going senile, if you can throw in an engine code I can go down to one of my customers garage tomorrow and hijack his Autodata repair programme and find out where its located. Have a look at the fault code again and see if either of these part numbers throw up a flag, 03L 957 147A.or 04L 907 601. With regard to the sensor causing the loss of power and it cutting out, most definitely that is the cause as the ECU cant get its head round mixed signals so if the fault gets that bad it simply shuts the whole thing down or goes into limp mode, I had it with a Ford cab I had coming home from stansted one night, going through the lanes the !Removed! thing kept cutting out not good at half past stupid in the morning, so I nursed it down to the only garage for miles got the reader out and scanned it, it showed crank position sensor intermittent fault so after a bit of head scratching a bored AA man that patrols that area walked over and asked whats the matter when I showed him the scanner he went and got his big search light torch and we had a look. the fault soon became apparent as when idling there was a steady drip of coolant coming from the water pump and down on to the crank sensor so I bought an overpriced Bars Leak from the garage put that in the coolant tank, WD40d the sensor to death and made a run for home, if any sensor starts to break down internally the only answer is replacement. Regards Steve.

Hi Ryan I have an airport take out and pick up to do but I will get to it as soon as I get back and should have your answers for you late afternoon if thats O.K. in my line of work you have to grab what you can when you can, BTW the sensor we are looking for cannot block up as its a Hall sensor, [solid state] so like an ABS sensor it relies on a circular metal ring with teeth or a magnetic ring to function. Cheers mate.

Hi I think the G40 or crankshaft position sensor is probably located behind the cam belt housing but if you can send me your VIN NO I can check it on my ETKA system which will with a bit of luck throw up A. the exact location, B a part number, the reason the DPF is blocking is because this sensor is malfunctioning and the ECU won't sanction any regeneration because it thinks doing that may damage the engine, furthermore I would not recommend a DPF delete especially if the car runs adblue as your likely to need VCDS to keep putting out the Christmas tree lights on the dash, then there is always the issue of increased emissions. the DPF is under the cat on the left hand side of the engine and from what I have seen you have to remove most of the front of the car, you might be better served sorting the sensor do a regeneration and see how you go, other than that if you are still not happy try Terraclean. A man with information and codes, priceless...... Regards Steve.

Now your talking, I cut my teeth on most of those, Minis the bypass hoses and if like I did you tried to make them go faster you caused yourself a whole heap of trouble like idler gears shredding because they were not built to handle another 40 BHP, head gasket blowing constantly because the block had hardly any metal left between the two middle cylinders where it had been over bored to far. it was not until my friend an ex REME engineer suggested if I wanted fast its better to buy fast off the peg. So went for a mk4 Cortina 2.0 Ghia, after a while I discovered things like void bushes and half shaft bearings and the best one was the oil spray pipe for the camshaft this would block and total the cam and followers, this all led to no small skill with a spanner, I even bought my first torque wrench. This is what makes me smile when Audi do a recall and everyone starts flapping, at least they admit they have a problem Ford/GM will normally deny all knowledge and hope it will go away, unless you have ever owned any car from that era you will never really appreciate how good modern German cars are, I don't think many people bought Audis or NSUs back in the late seventies as the brand loyalty was always Vauxhall, Ford, British Leyland, my dad would have considered me a traitor if I had bought a German/Japanese car, it took a long time for this mind set to disappear, its been an interesting and on occasions happy journey and I learned a lot. With has really made me appreciate my Audi. Regards Steve

Hi, I have seen engines that look like the inside of a Hellmans jar but still run, if you consider that most oil pressure sensors only trigger at just under 2 bar by then you can safely assume its game over, judging by your pictures the big end bearings have had a lot of contact with the crank journals that is what has torn the chunks of white metal away, if you look at it logically the journal and bearings use what is almost an interference fit, this is to hold the oil between the the two this causes the oil to form a wedge which the two surfaces operate on in opposite directions, the holes in the crank journals and bearings allow the oil in and out and are designed to cope with the demands of higher than normal oil pressure. If the surface of the crank journals are even slightly scored they will compromise the the integrity of the new bearings, in some cases you could remove very light scores with a light polish, worse case scenario crank out re ground and oversize bearings fitted. I think the most plausible explanation is that the oil pressure dropped, which they have not designed a monitor for, therefore that caused the original problem what did not help you was the fact that there was partial deposits of metal in the oil galleries which then would have been pushed round in record time by the new oil pump, if they are suggesting a new crank I would say that they have worked out that the old crank was not serviceable in the first place, then there is the other consideration what are the pistons and cylinders like on your engine. Cam sad to say you only have three options, get your unit rebuilt by a reputable engineer, source a second hand engine, cut your losses sell the car as a rolling project then go and buy another car. Regards Steve

Hi John, its an absolute oasis in desert of OHM readings and re learning values to hear someone who knows about points and condensers and especially S.U. carburettors, I especially miss the old bar stool debates over which was the better version, S.U., Stromberg, Pierburg, and the universal condemnation of carbs like the Ford VV, all long forgotten thanks to fuel injection, these along with distributors were a work of art to any mechanical self servicing fanatic and without doubt a source of great personal satisfaction when you had just fitted a refurb kit and re tuned your carburettor with the aid of an airflow meter or colour tune, [remember them], then go out on a warm spring day for a blast over to a country pub with the girlfriend. Mind you can you also remember hanging out of the bonnet with your best clothes on with a small screwdriver or spanner trying to iron out some small flat spot while the girlfriend sat in the car chain smoking with a face like thunder, thats how we learned I suppose, thank you for the resurrection of fond memories. Regards Steve.

Hi to be honest it looks like a good old fashioned oil pump failure, the bearings look as though they have had a good heat up, I think at that point I would have scrapped the engine as with that amount of debris floating around the only real way of rebuilding it would have been to have it out strip it right down and have the block and cylinder head hot tanked and the oil ways steam blasted to get rid of every last piece of metal, any small pieces of metal hiding in the oil galleries will eventually come out causing catastrophic failure of the new bearings, if I was you I would source another engine because unless you have your one professionaly rebuilt its just going to keep on killing the new parts you put on it.

Hi John, you had me going for a minute, I was thinking what the hell is an Anti Shudder Valve so I googled it and its a throttle valve by another name, suppose I am going to have to get used to the different terminology used for dealing with German engineering on cars, though having now seen what it was I have had plenty of experience with these, normally caused by an air leak in the intake hose below the throttle, this allows the crankcase ventilation gas/oil to hang around because of the drop in barometric pressure so it weeps into the control box on the side of the unit, then causes the throttle butterfly to stick open and the engine would briefly run on after the ignition was turned off. I agree its worth trying the low cost options but if you have no idea whats causing the light how much are you likely to spend on different treatments before it adds up to the high cost option, in all fairness at least you had two faults so at least you had an idea of what it might be. believe me when I tell you as we have staggered in to Euro 6 with even more sensors the software programmers have a code for just about everything, I know its not the same manufacturer but on my Euro 4 spec cars I could unplug the Map sensor take it out and clean it, plug it back in and go to work, the Euro 5 was a different animal in so much as any sensor to do with the emissions that you unplugged would case the car to fly into limp mode when started so you would have to clear the code before she would start, the thing that amazed me was that the sensors are still monitoring even when the engine is dormant, work that one out. Think a lot of these strategies are used to discourage the average home mechanic from having a go, lets face it the average dealers will charge an hours labour for five minutes work, I am aware that the whole ethos of forums is to try and help each other overcome problems that would otherwise make ownership uneconomical but I cant see the point of rocking up on any forum with no information other than the light is on how much to fix it, try that one at any garage and as John said its a process of elimination. Regards Steve.

The trouble is there is so much information on line as to what the cause of your problem could be, all good but never definitive without codes being read it could be Anything, oxygen sensor, implausible correlation information between the MAP and MAF sensors, sticky turbo vanes, EGR bypass valve stuck, faulty injector, some faults can be in a chain where one sensor goes down and and the others get a default setting from the ECU to get you home [Limp Mode] all ECU software regardless of manufacturer will have a defence strategy built in to it, the idea is that you get home without destroying the engine I.E. it runs everything on the minimum range until the offending part is cleaned/replaced. Had the once with one of my neighbours cars, he had recently changed the starter motor, fair effort, but some how he bent one of the pins on the oil temperature sensor no EML but when I was checking the fault codes for him it flagged up that the oil temp was 180 degrees this was of course impossible so the ECU had set a default so rather than the engine temperature being assessed from the oil and water sensor it was just relying on the cylinder head temperature sensor to tell the ECU what was going on real time, we changed the oil temperature sensor cleared the code and normality returned.

Hi, have you had it scanned for codes, this would get you in the right ball park, how many miles has it done? could just be something as simple as an oxygen sensor, without scanning you can spend a fortune trying to cure the problem and never get lucky enough to have nailed the problem, flying blind I think is the correct term I used to try that one many years ago until I got my local independent garage to plug the car in, give em a tenner and actually have a better idea of what was going on, eventually I bought my own diagnostic platform with generic software pre loaded and with the help of a computer orientated friend developed it further from there .

Hi Kev, it all comes down to the old saying, cheap aint necessarily good, and you are bang on with the Jet fuel its another spot market purchasing company, there is always the element who will say I always use supermarket fuel and have not had any problems, these fall into two categories they either have a car thats about ten years old and done about 30k or they hand it back to the lease company every two years.. I see from your list you like an Audi or two, good luck to you.

Hi Brian, Thank you for describing your experience, I have no doubt that a lot of people would think my post was a deranged rambling, but it is based on solid research based on what the customer had told me, the only thing I have ever put in with the fuel on my cars is a product from a company called Hydra, its an additive that contains an upper cylinder lubricant and a mild cleaner for the fuel system as well as a cetane booster, it seems to work well especially during the winter. When I first used my Audi in very cold conditions I found it took ages for the temperature gauge to rise despite having driven two or three miles, the additive seems to help with that as it makes the fuel burn a tad hotter, the mystery of it all was finally solved by a Ford engineer who I was talking to at a barbecue in between lockdowns he explained that diesel and petrol engines work far better at higher temperatures but the downside of that is they produce far more Nox and Hydrocarbons, this did not please the friends of the earth so with the constant race to produce low emissions the only way they could do this was make the engines especially the diesels run a lot cooler this was achieved by putting in massive radiators, liquid cooled EGR valves and in the case of Audi quite complex thermostatic control of the engine coolant, oh and of course Adblue. hence the auxiliary cabin heater because of the cold factor. Regards Steve

Hello Ladies and Gents. I had just dropped a fare at the local Asda the other day when I saw one of my fellow drivers who now owns a cracking 19 plate A6 saloon filling up with good old City Diesel, sacrilege I thought, which drew me back many years to a fare I had from Heathrow, it was the usual carnage on a Friday rush hour and we got caught on the way back by the usual accident at the Holmesdale tunnel therefore an hour later we were still in a queue of static traffic so I sparked up a conversation by asking what he did for a living, he replied that he was a blending chemist for Shell at which point most others would have shut up, but I just had to ask what that involved he then proceeded to tell me all about it and was quite proud of the fact he had quite a large role in developing V power petrol/diesel which was reasonably new to the market. He asked me what fuel I used in the taxi, supermarket fuel I replied, he pulled a face and went on to explain that most supermarket fuel was bought on the spot markets and then shipped in to the country and after weights and measures had tested it to make sure it was diesel/petrol they were allowed to blend down by twenty percent, this is how they make more from less and a profit margin, blending down involved using a light paraffin and detergents, the by product of this was that the fuel still achieved the B.S. cetane rating but rather than burn slowly and efficiently it basically just goes bang. The V Power apparently burns more slowly and leaves less unburnt fuel in the cylinders, the deal was he invited me to fill up with V Power when possible and if I was not happy with the results after a hundred miles I could present him with the receipt and without quibbling he would give me the price of the tank back, I tried it a couple of weeks later when I got near a Shell garage in Southend, twenty miles later the car was running like a steam train after emitting a large cloud of smoke at the half way point, needless to say I never did go back and see him and I was getting as promised more MPG a quieter engine and less oil contamination, the last two cars I had did 570,000 between them and never had new injectors or fuel pumps run on either Shell/Esso standard fuel or the premium of both. I am convinced that if I run my Audi on the same I can expect the same longevity from the fuel system, especially as most Euro 5/6 engines have piezo injectors which to be honest are about as highly strung as it gets, the injection Venturi are about four microns which if you consider a human hair is six microns, that is very small and won't take a lot to block up and destroy the spray pattern, so if you consider the ten pence extra per gallon that will still not come to the same price during ownership as a new fuel pump and injectors plus fitting.

Hi Rich well done for posting the cure for this problem, many thanks.

How long is a piece of string, don't be terrified it could be anything from a dodgy glow plug, MAFsensor, or any other sensor come to that, without getting it plugged in and finding the fault codes, try your local independent garage provided they have an up to date scanner for a small financial consideration they will give you the codes then you can either put them up here or trawl the net for answers. Just because its an Audi the first thing people look at with dread are the £ signs when realistically they don't cost anymore than any other brand of vehicle to fix due to good old globalisation of parts within VAG, unless of course you go to the main dealer in which case give em your bank details and then apply for bankruptcy. You did not say if the car was in limp mode no power if it is not it could be something as simple as a faulty brake light switch !, get it read.

Hi Gents, I have always had my own diagnostic platform which I used throughout my ownership of my Ford cabs, this saved me a shed load of money when the milage started to rack up, I got a Dunton engineer as a fare up to Luton airport, turns out this guy programs the computers that program the ECU and just about any other electrical module on the car when they are on the production line, I had a couple of recurring faults on the body control module and the ECU they were not stopping the car running but it just bugged me. He explained that over a 100k the modules were probably rammed to capacity with redundant information and that was why they kept throwing up codes, he then suggested that if I used the as factory facility on my software and let the modules relearn their values with the existing milage this would cure the problem, it did. Roll forward to the Audi, I bought a pre loaded laptop with a version of VCDS and the correct interface and up to about three months ago every two weeks had a plug in and cleared a lot of the one time codes I had only found one embedded code and that was for the humidity sensor under the mirror so I replaced that and the screen stopped misting up and the code never returned, three months ago the hard drive on the computer started to play around so I gave it to a friend of mine who is into anything to do with computers and runs his own repair business, he was going to fit my rig with a digital hard drive which is faster and has a larger memory. It had been a while but I wasn't worried as the laptop was not high on my list of priorities. Two days ago he turned up at where I work highly excited and with the laptop which he informed me now loads up like a rocket, he then announced that the only information he had salvaged off of the old hard drive was my previous fault logs but not the VCDS or ETKA I had on there, but he had sourced the latest version of both and loaded them on there and now wanted a car to try it on, so being bored witless after only getting a job every couple of hours I booked a break and we plugged in, crammed in the front with all the cables and the laptop looking like a couple of MI5 operatives on a observation mission, the newer VCDS worked really well but the end of scan had more red bits than the Texas chainsaw massacre. None of the faults I had logged previously had appeared again with the exception of the implausible information from the clutch pedal switch which I believe is caused by me getting the wrong gear when I change down and stall it, the other faults were all new so logged them and cleared down, today I read it again and the only returning fault was for the fresh air sensor which on research seems to be a common problem, also finding its exact location seems to be shrouded in mystery, I will find it. So in conclusion it would appear that the Audi diagnostic analysis is somewhat more sensitive than the Ford and therefore flags up the slightest communication break between modules this is worrying from the perspective that anyone who uses a dealers for servicing may be open to abuse from the point of having to have very costly sensors replaced merely because of what amounts to an electronic sneeze and would never know if it happened again as they don't have the facilities to look at it, now here comes the clever part with my particular problem, the sensors for the climate control are all daisy chained so if as in my case one stops working the others won't work and the diagnostics cant check their functions so they operate in a state of neutral default, no lights or any warning, in my case I can smell exhaust fumes when I am behind old cars as the sensor is not picking them up and shutting the vent to stop it getting into the car. Therefore might I suggest if you do have the car scanned get the codes deleted and try again in a couple of weeks to see if they reappear its a damn site cheaper than keep replacing parts because the computer says so.

Hi, the man is right if the belt becomes damaged it can potentially get bits of debris into the lower part of the cam belt drive, game over, I think there are only three main suspects, 1, the auxiliary belt tensioner, this can be checked by observing the pulley whilst at idle and then turning on every electrical service available, aircon, lights, blower motor, if it starts moving thats your kiddie the motion of the jockey wheel should be uniform and level regardless of load. 2, the aircon clutch bearing, run the engine then turn on the aircon if the noise ceases then you have your answer, it's the electromagnetic clutch engagement that takes up any slack in the bearing. 3, the free wheeling clutch on the alternator this can be tested by removing the belt and running the engine. I wish you luck.

Hi, the first question is have you had the light put out as the cataclean may have done its job but you won't know because most emission related faults will be locked in until deleted regardless of the cause being fixed or cleaned. With regard to the strip down by your friend you cant visually tell if the units working correctly however clean it appears, furthermore did he check the inside of the cooler?, these are often the source of the alleged blockage as these systems are very refined and twitchy because all the valves from 2009 onward use electromagnetic drive systems which throw a paddy if there is the slightest impediment of the actual valve movement, the old type vacuum operated had a propensity to stick open throw up no EML and just feed the cat and dpf the worlds supply of oil enriched exhaust gas until they failed as well. Then we have the turbo of which most modern diesels have they are normally variable vane, so you can imagine all that sticky stuff will eventually ruin that as well, prime example which I realise is not an Audi but the same principles apply, I had changed the egr on my Mondeo six months before I had to change the turbo, six months after that it kept throwing up a light and limp mode, the coding was for vanes sticking within the turbine, I phoned the company I bought the turbo from and explained my problem, they immediately explained it was probably the egr causing the problem, I replied that I had replaced the egr just over a year ago but the guy was adamant and stated that they would clean the turbo for a small fee, but guaranteed I would be back to square one in record time, I bit the bullet and bought a genuine Ford egr put that on and used a whole can of Lucas spray down the air inlet hose turbo cleaner, the old valve was stripped as it was redundant and with the valve in parked position the diesel I poured in leaked out revealing that the seat was not sealing against the valve, the liquid disappeared in less than twenty seconds and you could not see the gap with the naked eye and in view of the surface tension of the liquid which is definitely higher than gas, it wasn't doing what it was designed to. The end result was that it ran for another fifteen months or another 90k until I had to replace the ruddy egr again for the same reasons[ used as a taxi], I have racked up some 850,000 miles between the first three cabs I had, from the MK111 Mondeo euro 4 which despite my best efforts still smoked on acceleration like the HMS Belfast trying to escape the Bismarck, then the MK4 and MK4/5 Mondeos which had a lot better emissions set up but still lived up to the legend of the badge Fix Or Repair Daily, having done 50k since owning the Audi I am of the opinion that if the Audi is treated with respect and care they will easily out last the Ford.

Hi, try opening the door and inspecting the latch mechanism, I had this with my A6 I use as a taxi, but mine was the other way round the door wouldn't shut, this was because the plastic coating they put on the latch had degraded and occasionally formed its own little ball and stops the latching hook from operating freely, after I got fed up with it one night I attacked the door latch mechanism with a pair of needle nosed pliers and derided most of the plastic that was hanging off and poked in a big portion of anti seize paste which seems to have done the trick, it seems to be a bit of a silly design when you in theory have to replace the latch because a two bob piece of heat shrink plastic has decided to play up.

Hi Gents, I just thought I would throw this in. Many years ago I bought a Mondeo Titanium x Sport as my third cab, this was sporting 19 inch wheels with 40 series tyres which even though branded tyres they wore like there was no tomorrow, factor in the accelerated puncture occurrence and it was a recipe for bankruptcy, I was only getting about 4k on the fronts and 8k on the backs without punctures. I finally bit the bullet and bought some 16 inch wheels and tyres from my local tyre dealer, the wheels were genuine Ford off of a B Max I found a site on the net that gave the formula for tyre size to bring it up to the same rolling radius as the 19 inch wheel, anyway I engaged the help of one of my mates to help change the wheels we were a subject of fascination of one of my neighbours a German teacher at the local senior school called Gerhardt, he came over and asked what we were doing and when I explained he replied excellent!, it transpires he was a powertrain engineer at Wolfsburg for fifteen years his speciality was wheel and tyre combinations. He went on to say he had tested every wheel and tyre combination known to man on just about every model VW produced, he explained that as long as you use OE wheels the offset is the same its only the rim size/width that changes, economy vehicles use smaller width tyres and rims as this helps with fuel consumption due to the lower rolling resistance of the tyres, we then go to larger heavier vehicles that use a wider profile tyre but may still use a 16-17 inch wheel. he ends up going into his house to get some scales so we could weigh the 19in rims and tyres against the 16in wheel and tyres, it was a marked difference between the two the 19in combination weighed 5kilos more than the 16in combination, he then said can you imagine how much extra energy is used to turn the extra weight and increased rolling resistance, you will now get extra MPG, he was right about another 8 miles per gallon and the added benefit was no more tram lining on uneven roads and better still no more aquaplaning in heavey rain as well as only occasional punctures. I had to ask the question as to why they make these massive wheel/tyre combinations, he replied its what people want they think bigger is better, its not and sited the Mercedes E Class estates and saloons which were produced right up to the late nineties with 15-16 inch wheels and 70 series tyres with no compromise to the handling, as long as you use a minimum of 101 xl tyres you want have a problem and the tyres are cheaper and wear wise probably double the milage even on mid range tyres

Hi I would consider the rain bit is probably coincidental, either way the only way to find out definitively is to get the car plugged in and get the fault codes read, my money as a pure guess would be on the gearbox needing a service, this is subject to a distant conversation I had with a mechanic I use who is very knowledgable and he suggested the DSG boxes are not suitable for a cab as due to the required service frequency times my annual milage would equate to more expense which is why I bought a manual the gearbox oil gets changed once a year and no filters etc are required.

Hi Gents, after a year almost of lock downs and a thin amount of work in the taxi trade I had finally reached the 80k mark and having read the service history for my car I was not to worried by the cam belt situation as the service history claimed that the belt kit was changed at 40k under warranty because of a squeaky idler pulley bearing, that said I did actually phone the dealers in Manchester to see if it tallied up with the print out of the worksheet I had, the service manager was very reticent to talk at first until he realised I was not trying to bag any freebies and just wanted information to form my own service schedule, he explained their definition of belt kit which was belt, tensioner, idler pulley and they wouldn't have changed the water pump as the recommended milage interval for that was 110k. I felt I might be able to force the changing of the cam belt and water pump to about 90k, then the sudden cold snap we have had forced the issue, only a two mile drive to base but a total absence of warm air, in fact it took a further fifteen minutes of idling to get any lukewarm air, all this equated to a massive increase in fuel consumption, I had second guessed that the thermostatic pump cowling had become jammed open which was proven correct when I had the belt and pump changed today, thank god it had not jammed shut as overheating is not a favourite past time for a CNHA engine. When I was down to pick my car up I met my neighbour who had his Q5 in the work shop, back in the summer I had noticed a rather rotund mobile mechanic hanging in the engine bay of his car but did not think anything of it, it transpires the guy had changed the cam belt at Audis recommended 110k but not changed the auxiliary drive belt as he said it looked ok, the belt had eventually shredded itself and fallen off, a breakdown engineer fitted a new one but by then it was to late as the debris from the old belt had gotten behind the cam belt shroud and made the cam timing jump one hundred and eighty degrees, the thing now was devoid of compression even after new belts fitted so they had the rocker cover off to find the bent valves, I don't think I ever want to see that far into my engine, I always change my ancillary drive belts every thirty thousand and when the cam belt is replaced regardless of what they look like, I honestly believe if I buy ten belts during the time I own my car it still won't come to the eighteen hundred quid the poor sod with the Q5 is looking at and thats if none of the valve seats is cracked. There are some very wise people on this forum who recommend 80k or four year belt changes which duly noted as well as the advice on using OE parts from companies like TPS who definitely don't have the same sense of humour as the dealers, so a word to the wise DONT forget the humble ancillary drive belt which lives in a very hostile part of the engine bay and for the sake of £20 for the part could end up costing thousands. Regards Steve.

Hi Thomas I had heard of this problem after I bought my A6 but I checked on the gov mot website and you get a link for outstanding recalls on your vehicle as per your registration, there were none plus the fact Audi have been contacting even third generation owners to let them know of this if their vehicle is affected. Its to do with the electric auxiliary pump getting clogged with debris or leaks in to the electrics and the thing can self combust but I really would not be worrying as it will have done it by now or you would have had the letter, ask a few Octavia owners circa 2013 those used to do pumps on a regular basis, the debris excuse is code for we bought the pumps from a cheap supplier. Steve

Hi Gareth, I knew about the ethanol as I live near Dunton and a very drunk engineer was explaining that they had been trialing an ethanol fuelled Focus, great mpg, nil emissions only problem was fuel leaks because the ethanol had started to rot the granny out of the pipework plastic and metal and then turned its attention to the fuel pump seals, after a few months they gave up because it had started degrading valve seats and pistons, I think localised hot spots in the swirl bowls on the pistons were mentioned. I can understand the concern with older vehicles as the internal castings were never intended to cope with the combustion power of ethanol, I once met a very old flight line mechanic who was in France at the beginning of the retreat to Dunkirk, he explained they were trying to get every available Spitfire that wasn't damaged back to the U.K. The only problem was lack of fuel, the standard hundred octane wasn't available so the French gave them this stuff called Essence B which as it turned out was full of ethanol, it worked to get them home but every pilot noted that when they throttled up the engine felt like it was trying to climb out of the airframe, the old guy explained that all the aircraft that used this fuel to get back had an immediate engine rebuild, ethanol can be lethal if used in the wrong dosing but I doubt the fuel manufacturers care much for older vehicles which I would consider to be made a criminal offence