Stevey Y

Hi sorry for the late reply, [cab driver], yes the EGR cleaner cleans both as it has a high volume of Hydrocarbon in it which makes the soot particles smaller and burn a lot easier, I have used various forms of this chemical since owning my Audi and I never had to change the EGR valve. Steve.

Hi if you add a good quality egr cleaner to the fuel that may well keep the problem at bay

Hi I think you are over thinking this, the first thing I would check is the point of impact to make sure that there are no bits of squashed wiring, the code you have is for the main part of the EGR Valve which is at the back of the engine, the part you referred to at the front is the throttle valve not EGR and to change the rear part is about 4hrs labour and £150 for the part. Steve.

Hi definitely not they will be either at the bottom of the unit or the back, the only bulb that has an inbuilt ballast is the D5s fitted to later Audis/Alfa Romeo etc as an energy saving measure this also excluded the need for bumper mounted headlight washers, have a look on YouTube there are plenty of tutorials on how to change both ballast and bulbs on your model. Steve.

Hi yes unlike the old days when you had a valve at the inlet side of the matrix its all about continuity of water flow to optimise engine heat control, get it up to temp as quick as possible and within strict demarcation maintain that temp to reduce emissions, Diesel engines run better when red hot but the problem is they produce more Nox 1 so to reduce this they introduced bigger radiators and fan packs as a trade off for lower emissions against total performance. Steve.

Hi am pretty sure it has constant flow as its part of the bypass system the hot or cold bit is worked by the air control flaps inside the air intake thus commanding the cold air during summer and warm air during winter. Steve.

Hi no they dont go intermittent, if the bulb goes pink its the bulb, any sort of flashing or going on and off is the ballast unit which is separate from the bulb on D3s bulbs, my daughters lights went this summer so I replaced both bulbs and ballast units which is best practice, the oem ballasts are available on eBay for not much money. Steve.

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.

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.

Hi some zoon of an engineer found out that a bag of silicate in the cooling system helped keep the antifreeze from deteriorating, they used to put the bags in the heater matrix but the problem is the plastic bags deteriorate and burst releasing the silicate granules in to the water which blocks the heater matrix, plan B later was to put a large bag in the expansion tank, the end result was the same the granules block the matrix but on my car you had to buy a new expansion tank and possibly a new matrix, the only reason I got away with mine was removing the bag from the expansion tank and flushing the matrix both ways with a jet wash then flush the block with the jet wash, it was just that my mechanic mentioned that some he had worked on had the bags in the matrix so they had to fit a new one. Steve.

Hi I think from memory on most models around that year instead of fitting the Silica bags to the expansion tank they put them in the heater matrix as you have minimal flow it could well be that the bags have collapsed, the heater system bypasses through the heater core so the car gets warmer quicker, you wont overheat because of the primary bypass at the thermostat. Steve.

Hi the previous owner details are no longer printed on the V5 just the current one, the V5 is not proof of ownership, most garages HPI check the vehicle before sale and there are multiple sites that for a small fee will check everything for you %100 guaranteed, the reason that PCP is cheaper is because you will never own the vehicle unless you pay the over inflated final payment, if you hand the car back you most definitely will have to find an extra payment for the slightest paint damage or any over milage other than what was in the agreed milage per annum, they state you can hand the car back at anytime but if you do they really dont like it, with finance at least you own the vehicle title after the last payment and unless you have a bad credit rating you can get very favourable terms from your bank. Steve.

Hi Gareth it appears the usual problem has reared its ugly head yet again. Steve.

Hi OEM Varta or JCB but really Yuasa or Bosch are just as good I am surprised that VCDS did not show the existing code, just a thought it might be worth cloning a BEM code from a picture of another Varta unit online, as it has no way of knowing that unit is fitted to another vehicle. Steve.

Hi you could find a repairer but thats not going to be cheap, had the same problem on my A6 and ended up paying £600 for a refurbed unit, they are reasonably easy to repair but you just can't get the parts from Hella, best policy try to source an aftermarket unit on line. Steve.

Hi Steve I forgot about the spontaneous combustion factor, prime example was the van load of electric scooters that went up this year in London, it only took four hours to put the fire out and caused chaos. Steve.

Hi I am not sure which diagnostic platform you use but I use VCDS for the earlier cars and OBD Eleven for the later cars both these show the original BEM code which allows you to change the last two digits which allows acceptance by the ECU, the OBD has the simple system to recode and even if your battery is not listed gives the UNK unknown option, you also have to enter the cranking amps etc so the ECU has the whole story, then its happy, the Q5 I did the battery was only six weeks old but the overcharge had killed it. The electronics on this brand are to say the least complex and rely on strict adherence to repair strategy to perform properly, if you can lift the right code it makes life easier. Steve.

Hi Gents just thought I would throw this out there, we seem to get more people joining who now own fully electric cars, without being offensive in any way I can't see any benefit to them if they have a problem, I might be wrong but is there anyone on this site that fully understands their complexities given that Audi franchises that have all the latest tech have problems fixing the later conventional cars, its a worrying future. Steve.

Hi if you are selling the car how would you feel as a new owner when the belt goes bang a couple of months later, which it will, as Gareth pointed out this site is littered with stories of no milage cars that have thrown the belt at the five year marker, sold as seen with a recent cam belt change sounds far more alluring than just sold as seen, it might actually get you more money on the sale. Steve.

Hi if I were you I would go back to the beginning, you mentioned that they fitted a new battery, did they recode the new unit to the car as especially on Q7/Q5 this will throw up all these type of communication codes, I worked on a Q5 recently that had similar problems and it turned out that the battery was going sideways, not only was it a cr@p brand the mobile pillock that fitted it told the owner they dont need coding as they sort themselves out, WRONG!,I fitted a Bosch battery and that was over two months ago and coding it successfully made all the faults go away, what leads me to this is the fault codes you published which state intermittent which I would read as possible low voltage faults, if the battery was not coded it charges at the same rate as it did with the failing battery and effectively cooks it because no one has told the ECU it has another battery, the other thing to try is clean all the connector plugs on the ECU as they are prone to moisture ingress which they are not to keen on, I could be very wrong as Q7s are notorious for ECU failure. Steve.

Hi dont worry about the milage, I had to buy two aftermarket driveshafts which started clicking after six months or 10k eventually bough two driveshafts for £50 each from an online breakers re greased them and never had anymore trouble bearing in mind the two breaker units were from an A5 that was six years older than my car but the boots were a completely different material, more like rubber, I then researched other Audi owners on our cab fleet eight of them were battling with the same problem . Steve.

Hi it could be the outer CV joints going a bit dry, might be wort doing a quick visual on the outer boots as more often than not they split, if not remove the boot from the joint [Big end] and repack with grease, had terrible problems with my A6 outer boots even buying new OE boots at £60 a pop did not cure this, the boots are made of some sort of marshmallow plastic but the killer was the clear grease they used from about 2015 it just dries out unlike Molybednum Disulphide grease which lasts for years. Steve.

Hi from personal experience I would not go for any Audi with that kind of milage, Diesel/Petrol as you will be entering the land of excessive expense, I would really take as Gospel Steve Qs advice about the VW cars as I have recently discovered the Passat as my new cab and have covered 20k since this February with no problems other than servicing and tyres and new brakes all of which cost a third of what the Audi cost me, power wise its 150bhp and gets down the road quickly, economy is probably about 30% better than the Audi and the 1.9 Steve mentioned has just gone on to the list of engines that will do in excess of 400,000 miles if maintained correctly, I would also give you a little info from a friend who is a trader that most cars now are bought by Cinch or We Buy Any Car, they keep all the good ones to re sell and dump anything with real problems in to the auctions. Steve.

Hi the only thing I would personally change is the glow plugs, as for the loom just get it checked in other words if it isn't broken don't fix it, the glow plugs are probably well past their sell by date and well worth changing as they contribute a lot to engine function especially on start up on colder days as it stops unburnt fuel from killing the catalyst. Steve.

Hi Paul that looks about right assuming yours is the red type it says gearbox fluid but all older systems ran on that it was commonly known as ATF which served both units the later upgraded fluid is green why I dont know, just ask the seller the question to nail it closed, I have used their oil in my Audi and their products for the money are excellent. Steve.