Stagn8

No need to check T and Cs, you are protected under The Consumer Rights Act 2015. Money back within 30 days of supplying faulty product, including second hand cars. Very odd that you have had such serious faults on such low mileage, I always feel you lose a bit of confidence at times like this.

Not much help, but my a5(45 tfsi auto) is in 5th gear at 30mph, the same as my previous Outlander. Third gear (and second) would seem far too low a gear and would certainly explain excessive fuel consumption. I assume it is manual?

JCB seem to think hydrogen powered ICE engines are the way to go. This definitely worth watching, would need to be scaled down for road cars but easily doable.

Definitely a runner of an idea, although I don’t have any electronics under my seat! It is cabriolet though so a sensible idea. I think my Rover 75 had exactly the same problem, also with a duck bill tube. The duck bill tube is soft rubber/plastic with one end bought together a bit like the end of a balloon. The Rover one exited in the wheel arch so the duck bill stopped water entering but of course if it fills up with gunge then it can’t clear and leads to the aforementioned flooding. A good but flawed design. Fingers crossed that is the problem, cheap fix if nothing has been damaged under the seat. Also a timely reminder to us all to keep the scuttle clear of debris as Autumn is well under way with lots of leaves. You now have a couple of easy checks to make, gunge in the scuttle and water under your seat!! Justpopping out to check mine 😂😂.

Finding decent and honest traders can be taxing. I am new to Audi (have been Japanese before and of course they don’t breakdown 😁😁) so did spend time sourcing an independent with plenty of a five star reviews before splashing the cash. Any decent trader won’t mind having his/her customers giving feedback via a review site, of course you have to find your way through the people with an axe to grind but that is the best I can suggest. Luckily I have a shop fairly close by which has been in business for many, many years, bit of a rough diamond but gives it to you straight ‘ you do realise this is Chinese donkey doo don’t you, I’ll repair it for you but don’t bring it back when it breaks again will you’ being typical, though of course far more colourful. Salt of the earth as they say, was also training up an apprentice to carry things on so a grand fella all round. As to electric, I’m hoping to bypass that and go straight to hydrogen when government and manufacturers finally get their heads looking in the right direction. Mind you I think there will be enough ICE cars around to last me until the DVLA wrest my driving license from my hands. I tow a largish caravan so electric makes no sense to me and even when it becomes a possibility it will beyond my income!!

Actually thinking about it, it could in fact be as simple as the brushes in the alternator, which could be affected by the cars movement if they have broken up. Didn’t think of it earlier because they shouldn’t normally cause a problem but as there is suspicion around the quality of the supplied alternator then brushes that have broken up becomes a likely culprit.

Hi Ian, I had read you as a frustrated Audi owner as I would be in your position and absolutely no offence taken at any of your posts 😀. I think you are being entirely reasonable in believing your alternator should last more than three years, my sons BM is 13 years old and at a quarter million miles and alternator is still working as it should. Mechanically there is not much happening in an alternator but the diodes which convert the electricity produced into DC voltage and control output are subject to failure. My guess would be that you have a failed diode pack on the alternator, which would also suggest a less than reputable make of alternator as diodes are ‘solid state’ (fully electrical with no moving parts) and shouldn’t fail if used within normal parameters, which you have already said applies to your driving style. Generally a good electrical specialist should be able to rebuild your alternator with a new diode and service pack at much less cost than an Audi replacement. Unfortunately they usually require you to present the alternator to them but they can and should test it before doing any work. So, your plan sounds a good one and perhaps pursue the line of having the battery and alternator tested independently.

I guess you may have gone as far as you can with your current equipment, as Gareth mentions it is more common now to use a vacuum system or more cheaply pumping fluid from each wheel cylinder back to the master cylinder pushing any air on its way. The kits for DIY are reasonably priced but a bit ‘low rent’.

No need to apologise at all Gareth as you are correct, just using the word as a catch all for any potential or actual battery drain, including of course all the monitoring systems. Ian, as Gareth suggests need to know alternator output, both when battery is fully charged and when under load, i.e, headlights on, heated screen on, heating on etc. With what you have described you could have a dodgy cell taking the battery down which can potentially take your alternator down as it is under maximum duress, or it could be your alternator only putting out a low or intermittent current which will take your battery out if it drops much below 12.1v.

Never had a car with DRL’s you can turn off, seems to defeat the object to me, so everything I have driven has had the dashboard lit.

Just confirming, if your aren’t using a one way kit or having the end of the bleed hose in fluid, then you need to lock off nipple with brake pedal on the floor, this ensures nothing untoward (air) gets sucked back in. Gareth gives good advice and the only other thing I can suggest is the master cylinder isn’t fully bleeding giving you the soft pedal or there is a regulator or similar in the brake lines holding a bit of air. Try tracking your brake lines from each wheel back to the master cylinder looking for anything that might interrupt flow.

👍

H’mm car should be monitoring battery voltage and keeping it close to 12.7v, the voltage you have measured 12.28v is close to flat ( 12v is considered fully discharged and if it reaches that it is pretty much goosed!). If that is with the engine running at would certainly suggest something wrong in the charging circuit. I think yours is a bit early for a smart alternator so not a lot in the charging system, so as you suggest, wiring or alternator, I always try and start with cheapest first, so look for wiring problems, tension on belts, then pop your battery down to Halfords to get them to do a check, that usually means putting a high (current) load across the terminals and seeing what happens to the voltage. I’m old school and used to hook up a couple of headlight bulbs and watch the voltage drop 😁. If the battery checks out OK then you can get a voltmeter which plugs into your cigarette lighter which allow you to visualise what is happening with the charging systems. Always difficult to remote fault find but gut feeling would be alternator but plenty of things to check before then.

As you are probably aware 12.7v is a fully charged battery, particularly as you have left it for an hour before checking and it has held that level while being subject to the patristic drain all modern cars have, so that would suggest your battery is fine. A 13.8v charge is about right for a holding or float charge, a bit higher for fast charge. Assuming this is a lead acid battery and not an AGM or gel as they have very different charging characteristics with initial charging taking place at around 14.4v and slowly dropping. If a reasonable quality and fairly new battery then a cell shorting is very unlikely, it would of course drop your voltage below 10v which would potentially cause havoc in the electrics but it would have to be a manufacturing fault or mechanical damage or possibly severe overcharging causing a hotspot ( dropping a wheel in a pot hole wouldn’t be sufficient for mechanical damage unless the battery wasn’t strapped in). Interesting observation of the light coming on and going off according to direction of travel and a loose joint would potentially account for it but I wouldn’t of thought it would be particularly consistent, far more random as suggested in your earlier post. Certainly worth looking for loose cables around the alternator, particularly earths and also checking auxiliary belt tension as slippage will cause temporary reduction in alternator output and the forces generated when cornering could be enough to allow a little slippage.

H’mmm interesting, every day is a school day. I guess the air fuel ratio has to be controlled in some fashion and this would be a simple way of doing it and of course that is how it is done with petrol engines. Don’t know why I thought it was different as both fuels now use direct injection for precision and both have a need to keep the mixture correct.

Good to know Steve.

Got me confused here Steve, why does a diesel need a throttle body? Surely throttle control is done directly via the ecu and injectors. The position sensor on the accelerator send its position to the ecu and the ecu increases or decreases fuel accordingly.

Absolutely, the DPF can only regenerate if the engine has sufficient temperature for the burn to take place, this normally means 20 - 30 mins of high speed motorway running. It’s short journeys that block the DPF and cause problems so avoid too many. When I had a diesel any short journeys were done in the wife’s Suzuki. The regen can start at any time and there is sometimes a clue such as a sudden increase in fuel consumption as it squirts neat diesel to burn of the residue, or a funny smell or higher tick over. Not had a VAG diesel so these are generalisations rather than specifics. If you stop the car mid gen, then invariably the fans will continuously run cooling everything down, happened twice on my Mitsubishi. If you get the blocked DPF light then give it a long motorway run in a lowish gear to keep the revs up which will hopefully clear it. Your dealer can start a regen for you but obviously will charge you a considerable amount of money for the pleasure! Best advice is to pile on the miles, which is what diesels do best.

Very odd, this end float business, my 1975 Triumph Stag is maximum 0.28mm, ideally around 0.02mm I.e. nothing. Can’t understand a modern engine would have any play at all, it would create havoc with all the reciprocating parts. I think someone has got there wires crossed here.

Exactly what I have been saying for a while, even down the Betamax comparison! Batteries in the long term don’t make sense. If all the money put into battery development had gone into hydrogen then we would be much further down the sustainability line. You can run your boiler on it so no need for heat pumps, you can even run an ICE car with a bit of modification (much like lpg) and of course for HGV and buses the only sensible solution . Anyway I will get off my soap box and back to driving my petrol Audi 😀.

Often a dpf will block up if you do lots of short runs, it needs a long high speed run to get hot enough for a successful regeneration. If that is the case then as suggested a good twenty minutes of spirited motorway ( no need to break any speed limits 😏) driving may well get it hot enough to regenerate and clear warning. If the cooling fans are still running when you turn the engine off it can indicate an interrupted regen, I’m new to Audi’s and mine is petrol so someone may be along soon to correct me! I had a Mitsubishi before and the main dealer offered a regen at every service at a cost of about £180 always refused and never had a warning but it very rarely did short journeys but quite often 60 mile motorway runs and also towed a caravan a fair few 100s of miles so often got hot enough. Still got interrupted regen though, so the system isn’t very intelligent.

Probably will do the same as I don’t know which supplier AUDI actually use.

Any recommendations on this part, I see everyone and their Auntie Doris are advertising replacements. Seems the genuine AUDI one is £80 + but is the B version whereas most of the others are A versions. Is it worthwhile going for the B version. Haven’t had the message but thinking of getting ahead of the game with a bit of Preventative Maintenance.

Doing my best to correct that perception, there were two of us in a row indicating the other day 😀😇. Kind of looking out for it since I joined the Audi massive but don’t think we are worse than any other make. Much better in fact than the other German marques I would wager! If you are of a certain age you will remember all Volvo drivers wore hats in the car and Volvo estate drivers were all antique dealers😁

Thanks Dave, I’m up to four days now back and forward with the manual 😃 but think I have got most things sorted, little green foot on a pedal was a good one along with disconnecting gearbox and coasting so ticking over while doing 70!! But, getting the hang of it all now 🤔, I think!