cliffcoggin

Condition is more important than mileage, and only you can decide whether the cars condition is worth the cost. It is fair to assume some money needs to be spent on the car to either make it roadworthy or to put in an acceptable cosmetic condition so you need to factor that into your budget.

Jay. In that case the starter and battery have nothing to do with the problem. Without far more detail one can only speculate about the cause. For the engine to fire it needs three things: [1] Compression. Are the valves or rings worn? A compression test would give you the answer. [2] Fuel. Has the fuel filter been changed recently? Is the pump delivering enough pressure? Are the injectors working properly? [3] Air. Has the air filter been changed recently?

Jay. Are you saying it is reluctant to turn over, or it turns over well but is reluctant to fire?

Best of luck Gavin. Let's hope Audi are prepared to be pinned down on the diagnosis.

Gareth's thoughts echo my own: glow plugs are only for starting.

I share Gareth's concern about throwing good money after bad, however if Audi will guarantee that their repair will stop the noise and eliminate whatever movement you can see, (which I admit I find hard to visualise,) then I would consider having it done. You need to weigh that cost against the likely cost of repairs to a different car. (I am a firm believer that secondhand cars will always need spent on them, no matter what the dealers offer by way of guarantees.)

I couldn't do the job in anything like that time, but I am no mechanic, however £150 per hour is an extraordinary rate. What will you do?

I solved a similar problem supplying power to a satnav last year. I prised off the right hand end panel of the dash to expose one of the fuse boards and used a piggy back fuse (I think that's what it is called,) mounted over one of the existing fuses. I don't recall which fuse I used or what the colour was, but the wiring diagram will reveal which of them are switched from the key or you can use a meter. I suppose the ideal would be to use the existing radio fuse.

That's a new one on me Dan. I'll bare it in mind for the future.

Dan. Do you really mean the rear wheel bearings? I am struggling to understand the relevance.

Could you borrow a syphon pump? That would empty the tank without blocking the jets.

I suspected from the start that the noise you describe was that of a CV joint, but your later messages suggested they had been tested. Like you, I do not believe the gearbox is the problem as the noise would then happen with the steering straight ahead as well as the turned.

Can't say I have ever noticed any odour from the screen wash. Perhaps your problem is why most proprietary screen wash fluids have a strong perfume.

Sadly I am not convinced Gavin. You said in your first post that you swapped the wheels around and it made no difference. You also said that vibration was detectable when the wheels were in the air. To my mind that rules out tyres as a factor. You have renewed or tested all the other likely candidates, so I am stumped.

I would agree with Gareth that if the mileage is very high, the deeper you look into the engine and gearbox, the more faults you will find, and the more expensive the job becomes. However I see no mention of mileage yet in Peter's comments so perhaps we are too pessimistic (or too cynical), and some new seals will keep the car going for many years to come.

Main dealer, local garage, auto electrician: you pays your money and you takes your choice. It depends on how competent they each are, and I really can't judge. If you car is being recalled to a main dealer for other reasons I suggest letting them test the electrics while there, then decide what to do. Is it possible the recall is because of electrical problems?

I'm no electrician but it sounds to me more like a bad earth.

I don't know, but it is possible, that the Audi mechanic can not pin point the exact location of the leak so he has quoted for the nearest three possible oil sources. Why not ask the dealer for details? I take my A3 to a main dealer and he will always get answers to my questions from the mechanic (I refuse to call them technicians,) who carried out the assessment or did the work.

I don't believe you can, though I'd be glad to be proved wrong. It was easy on my 23 year old Granada but not on a 10 year old A3.

That's a neat trick Kevin, though it sounds too much like hard work for an idle bugger like me. When it happened on my wife's car I took the lazy way out and squirted penetrating oil into the lock barrel and just left it for an hour or two. That freed the barrel enough to let me unlock with the key. Needless to say I then squirted some real oil into all the locks for long term protection.

Graham. No I don't have any sockets beside the handbrake. Martyn. As a matter of principle I won't use anything made by Apple, (or Microsoft come to that,) for reasons we don't need to go into. I can put music on a USB stick for absolutely nothing.

I never even realised I had an Ipod connection in the glove box. Not that I have an Ipod, (and to be brutally honest I don't really know what an Ipod is,) but I wonder if it can be adapted to a USB connection for playing music via the stereo.

I don't know it there is a Haynes manual for that model or not, but I doubt they are worth buying nowadays. It seems that with the multiplicity of different models and variants, and the supposed impossibility of repairing (rather than replacing) faulty parts, Haynes are unable to produce a repair guide that is of much use to the home mechanic. I bought one for my 2007 A3 that I have little use for as it is filled with phrases like "not serviceable" and "replace with new component". It's inevitable I suppose, given the increasing complexity of modern motor technology and its use of electronics, that less can be done by amateur mechanics like me, so I can't blame Haynes for the drawbacks of their guides.

In the absence of any other fault I guess it must the brakes, but strangely why only when turned to one side? All that occurs to me is excessive lock pushing the guard against the track rod or some other link, though it's a remote possibility.

Sashi. Your key is behaving normally. You do not have a fault.