[A4] No warm-up...?

[Joel Landsverk]

Thanks Dan & QC!  That's exactly what I was referring to.  If you check out this month's Car and Driver, Csaba Csere's column talks about this issue.  Quincy's right when he calls out owners that are not following the recommended service intervals of 5k mile oil changes.  I asked my mechanic just yesterday about this and he said VAG has changed the spec on the oil they recommend and require now for them to stand behind the extended warranty.

Apparently, all owners of longitudinally mounted 1.8t's got this letter from Audi explaining the extended warranty.  Apparently, the sludging issue only affects the A4's and Passats.  I never got one.

Joel
'98 A4 1.8tqm Avant
'96 A6 2.8q Avant
ex '91 90q 20v
'00 VFR - too cold  :-(

>>> Quincy Chiang <b5quattro at shaw.ca> 11/9/2004 9:10:55 PM >>>
This warranty extention covers all 1.8t's tracing back to '98 I believe.  In addition, Audi/VW must now use synthetic oil on all '05 and up 1.8t cars.

We're on this list or AW because we are enthusiasts.  We may drive our cars hard but we're also more likely to take better care of our cars like some have said (ie. proper warmup before boost, cooldown the turbo before shutdown, synthetic oil change...).  However we represent a relative small % of all Audi owners out there, the majority of them don't know or don't care about proper maintenance, leaving the dealers to take care of their cars.  Coupled that with cheap practices of not using synthetic oil and extended oil change interval (16,000 km/10,000 miles! What was Audi thinking?!), you've got yourself a massive oil sludge problems.  Of course I don't expect too many people here or on AW to experience it as we've been taking good care of our cars from the get go.

Quincy

----- Original Message -----
From: Dan DiBiase <d_dibiase at yahoo.com>
Date: Tuesday, November 9, 2004 7:31 pm
Subject: Re: [A4] No warm-up...?

> --- Brizax at aol.com wrote:
> 
> >  
> > maybe im wrong but, i have not heard of anyone have'n abnormal 
> sludge> probs with the audi engines, the main thing imo is letting 
> the motor   >
> warm up before rev'n over 4k or so...
> 
> The sludge issue is real, all right - many owners of newer 1.8T-
> enginedAudis (and VW's too, I believe) received a limited engine 
> warrantyextension because of this issue. But it's not limited to 
> Audi, I believe
> Toyota had a similar issue with one of their V6 engines.
> 
> Dan D
> '04 A4 1.8T q MT-6
> Central NJ USA
> 
>