Imagine ... Audi helping owners of older Audis with part searches

[Larry C Leung]

My friend's experience with his new Subie  is evidence that the car's
don't have to be old for Dealers to screw up. His car was inboard wearing
the front tires, so he brought his car in (it was a dealer demo car) to
be aligned. They told him that it "couldn't be aligned" and that the rear
shock was bent (thus claiming abuse) causing the problem. My friend, who
now drives like the family man that he is cried foul, "how could they
sell him a car that wasn't right in the first place!?!?" Finally, he took
his car to his trusted Audi wrench (mAC), whom not only aligned it, (it's
front camber was off, one side was positive, one negative (no wonder it
pulled to the side!) and nothing was wrong with the rear shock. In fact,
his wrench told him that the rear suspension was a full upper/lower link
type, so there is NO WAY a bent strut COULD affect alignment (it wasn't
bent anyway). He is busily trying to have the dealer pay for the
alignment.

BTW (mAC pt. 2), his '93 100CSQA is still running perfectly.....

LL - NY

On Mon, 19 Nov 2001 21:19:13 -0500 "Fred Munro" <munrof at sympatico.ca>
writes:
>Hi Taka;
>
>Our local Audi dealer tech drives a '86 5ktq. His wife drives my old
>'91
>200q. He knows these cars inside-out. Ironic, really - there's not
>that many
>of them around here to service.
>It's a mixed bag for service on these old cars, all right - they're
>not
>teaching this stuff at "Audi school" any more and as we all know,
>even
>though the cars are old, they are not simple mechanisms.
>
>
>Fred Munro
>'94 S4 (the only one in town)
>
>
>
>----- Original Message -----
>From: "TM" <t44tq at mindspring.com>
>To: <duane at zk3.dec.com>; "'Quattro List'" <quattro at audifans.com>
>Sent: Monday, November 19, 2001 5:02 PM
>Subject: RE: Imagine ... Audi helping owners of older Audis with part
>searches
>
>
>> Dealers working on old Audis are a double-edged sword, though-
>> They often lack the knowledge or expertise to really fix the
>> cars properly, considering the majority of the techs at my local
>> dealer are too young to have fixed a lot of I-5 Audis. They tend
>> to do the "replace the part according to a procedure list and see
>> if the problem goes away" kind of thing. That really pisses me
>> off- they can't diagnose the problem properly, so they throw a lot
>> of new parts at the problem. Not my way of doing things.
>>
>> They also try to sell you everything at full list and the local
>> dealer is $85 or $90/ hour, not even $75. This results in cars with
>> relatively minor problems (but maybe several of them) getting
>> repair estimates of $3000 and up, which causes a lot of cars to go
>> to the junkyard. My mechanic bought his car for $500 because the PO
>> got a $9000 estimate at the dealership to fix the car.
>>
>> The only instances where I see mechanics refusing to work on cars
>> because
>> they're too old is when they honestly lack the expertise or parts
>> suppliers
>> to fix them- I have seen this with Porsche 356s and old
>Mercedes-Benzes.
>> I sure as hell wouldn't have the faintest idea on how to fix a
>190SL.
>> Heck,
>> I am not even able to start one of those- you have to push and pull
>> levers
>> and switches just to start it and get the carb working properly.
>>
>> Taka
>>
>>
>