86 4000 CSQ advice

[Nathan Ray]

Rory,
Is this the white one that was listed in the marketplace a few days ago? 
Because if it is I would deffinately get I, from what I saw it looked like a 
great car for the price.  I'll try my best to answer your questions:
1. Windows/locks
Power locks are often slow because of leaks in the vacuum lines to the 
doors, not hard to fix if it really bothers you enough to fix it.  Power 
windows typically don't work because of bad switches, I believe that the 
switches can be made to work againg, but I have never tried this myself.  
New switches are expensive, and it is hard to find a working one from a 
junkyard.  If the windows are slow going up and down it is pretty easy to 
refurbish the regualtors by removing them, taking them apart, cleaning, and 
reassembling with lots of new grease.
2. Oil leak from valve cover:
This is a very common on quattros and is easy to fix, a new gasket runs 
about $20 and can be changed out with a 10mm socket wrench in under an hour. 
  The leak won't really ammount to much other than a dirty engine, and you 
shouldn't need to add oil between changes because of the leak.
3. Locking differentials
  The problem with the illumination is most likely just a broken wire into 
the plug on the switch panel in the center console.  Fixing this will 
require dismantling the center console, which is easy to damage while being 
taken apart(some hidden screws behind heater controls).  Typically if you 
drive a 4kq on dry pavement with both differentials locked the tires will 
scrubb across the asphalt when you try to turn, one of the rear wheels will 
definately definately slip while turning.  If you find that the 
differentials don't lock, the problem is most likely the vaccum lines.
4.Shifting/transmission
Even with 300k or more miles on it a quattro transmission should still be 
good as long as the oil was changed adequately.  I know that on my quattro 
the clutch pedal is fairly heavy.  Since I had bought my quattro it had 
always been very difficult to shift into 1st, 2nd, and reverse.  This spring 
it got really bad (had to turn off car to put into reverse) so I replaced 
the clutch slave and master cylinders which made it shift easier than I ever 
expected it to.  While doing the repair I didn't have the slave cylinder 
bled properly at first which made the clutch pedal very light.  Reolacing 
the slave cylinder is a very tough job, its held in by a tension pin on top 
of the gearbox.  I would reccomend bleeding the slave cylinder first to see 
what improvements can be made.  If that doesn't help, change the slave 
cylinder ($60-70 or so for the part), I can give a good description of how 
to do this if you need to.

Overall I would reccomend buying this quattro because all of its issues are 
common ones and are pretty strait foreward to fix.  Buy yourself a Bently 
manual for it, that will help a lot. Other things to look for are the color 
of the coolant(should be blue), integrity of CV boots, peek around at the 
wiring some for problems, check the vaccum lines under the hood, this is a 
common cause for problems, and whether or not the transmission is bolted on 
properly(hard to believe that it would be possible to do this but I drove 
400 miles last month to buy a quattro and found that the tranny was bolted 
on crooked because they shoved the tab for the heater pipe in between the 
block and the tranny).  The 4kq is a very sturdy car that can take a hard 
beating without problems and I've never met a person who has owned one and 
didn't love it.
nate

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