she starts, she won't run - 1990 200QA (very long)

[Doyt W. Echelberger]

You have the faith of a true fanatic.....mandatory requirement for Audi 
type 44 owners.

Doyt Echelberger
87 5ktq at 345k miles. Not perfect yet

 >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
At 10:43 AM 1/22/2007, David Michael wrote:
>Folks, thanks for all your suggestions and offers of help. It turns out that
>the story is worse then I thought. When I wrote my original message, I had
>not actually picked up the car from the mechanic. I did so over the weekend,
>and am appalled at what has happened to it.  So, of the sordid details
>(long):
>
>
>
>In November, the car was making a screeching noise when starting. I brought
>it to the mechanic (someone who I had never used before, but about whom I
>had heard good things). He diagnosed the problem as a throwout bearing, and
>we decided to replace the clutch and bearing as well.
>
>
>
>The mechanic also mentioned that "the car should run better than it does. It
>build boost way too slowly". They did not have time to address it, so I
>drove the car off, the noise was gone and the clutch effort much reduced.
>BUT ­ the car was hesitating a bit when cold and generally not running at
>100%.  As I had some time,  it was warm, and it had not been done in 30k
>miles, I replaced the plugs. I also did the wires for good measure. The
>plugs were all perfect ­ slightly ash covered, but otherwise fine.  The next
>morning it finally got cold, and I discovered that the car was quite hard to
>start.
>
>
>
>Thinking that something needed tweaking, I brought the car back to the
>mechanic to get the cold start problem fixed and have the slow boost problem
>addressed. They worked on the car for two weeks, and found that supposedly
>everything was all OK (control pressures, exhaust back pressure, sensor
>resistances etc) with the following two exceptions: I remembered that I had
>not replaced the air filter in a long while, and the mechanic found that the
>duty cycle signal from mac-14 to the mixture freq valve was not going rich.
>I fortunately had a 2nd mac-014, and upon installing that, car was
>pronounced fixed.
>
>
>
>We picked it up. The next day my wife announced that "it smells like burning
>brakes, and is really hard to start". I tried to start it on a 20 degree
>day, and could not. So I had it towed back.
>
>
>
>They spend another 10 hours on the car (mostly their expense), and decided
>that it was the metering head. By this time had lost faith and asked them
>put it all back together.
>
>
>
>I picked that car up over the weekend (after working 5 minutes to get it
>started) and  now it won't go more than 40 miles/hr when cold (even under
>full boost), it smells badly of something burning (clutch smells), it
>smokes, and is leaking both coolant and oil all over my driveway.
>
>
>
>So they took what was one of the best (in my opinion) remaining 200 QAs in New
>England (everything worked ­ A/C, windows, event the parking brake) and
>turned it into a $50.00 piece of junk. I am now convinced that it is
>something simple. The car has gone from rock solid to appalling way to fast
>fro it to be something subtle. So I am going to tackle it one way or
>another.
>
>
>
>Thanks for listening
.
>
>
>Dave
>1990 200 QA - 220K, sadly treated
>1998 M3/4 98K
>02 MCS 35K
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