Maintenance, spares, and owners

[Tony Hoffman]

Bill,

Some very interesting oservations. First, I think in general DIY
maintenance is going away. As a professional, I work at a mostly VW
shop. We also get in Audis', and the Toyota/Honda/Nissan cars fairly
regularly. And, on a rare occasion a 3-series or the like.

Anyhow, the DIY is getting slimmer in all car makes, it seems,
compared to 10 or 20 years ago, and this is sad. It's sad for me as a
professional, despite it meaning more work for me. Why? Because I
can't explain what the cam chain tensioner does to someone who can't
check their oil, and when you give them the bill, they probably feel
like they are being taken advantage of. If a DIY'er takes it in for a
major job, they already know it would be a lot of work to replace,
that's why they brought it to a shop in the first place.

As to the durability of the engines, they are fairly robust. But no
engine can withstand light use a carbon/sludge issues. We are not only
seeing this in VAG products, but also anything with a very large
horsepower/weight ratio that tends to be daily driven (read sedans).
If you take something with 200hp, and use 25 of it at most in general
use, just how clean do you think it's going to stay? People don't
understand this, and think that by babying their car they are
preserving it. we've cleaned the bottom ends on Toyota and Honda V-6's
as well as the VAG 1.8T's and V-6's.

As for the used parts availibility, it seems the salvage yard business
is also a dying breed. This goes along with that dying DIY
maintenance. It is getting hard to find cars that sit long enough to
get parts off, with scrap metal constantly going up. It seems a car
will sit for a couple of weeks, then off to the crusher. That and a
lot of people live where you can't keep parts cars around. With HOA
rules (don't even get me started) that tend to limit what one can do,
the possibility of having a parts car around while stripped is getting
slimmer.

Anyhow, just my thoughts on things,
Tony Hoffman
Oklahoma City

On Feb 3, 2008 10:01 AM, Bill Shaw <b.shaw at comcast.net> wrote:
> I've had ample time in the past month or so to ponder the current state
> of contemporary Audi parts availability, maintenance requirements,  and
> owner demographics,  and I've come up with a few observations.  I'd be
> interested in hearing what others have to say on the subject who have
> more than my limited exposure to the marque.  I'm specifically talking
> about the the one I have,  the A6QA 30V,  and it's close relatives.  I
> can't help but draw comparisons to the Porsche world,  even though my
> experience there is mostly with the older models. Please don't take any
> of this as a slur against Audi or Audi owners,  I'm just looking for
> some insight and trying to provoke some discussion on the subject.
>
> First,  parts:
> I would expect with the vast numbers of these cars produced that there
> would be a huge pool of used parts to pick & choose from when needed,
> but that is not at all what I've found.  The pickings have been slim and
> the offerings of poor quality.  If I asked on Rennlist for pistons for
> my 928 I'd come up with 1/2 dozen offerings.  When I needed pistons for
> an early 4.5L Euro engine I even found a brand new set at a very
> reasonable price.  Not so here in the Audi world.  I did have one very
> generous offer (thank you Craig) but not the outflowing of support I've
> experienced on the p-car list. That leads me into owners & maintenance.
>
> I think (again just mho) there is not the same level of DIY here as in
> the p-car world.  At least not with the newer cars, there seems to be a
> lot more diy in the older Audis.  Note that even though this A6QA is
> almost 10 years old I'm still calling it 'newer'.   Is this due to the
> type of people that buy Audis vs p-cars?  Is it due to the overly
> complex maintenance retirements?  Maybe it's partly due to a
> self-feeding thing where fewer people are doing the heavy mechanical
> work so there's less technical support when needed, so fewer people dare
> to take on the maintenance?  It seems that a much higher percentage of
> the Audi population takes their cars to a mechanic to change a
> thermostat than actually does the work themselves,  which again feeds
> into the general lack of availability of used parts (talking trends
> here,  not just t-stats).  The spares & service seems for the most part
> to be staying in the dealer/professional network and little is trickling
> down to the diy world.  Or am I completely wrong here?
>
> One other observation & theory I'd like to present is the current state
> of my a6qa engine.  At 130k miles it is pretty much used up,  pistons
> beat, cylinders scored,  bearings shot.  I'm told that these engines are
> pretty much bullet proof,  which I would expect after seeing the stout
> manner that the main bearings are fixed in the block.  But there's
> mine,  dead at 130k.  My theory is that this car spent the vast majority
> of its life idling,  never really getting revved,   and that has lead to
> its coking & carboning,  which directly contributed to it's early
> demise.  It was owned by a family of 4,  the mama driving the babies
> around never pushed it,  the dad commuting 50 miles on the highway each
> way to work doing 65 mph not revving past 2k for an hour each way every
> day.  This is another one that until I got it was dealer maintained with
> synthetic oil.   Could this long term gentle use have killed the engine
> well before it's time?  Any other theories?
>
> I'm looking forward to your comments,
>
> Bill
> _______________________________________________
> quattro mailing list
> quattro at audifans.com
> http://www.audifans.com/mailman/listinfo/quattro
> ---
> Watch this space for ads :)
>