Re: The price of owning a quattro

[steveb@falcon.kla-tencor.com (Steven Buchholz)]

 #  While going through the huge hassel of replacing my air filter I discovered
 # what may well be my missing vacuum leak. The flex hose going to the cold side
 # of the turbo has a nice rip in it. I most likely made it worse on the
 # learning curve for the air filter.
 #  The price of this rip? $189 U.S. Thank goodness for Marty at Carlsen. His
 # price is a slightly easy price of $141. The bright side is my car should run
 # a lot better.
 
... sorry to hear about your learning experience Anton ... I don't know 
if my method works for your car as I have Cibie euro lights, but I can 
do an air filter in about 30 minutes pretty painlessly.  The biggest pain 
is getting that one clip in the back up against the body to snap!  This 
technique is also useful for replacing the OXS.  

That hose is a very common failure ... AAMOF Nick Franks just fixed the 
same thing on his urQ.  I have installed a heat shield over mine, as the 
hose gets brittle from being exposed to the heat from the turbo.  The 
hose is very similar to the stuff that I bought from Graydon Stuckey to 
replace the IC => TB hose on the 5k ... it ain't cheap either, but it 
might be cheaper than buying one from Audi.  Don't get rid of your old 
hose!  I keep one that I have duct taped in the trunk just in case ... 
the hose does not see boost pressure so that should work just fine.  

Steve Buchholz
San Jose, CA (USA)

BTW, Has your AOL mail been down much lately?  My home account has had 
problems accessing mail for hours at a time.  It's great to check mail 
in the morning and find that you have made 5 useless phone calls (one 
for each screen name) thanks to your nightly flash session!