A4 Driveline Shudder Datapoint

[Bob Cotton <bcotton@synxis.com>]

Here is another datapoint for the A4 Driveline Shudder.

I've had the car almost a year now and have *never* experienced the
driveline shudder, until about 2 weeks ago while on vacation.

The symptom suddenly appeared, and the only things that were different
were:
	- I had put regular unleaded instead of premium in the car for
	  the *first* time.
	- I was at sea level (Home is Denver)
	- There was about 13K miles on the car.

I put regular unleaded in because I almost ran out of gas outside of
Palm Desert, and the only place for miles was charging $1.76 a gallon
for regular unleaded.

Almost immediately, upon hard acceleration (full throttle) from 3rd ->
4th the engine would resonate at about 3-4 time/sec. for 1-2
seconds. Could sometimes get it to happen from 2nd -> 3rd.

Later, while in death valley (at and below sea level) , and back on
premium gas I could not reproduce it, ever. Nor has it ever come back
since. 

Could this shudder be something in the anti-knock regulator that is
invoked with lower octane gas?

Do people who experinece this regularly run on regular or premium gas?


FYI,
- Bob


-- 
Bob Cotton               bob@synxis.com Phone: (303)595-2511 Fax: (303)534-4257
SynXis Corporation       Give me the strength to change the things I can, the
1610 Wynkoop, Suite 400  grace to accept the things I cannot, and a great big
Denver, CO  80202        bag of money.