RE: Really awful TT experience

["Buchholz, Steven" <Steven.Buchholz@kla-tencor.com>]

>  I am assuming they are just rebuilding the same tranny over 
> and over again, 
> and doing it wrong.  After all, how many times has anyone 
> rebuilt a TT tranny 
> anyways?
> A new 89 200 auto tranny is about 1500 bones, I can't even 
> imagine how much a 
> new tranny for a TT could cost.  So it could be badly rebuilt.

... bad assumption ... IME they swap a different unit in.  Given the fact
that the supply of rebuilt TT trannies is likely to be small right now I
would imagine that these have been brand new transmissions.  Also, be
careful when you compare automatic to manual trannies ... manual
transmissions tend to be more sensitive to abuse (not to say this is what's
going on here by any means).  When I bought my ur-q used back in '86 it had
a bearing noise coming from under the shifter when driving on the freeway.
Carlsen [actually Audi] paid the bill to have a brand new tranny installed
... and even then the tab was well over $6K for the tranny.  When they gave
me the car back afterwards they told me that it didn't resolve the bearing
whine, but they weren't going to pay for any more work.  I said fine ... and
then learned how to replace the bad carrier bearing in the propshaft for $20
or so ...

Perhaps the most unfortunate thing I see is that a car is never quite the
same after it has been disassembled and reassembled in such a major way, and
so many times.  This is what I would attribute some of the other smaller
problems to be a result of ... and where you would expect a car to be pretty
much trouble free for the first few years of its life, I would expect this
car to be more problemmatic becasue of all of the major work.  

I think that if I were in that situation I'd probably push for paying some
amount for the miles I'd put on it and try for a new car.  Of course if it
were me that car would be a quattro roadster ... :-)

Steve Buchholz
San Jose, CA (USA)