Posted by David Wostarek on Tue, Apr 14, 2009 @ 09:22 AM
Audi service made easy
Or just do it.
I have been an Audi fan most of my life. I started working on them at Porsche/Audi of Austin in 1982 after working for Volkswagen. I immediately feel in love with Audi's forward thinking. Even in 1982 they were using more advanced technologies than their competition. This push for advances has carried through even today. The best part is that as an Audi owner you get a car that is equipped with advanced technologies that are at the front of engineering. There is a price to be paid for this though, unfortunately they are also more expensive to repair and maintain than many other cars on the road. I have personally owned several Audi automobiles over the years and found that even though you may not be able to prevent some of the failures you can certainly keep things under control by following a strict maintenance schedule and by fixing things when the break. On most cars putting off maintenance and repairs will cost you more than just taking care of it as you go, Audi repairs that are put off can snow ball more than most. I have also noticed that since we are in this to get you to keep your car for many years and the automobile manufactures are more concerned about getting you to by a new one every few years our idea of maintenance is different than theirs. They tend to stretch oil change intervals as long as possible to lower the cost of ownership. That is for the first few years anyway. We see many cars when with internal engine issues that could have been prevented by just changing the oil more frequently. What types of problems do we see? The simple things are leaks due to seals that have been damaged by the hardened sludge that has built up on the shafts they are sealing, sometimes damaging the actual shafts. The worst cases have been bearing damage due to oil starvation and oil consumption due to worn internal parts. In the long run your car will last longer with more frequent oil changes. Our experience has been that using synthetic oil and changing it every 5000 miles on a turbocharged engines and timing chain engines or 7500 miles on a normally aspirated timing belt engines will result in a very reliable engine; most of them will never have an internal failure. Other things that have been problems are stretching the timing belt intervals and not having service intervals for transmission fluid on cars with synthetic fluid (except the multitronic). Please call Joe Tracy or myself if you have any questions about service on your Audi.
David Wostarek
Northwest Imports