life and times of a 2001 a3 1.8 t sport owner

[skratch1975]

First and formost big thank you to all the forum members this site as supported my ongoing resolution with my poorly car which i have only had 3-4 months

the story so far purchased the car having only down 42000 miles was on avs had 4 stamps in book all checked out legit HPI etc etc

within two weeks aircon pump blew up £623 fitted

MOT time rear driver axle bush worn plus new dump valve required and rocker breather pipe perished £260

purchased leather interior thinking it was from same year but 2000 model still happy with it though

replaced two vacumn hose for brake servo suppossed to be common according to audi £45 fitted

Window regulator replaced driver side £130

cambelt and waterpump fitted £280

Currently got eratic idle very random not always present feels like potential missfire when present any ideas?

two separate incidents brick thrown at car and kid come off bike scatched door dent in wing £140 to be resolved via chipsaway awsome service by the way used previously on old car!!!!

Most recent oil change onto fixed servicing courtesy of e b jones county rd liverpool £58 also advice on preventitive measures as concerns of oil sludge due to avs anyway advice given to me was oil change every 5k to clean out system by the way car seems lot better following oil change! strongly advised not to use engine flush due to vag cars not liking it!

I am now looking to replace front arb bushes as slight sqeek over speed bumps and generally feels bit loose at front any other bushes worth changing?

As you can imagine not the intro to audi life i had thought of love the car though even after all this lol by the way previous car 1.9 td pug 306 in 4 years never missed a beat sods law

any advice would be well recieved thank you

 

[AndyMac]

Sorry to hear that, unfortunately just another example of why low mileage cars can be bad news. They only ever get looked at every 2 years and lots of short journeys wear heavy on the mechanicals. Surprised to hear the aircon pump packed up as they are usually good for 120k miles or so. I take it from the price you didn't go to an A/C specialist as this would have been about half the price you paid using OEM parts (Audi don't make any of the parts on the aircon).
Regular oil changes on any turbo charged engine is always a good thing, and hardly expensive (easy DIY job), I still don't trust the longlife oil as I've seen the state it's in after 10k miles, fixed service intervals all the way!

 

[Clach]

on the flip side I bought a 206 with 11k on it for 6k and that cost me 6k in 2.5 years of ownership to keep it running!!! Both coils broke on me once.

Try as much as possible to stay with specialists and haggle the price ( o learned the hard way). If not, you would be cheaper to lease a car every three years as opposed to maintaining an 8 year old car...

 

[A3Monster]

I had erratic idling, intermitent on my 1.8T Sport. Turned out to be a split air bleed hose.

Just had my anti roll bar bearings done, timing belt and water pump and new dash unit. Mines done over 100,000 now.

 

[voorhees]

I echo the sentiments,its a car which is 6/7/8/9 years old whether it has 50k on it or not.

I had my front top mounts changed as I was getting a bit of noise.