Just had an annual/10,000 mile service by those very nice people at Falmouth Garage in Penryn, who are a Skoda dealer. Listened very tolerantly to my tale of woe beforehand and have also replaced air filter, topped up all the brake power steering coolant fluids, used a flushing agent on the oil change, checked the temp gauge is working properly, used their version of the VAGCOM to find no fault codes (older Audis are more accessible with other VAG group systems apparently, newer ones less so), found some play in the front offside suspension bushes (after only 186k miles? i was robbed)(joke), told me theres 10k left in the discs and pads, played hunt the oil leak for some time after jet washing the engine, all for the princely sum of £177. This is about £60 cheaper than Truro Audi before you start adding all the bits. I added up my oil usage since the last service - i'd put in 8.75litres in. Just to be ****** awkward the car hadn't put the oil level light on in the last 1100 miles, so asked them to dip it before they dropped the oil. There was still 0.25-0.5 litre above the minimum mark. So after averaging around 850miles a litre it suddenly dropped to about 2000miles a litre. The only oil leak they could find was a drip off the tandem pump that is bolted on at the rear of the nearside cam cover, no way that is losing a litre every 850 miles. So its burning it. Recently its been more difficult to see the smoke as i have been travelling in daylight so i'm not sure how bad it is. However the performance has seemed a bit better over the last 1000miles or so, although the fuel economy has dropped off to about 30mpg.
So today i gave it a quick blip up to Scotland to see what difference the service has made (have to sweep up the leaves, fix the roof, point the garden wall, cut up fallen tree (PLEASE buy my house) at the still unsold house). Starting is better, fires up quicker without the need to crank it as before. I thought about cruising at 79mph to save diesel but that lasted about 20 miles. It's definitely performing better, pulls more than it was and is hinting at more power at the top end, although it is nowhere near destroying 90-120 as it used to. Bit crowded on the motorway today but after diverting to work and off to my nieces birthday party we settled down to 100 on the cruise control no problem and 135 on the sat nav once we got past the north west. Filled up at Carlisle after 450 miles or so, DIS gave 28.2, calc gives 30.0mpg, DIS 63mph. At last a better day.
I was having a good morning, my leather trouser zip had broken and my washed waterproofs hadn't dried out so I was wearing my stinky old Frank Thomas Aquasuit (red and gray). One very expensive hot sweaty 30mins jumping in and out of 4 different pairs in Hein Gericke later I now have some new trews. Lets see if they last 20 years like the Frank Thomas ones just did.
