Have the garage ripped me off? Poor idle fault -VAG test

[Foufdog]

Hi Peeps,

so my a3 1.8T had been going great until about 2 days ago when I decided to give it some beans and take the old girl for a little belt around.

Well when I was on my way home pulled up at some lights and when in neutral the idle was dropping very low and the engine nearly cutting out, then when I accelerated the revs were lagging/hesitating.

I should mention 1 month ago I had the engine light come on and when I had it diagnostic tested the fault was Lambda sensor. The guy reset it and said see how it goes (as the car was driving fine still).

So I had it in the garage today, they ran VCDS VAG/VAS emulator (diagnostic test i guess) and i was expecting to need a new Lambda sensor or 2 to be honest. But to my surprise they said they found nothing major apart from nothing was talking to the ECU as in it was in some weird mode, default mode!

Anyway, they told me everything has been reprogrammed and calibrated and charged me 90 pound. I did ask what had actually been done as I was worried all they did was plug it in and push a button!

The car seems to be running fine as before again and no problems so far, I will see how it goes in the morning and the rest of the week. Do you think they really done something that was worth the money????

Can you reset/ adjust the idle from the VAG software???


Any advice or info would be great. I will try take a pic of the diagnostic test and post it too for any of you who can understand this stuff!

 

[Foufdog]

 

[s3_trev]

I did ask what had actually been done as I was worried all they did was plug it in and push a button

.....and they said what?

 

[Foufdog]

Sorry tried everything and could not turn them the right way up! Sorry, damn I must be getting old and retarded!

 

[Foufdog]

well they said they had reprogrammed the ECU!

 

[B5NUT]

Well looking at the fault codes sheet you have they are just using VCDS, and that cannot re-program an ECU. If they have other software then that may be possible but where would they get the exact ECU flash firmware from, it's not like Audi have a download site you can access for these files. Also if nothing was talking to to the ECU then how did they get the fault codes off the ECU?

To me it just looks like they have cleared the fault codes handed the car back and charged £90 for the pleasure.

 

[Foufdog]

Hi B5NUT,

that's what I was worried about and I did argue that fact with them, but unfortunately am not clued up on the fault codes etc as you can tell.

By resetting the faults could that have sorted the idle fault???

As now the car is running good again!

 

[leegsi]

You can reset adaptations though so the ecu relearns Settings

 

[Foufdog]

Hey guys,

Just a quick update, I managed to speak with the person who worked on my car and he advised me the throttle body was cleaned and then alignment done via the software and other settings adjusted!

Car is still running fine, only difference I have noticed is I seem to be getting 23.3MPG (according to my dash display) around town, i'm sure it was higher before!

Well the next thing is, they did advise me to get the Thermostat replaced as the engine is not getting up to temp and I have noticed it stays around 70 degrees apart from when stationary when it hits 90.

Well I now have a list.

Oil and filter change - DIY
Air filter - DIY
Clean and spray calipers - DIY

Thermostat - garage job (for me )
Cambelt + waterpump - garage job (for me )


Wish I had a garage and I would attempt them all myself - one day