My A3 1.6 FSI Build/ Ownership Log

As i have a bit of free time, I've decided that i'll document my A3 on here and the process of me trying to restore the car from its past abuse, to begin with it an last 07 build of the 1.6 fsi engine with the concert 2+ headunit (this was a happy accident when i saw the car as it was originally advertised as an o6 model year car) it was brought with 94,000 miles on the clock and this was the condition of the car.



when i first saw it i was put off as it the modification were questionable at best, but i was wanting a car and thought well a look and a test drive of it can't hurt, when i went to view the car mechanically it was sound, no cold start timing chain rattle, it pulled strong (for a 1.6) through all the gears, however the electrical and bodywork were not perfect, the Le Mans style rims were heavily curbed and later to my discover one was slightly bucked, the driver side window was slow to wind up and down, turn out to be a plastic clip in the window regulator was broken, so needs to be replaced at one point.


Date of purchase 13/03/18, mileage 94,582


21/03/18 when leaving six form i felt the steering go very heavy so i decided to pull into my local tyre shop literally on the same street as my six form to discover a tyre unbeaded it self

At this point I felt it was probably get a new set of tyres all round as going from the state the car was in before I got it, I can’t really trust the other 3 to hold, lucky I had the space saver in the boot and my local tyre had a set of tyre for me and told me to come back the next day to get them fitted (you got to love local shops)


March 28th, finally have a free day to clean the car in and out, after a couple of hours detailing the car the paintwork was in a much better condition than I was expecting, after a clay bar and autogylm polish there was minimal marks and scratches in the sliver paint




May 7th, another free day and luckily two items I’ve order came, a heat gun and my Audi emblem for the front grill. I decided to remove the license vinyl from the front bumper and fit the Audi emblem the best I could as this aftermarket RS3 style grill only had the license plate holder and not the badge holder, this is only temporary as I do have an s-line grill to go on the car at some point once I’m able to locate and order new bolts to mount he grill from the top as the ones holding the black one on are all rusted and most likely will need grinding off, but to say it was looking much more respectable with the badge on and the vinyl plate off (one more thing to note the windshield vinyl was removed after this photo was taken)

May 20th, it starting to become hot In England and now I only discover I have zero AC and when going to Halfords for a free air con test I have zero pressure and according to the Halfords rep I have a broken ac compressor. As it was late in the day I didn’t feel like question his methodology even though the Hvac system wasn’t throwing any codes when I scanned it before so I thought I leave it and deal with it another day….. This is still yet to happen and to prevent wear on the ac compressor I run the Hvac system on econ mode


10th July, my first mechanical fault p4020 code, my catalytic converter. As I wasn’t at home and didn’t have my scan tool with me I decided to call out the AA to first see why my EML light was on and it was due to an inefficient cat, me and the aa mechanic was both surprised to see this code, one considering the car is only an 07 and it hasn’t even done 100,000 miles. I was around 98,000 miles at this point so he suggested to me change the o2 sensor and clear the fault and see what happens. So I did a quick order on amazon and I had a new o2 sensor the next day, installed it and clear the fault, 200 miles went by and then hey it comes back, again another call out to AA and time to claim on my AA BRC, book my car in at my local VAG specialist (Lion garage) and within a day a new underfloor cat was ordered and installed, I had a suspicion though this wouldn’t be the last time I deal with the p4020 code.



30th July and after working overtime at work I could finally address my wheel situation, I really loved the style of the le mans style rims on the car but hated the black powered coat so after a solid week of checking gumtree and ebay, I found a set of le mans wheel in Birmingham and they were in well in my budget so after a day trip to Birmingham and boot rammed with shopping and wheels. I finally had a set of non-buckled wheels and if I say so myself they look a whole of a lot better in the sliver colour than the black.

The state of the old wheels:




And the state of the new wheels:


25th September, I managed to find a parrot mki9100 system minus the remote and mic for around £30 and I wanted to install this to replace my dying xcarlink unit, I was never impressed by this unit with it poor call quality and Bluetooth performance, I only used it for the aux and due to the increasing time spent driving I thought it was best to replace the unit so I did with the parrot system for calls, now time to retrofit an aux port through the concert 2+ headunit as I already coded it for the aux port. If anyone has a retrofit kit for this please message me and I would like to have it.

10th October, my birthday and service time for the a3. Now at 100,040 miles, normally I would do this myself. But due to AA BRC terms and conditions I have to have a garage do this, so another trip to lion garage to get a minor service done as a major was done at 90,000 miles, but the car had a little surprise for me… Yes the EML light is back on, whilst the car was in the garage the guys told me they are going to clean the o2 sensor connector and see if comes back again as they were shocked it was tripped again in such short time.

Which brings me to this week, again the light tripped only after 174 miles this time and as of Monday 22th October it at the garage, after 3 days of troubleshooting looks like AA will be paying for a new pre-cat on the car to finally rid it of the P4020 code.

Well the first time they didn't want to pay out but i managed to change their mind after a long conversation with a BRC manager and explaining to them i followed your term and conditions with evidence.

At the minute it been sat at the garage, luckily I have this and next week off work so it being off the road has been no problem, hopefully i get it back monday

31/10/18 after 1 and half weeks in the garage finally my car is getting some work on it, I will update later on when I collect the car from lion garage

And as expected the pre cat was changed and amazing AA even paid for a new o2 sensor to be installed, I hope this is the end of the p4020 issue

08/11/18 Car goes into for it's first mot under my ownership. To be honest i had a little doubt in me as i've not spent a lot of time under the car to check it's condition (need an driveway when i move house) and the car had zero history before my ownership. But amazing it passed with a single advisory, a nail in the nearside rear which has resulted in a slow puncture which will be fixed as soon as my local tyre shop has some free time. Good thing i both cats got replaced, it's well in spec for emissions

Now over the next coming months i'm planning on doing a couple of stuff, first when i can get some garage time.

1. The front rs3 style grill will be change to my original s-line grill, if anyone know where i can find the top bolt hardware for the grill please message me.
2. If they ever come new audi center caps as one is missing and maybe a rim respray to the black edition gunmetal grey.
3. Cruise control for long motorway journeys at some point after driving to Milton Keynes and back didn't serve my right foot any good
4. A new headunit with bluetooth 5.0 or a usb port to clean up the interior a bit to remove a aux cable coming from the driverside dash and the interference i can hear from time to time due to the xcarlink system slowing dying. or factory fitting a aux cable from the center console and running the aux cable on the driver side of the center console.

if anyone has any more suggestion feel free to leave them

I think it’s about time I do a little update, so far the “new year car plans” have yet to start, working on a drive in the current weather isn’t too appealing .

However it doesn’t mean I’ve neglected to care for the car. I.e checking oil and coolant level every couple of weeks and ensuring the rain channels are not blocked (the joys of having to park your car under a tree)

Work that’s been done since last update are:

6/12/18 (100,838 miles) three day before an apprenticeship interview my clutch decided to kill it self, due to short notice lion garage couldn’t get the job done so it was done at in “n” out autocentre.

I have zero complaints with them, to be honest they went above and beyond with their customer care ensuring that the clutch and very worn slave cylinder was replaced and change the oil in the gear box before my interview day.

Other than the clutch the car has been running 100%

downtothebone said:

Glad to see you going back to a SLine grille - never understood this obsession with the honeycomb ones which don’t fit in with lines of the fog grilles - unless those also have honeycomb mesh as well. Just a mish mash of styles ... imho.

Click to expand...

I totally agree, especially because my car is a sport, doesn't even have the chin spoiler on the front bumper. so it just looks out of place.
Also i prefer the oem + look, the stealth just give you less attention therefore less hassle from the police who spot the car and think boy racer.

Update 29/4/2019 (104,600 miles) : mechinally car has been sound since the last update, nothing has been needed. Body works wise, i would refer to this post i made about Hit n Run someone did to me

https://www.audi-sport.net/xf/threads/help-to-deal-with-damage-caused-by-a-c.386664/

21/4/2019: I went down to Northamton to finally start the "to do" list for the car. I picked up an Xtrons Android 7.1 (Px3 2gb) headunit that has been installed in my car and over the week, i've been impressed with the unit, not only with the sound quality improve but the speed. This is after i swapped the rom on the unit to Hal9k 7.1.2. This led to the fast performace i was expecting from the headunit and allowed the Zbox app (which allows the apple carplay to work on andorid headunit with the zbox module) to work without any audio delays and crashing.

Right, Time for a big overdue update almost a year since the last.

This update is going to shed a lot of negatives that has happened to the car, but the fact its still running and driving fine today shows i am still looking after it to the best of my ability within reason considering the market value of the car.

4/10/2019 - whilst at my local barbers getting my hair cut, someone in a Pickup or SUV decided to back into the boot and dent it majorly, setting off the alarm and me running mid hair cut to check what at happened, like the last incident there was no CCTV footage and again i had to eat the cost of the damage, some PDR companies did quote to improve the damage and try and fix it to the best of their abilities as they said it was impossible to prefect for about £150, at present this dent hasn't let any water into the boot area so for the time being i have left it, it was meant to be fixed December 2019 but this didn't happened as explained later.




22/10/19 - Major Service

Service time, again like the previous service Lion Garage Leicester did the Major service on the car, Below will be a copy of the service report (Note the rear wiper was fixed by a gentle push, i suspect the plastic gear some of the teeth have worn away.




15/11/2019 - Big downtime for the A3

This is where the car had a somewhat major incident which result in about 6 weeks of down time, below screenshot will explain what happened on the day of the incident - ( i feel like this needs to be made CLEAR NOW before i continue, below screenshot will highlight some errors on my end, which i fully take, for example if i had doubt why would i drive the car and trust the engineers opinion, or i should of known better in the first place, and i want to just want to say this. Yes i probably could of avoid this whole incident if i trust my gut instinct but understand this from my view. i was 19 at the time, moved into my own place, i'm a degree apprentice for a understaff WISP who overworks and more importantly over stresses their staff. At the time i didn't trust my own mindset hence why i got the AA out to get a second opinion and someone who will tell me straight if it safe or not. i did what i thought was best in the situation and trusted the experts assessment.)



below is the actual damage to the car:





06/12/2019 - The comeback

After a battle with the AA and their Partner garage over the damage to the car, The AA agreed to pay for the bodywork damage to the car and i agreed to over the suspension damage as that would of been broken anyway, the repair was done by Marcus at lord and son auto body who did a fantastic job of the repair who managed to turn the whole thing around within two weeks after AA authorised him to do the repair, the whole suspension assembly on the passenger side was replaced as not only the Shock and Spring gone, but the wishbone was beyond repair, below is the picture of the car post OP and a copy of the estimate.



07/12/20 - MOT time

Car goes for it's overdue MOT due to the downtime, Passes with only one advisory a noisy exhaust, i suspect it's due to the slight exhaust leak.



21/03/20

This is the latest update on the car and whilst in Sheffield one of my coils decided to finally give up the ghost, luckily this was pre lockdown and Euro car parts were still open so i new coil was quickly installed, However since then i now have an intermittent P0016 code, and it seems only to trigger at idle, will never trigger when above 1200rpm so i'm suspecting a cam sensor is on it's way out, the AA checked the car is in time, it starts and drive the same as it always have and it's not drinking any more fuel as it would either.

if anyone could give me advice on this one, i would prevaricate that. I do have a cam senor on order but it's currently delayed.