177 diesel smells of rubber & fans running ?

[phils4s]

Hi,
I've just noticed a couple of times recently my 13 plate A4 Avant Quattro ( 2.0 177ps diesel ) has smelt of rubber when I've pulled up to let someone out ( i.e. engine running )
Also sometimes the engine fans are running on after I turn off the ignition even though it has just been a short journey & engine was not even up to temperature ? Tonight I lifted the bonnet to see if I could smell rubber under there but nothing yet fans were running away & also I could hear 'trickling' water in the vicinity of the header tank. I'd only driven 5 / 6 miles & temp gauge was showing just over 50. Any ideas ?
I must admit I do feel the car takes too long for the temp gauge to show normal temperature, it does get up to an indicated 90 but seems to takes ages & a lot longer than any other diesel car I've owed.
Another thing I noticed, a few weeks back I dropped a fiends Daughter off at her wedding & as I had to wait in the car & it was snowing I just sat with the engine on tick-over & the heater on 20 degrees, it was showing 90 degrees on temp gauge when I dropped her off but after 15 mins of sitting there the gauge had dropped to 50 & didn't realty move until I'd driven about 5 miles up the road ?
Does this all sound normal or do you think I should take it into Audi ( warranty runs out in March )
Regards, Phil.

 

[Darren92]

DPF regen. What sort of journeys are you doing on a daily basis?

 

[phils4s]

Short, too short really for a diesel. My Wife uses it mainly, 5 miles to work & back twice a week & 5 miles to the gym & back 3 times a week !!
When I use it I do try & give it a good blast out & she usually gets a good run maybe once every 2 or 3 weeks. To be honest I didn't really want a diesel but I was put off the petrol engine having read the oil consumption horror stories plus this one came up & ticked all the other boxes.
Long term do you think we could have issues with the DPF, I run it mainly on Shell optimax diesel.
Phil.

 

[Darren92]

Doing those journeys daily, yes. You'll have issues in the future.

The fans running and burning smells are early warning signs you need to drive it hard, more often or your DPF will start and get blocked.

 

[desertstorm]

As above the fans running are sign that it is probably trying to do a regen. It really needs a long run every other week to allow it to do a full regen.
As for the engine temp thing diesels are a lot more efficient than petrols. They generate a lot less waste heat so take longer to warm up.
Older less efficient diesels weren't quite as bad. The way the temperature gauge works can also confuse matters, if you actually look at the sensor temps in VAG-COM you can see that the gauge will show 90 even though the engine may not be that hot.
Audi do this so that the gauge always sits on 90 even though it may be somewhere between 80 and 100 degrees.
Thats a normal running temperature.
When sitting in the car idling when it's freezing outside you are cooling the engine faster than it is producing heat, It uses very little fuel to idle.

 

[phils4s]

Cheers for the replies & info, looks like we'll need to start having a longer run more often. It's a shame the dealers don't ask you what you use the car for when they are trying to sell you one, although we didn't but this one new we did look at new ones first & there was no mention of the fact that a diesel engine was not really suitable for what we would be using it for.
Phil.
P.S. anyone want to swap a 2013 plate A4 Avant Quattro black edition diesel for a petrol one ?