Goodbye Vauxhall (sort of), well hello Audi S3

[Harvey]

The other week as part of the biannual AC check on the S3 I popped to see the chaps at StayKool in Derby as I was hearing a whooshing noise when I started the car which I knew is the expansion valve and usually means low AC gas. The system had less than half what it should and they extracted 190g and found a leaky condenser at the connections.

I left rather sad knowing what a mission I had ahead of me and after sourcing a replacement brand new Febi condenser part no.197654 I dived in having never had to remove the S3 front bumper previously.

It was the lower condenser connection that was leaking which became obvious once it was undone.

New AC seals were fitted which I had in stock and you can see the leak wasn’t caused by the seals but corrosion within the condenser fitting itself which StayKool had advised would be the case.

Not wanting to drop the whole rad pack I opted for complete front-end strip as it’s the only way to replace the condenser without dropping coolant as I was in this deep a few more bolts didn’t hurt.

I finished the rebuild and manged to grab a late Sunday booking back at StayKool who checked and confirmed there were no leaks holding vacuum and filled the S3 to the full 460g. What a job I wasn’t planning on doing but it’s just a big Lego kit so not exactly rocket science.

 

[Harvey]

The VXR8 had a good 2025 with no major issues and plenty of shows/meets attended but I did have a few jobs lined up for when it entered Winter hibernation. Ever since I bought the car I noticed an oil weep/misting from the lower dipstick tube where it’s a push fit into the sump with o-ring seal and bolted fixing to the head at the top. I mitigated this in 2024 with a microfibre sweatband to stop the oil blowing under the sump.

Earlier this year I had a eureka moment and realised due to having tubular performance headers installed the dipstick tube was tight against cylinder no.8 exhaust in two places where it feeds round from the top to the bottom and with thermal expansion it was lifting the tube out the lower fitting enough to cause small oil weep. After a head scratching session I used a temporary spacer on the dipstick tube top fixing that allowed clearance by a mm or so to the exhaust. A few months later I checked and this year’s sweatband was dry (see previous pic) so issue resolved.

I set about a permanent fix so made a 7.5mm alloy spacer to replace my temporary test stainless nut. The spacer was bonded onto the dipstick fitting using sump sealer and painted satin black for that authentic OE look while also fitting a slightly longer bolt. I’m now hoping that’s the end of the annoying oil weep saga which was blowing under the sump.

 

[northpole]

sometimes on has to use their brain to sortout problems... well done it looks oem and none would be the wiser... maybe something to let VXR owners community know, as it seems to me that you won't be the only one that experienced this exact problem... As I know most vauxhall/holden owners just accept oil weeping from things like that, it's the american way lol something that wasn't a problem when Vauxhall/Holden were 100% German owned.