sohail

I had my rpm needle oscillating or at least going down once to few 100 rpm, when stopped in neutral (96 A4 Qtr Manual). In addition the fuel consumption, and pickup is not as great as it used to be. In hot weather, it sometimes kills the engine. I went to the dealer (Stevens Creek Audi), and they charged me for error code reading and Injector cleaning (both not covered by the extended 7 year warranty that they sold me "CNA-Prefered care") to fix this problem. The problem still exists. Now I searched in your forums, and find that these are very good symptoms of bad Idle air control valve (idle stabilizer valve). Shouldn't the dealer have known about this problem with A4? You would think, they would not try to rip you off, when you are paying premimum price ($59 for oil change).

pissed off owner of
96 A4QM

Lazlo

I had one go on my previous A4. Same symptoms. Fluctuating idle, occasional stalls. (However, the idle control valve wouldn't impact the performance of the car at all.) In my case, the check engine light came on, i brought it to the dealer, they read the fault code which explicitely stated bad idle valve. If your check engine light goes on again, have them give you a printout of the fault code. Another option, which people have had varying success with, is to clean out the valve itself. Apparently there is not much to it. But if the car is under warranty i would definitely push the dealer for a new one. Good Luck.

99.5 1.8Tqms
96 qm (former car)

PS: Nobody should pay $59 for an oil change.

Bob Petruska

Obviously, your dealer's techs are subpar.....they could have called the Audi tech hot line and received that info! Hell, they could have searched the A4.org archives!!!

Find another dealer, best of all search the archives yourself before you go to the dealer or ask us....we'll answer!

You can remove the valve yourself, but it is in a very tight location and takes a lot to remove it. Once removed a shot of Gumout or 2+2 cleaner and then a shot of WD40 usually solves the problem. Oil filter costs less than $15 at dealer, 5 qts of any oil (non-synth) for $5. Find an independent garage to change your oil for $10 labor = $30 total cost or change it yourself for $20.