Mr. Spock

I'm sure you've all heard that light ticking sound from your A4 while it's at idle. I assume it's valves, or whatever. After a very spirited drive up a mountain in summer I had an oil temp of around 240-245, and during the idle down my car was making a VERY LOUD ticking noise. The noise started out very loud and faded a decent amount after that. Upon restarting the car to continue down the hill, the noise was gone.

I checked the oil shortly after turning off the car and it was at the very top of the 'OK' range on the dipstick.

The going theory is that the oil thinned quite a bit during the drive due to high temps and the engine was somewhat oil starved. The question is: How bad is this? If this happens on the occasional very spirited drive, is it worthwhile to go to a 15-50 mobile one instead of the 10-30 I have now and risk having too thick of an oil at startup time?

And of course is there a possibility this is some "real" problem and not just oil thinning that could be considered normal?

Reggie3

How often do you change your oil? Try do get the dealer to fix it. If they can't, try a oil detergent additive to see if it helps.

Reggie

98.5 2.8QMS

Totalled SuperChargeA4

i was told it's the vapor recovery system working, a good thing.

Mr. Spock

This is a fresh batch of mobile one... only about 2500 miles on it. And why would it only happen when the engine oil is very hot?

Mr. Spock

And I do mean very loud. I honestly thought I might have shredded a valve or something.

Totalled SuperChargeA4

like a timer or fan kind of ticking with variable speed

Mr. Spock

That the volume increased about 25x when I got to the top of a mountain after driving really agressively all the way up. It sounded like someone was hammering away at the inside of my engine with a hammer instead of with a pin

Bryce

engine eat itself up. That ticking, knocking, banging sound was amazing!