Rick

Here is an update about my car. As some of you may remember, my A6 2.7T began experiencing difficult cold starts that would occur after sitting overnight. It stumbled, stalled and ran rough. It has now been in and out of the local Audi dealer’s service department for about two months or more. I received word yesterday and today regarding their (the dealers) final response: they drained the fuel tank and put in 87 octane (regular) gasoline!!! This is their “solution” to my problem! It is also the one thing that I absolutely and very explicitly forbid them to do. In other words, after all this time, they have still not fixed my car. I am outraged, and do not know where to turn. I told the service manager that his “fix” is totally and completely unacceptable, and he said that I would have to go through Audi’s customer service hierarchy. From other posts on this forum, that does not give me much confidence. He told me that running regular gas in a car that was designed and built to use premium only would not be harmful or degrade performance; at least not an amount noticable to anyone other than a race driver on a race course! As would be expected, the car has lost significant power, and now runs like a 2.8 (non-turbocharged), if even that good.

To reiterate, their solution is to either: run regular gas with lower performance and (I wonder) possible engine damage but good cold starts, or use premium gas and hopefully regain some of the lost performance but have the cold starting problems return. Either of these choices is unacceptable.

I remember reading here that using regular gas changes or resets some of the engine control parameters in the ECM, and causes performance to suffer. Is this true?

To me, the reason that the car was designed to use premium gas is to take maximum advantage of the superior performance envelope that this allows. The engine can simply make more horsepower and torque using premium. At the very least, the knock sensor that most modern cars have will retard the timing to match the octane rating and antiknock capability of whatever gas is used in the car.

I was planning on “chipping” the car; what affect will a chip have? Will it run like it should with a chip, regardless of how it runs now?

Does anyone else on this forum have this problem, and has this dumb solution been offered to you? Any suggestions on how I should try to get this problem resolved? I agree with the sentiments of many of you that Audi designs and builds a great car, with some reliability problems that make it a few steps below the Japanese in terms of reliability, but their service, dealers, and support sucks.

pablo1

under lemon laws. Good luck.

Dangler {/KAWF} BUMP

Get your money back - this is a joke! (good luck and best wishes!)

timcar

Your original post on this subject said that the car ran badly and couldn't be driven for several minutes after starting it. Therefore I'm assuming it's not just a case of rough idle that you could live with, and that has been descibed by other posters to varrying degrees. Assuming that the problem makes the car undrivable, and the dealers only fix is the gas nonsense, I would, in this order:

1. Stop trying to trouble shoot it myself.
2. Decide in advance what you want the resolution to be. I.e., the car has full power and is drivable when cold, or they give me my money back, or they give me another car.
3. See if there is another dealer in your area that has better reputation for service and try them.
4. Contact the general manager or owner of the dealership where you bought it and tell them how unhappy you are, and that you will take all necessary action to have the problem corrected to your satisfaction possibly including recourse to your State's lemon laws (See link below.) and, if needed, an attorney.
5. Get out your warranty and check out the arbitration provisions before contacting AoA. When contacting AoA, escalate the problem immediately to a supervisor or department head. (You'll waste less time and get to the end point of this process faster)
6. If all this fails to resolve the problem, contact the agency of your State that handles lemon law provisions and begin the process.

http://www.autopedia.com/html/HotLinks_Lemon.html

JP4

There's too much at stake on your vehicle right now and you don't want to do ANYTHING that would give AUDI an out for any kind of warranty issues on the engine in it's current condition.

geoff-az

are designed to help in a situation like this. Usually you need a problem which "substantially impairs" the value of the car and that the manufacturer has failed to address in a reasonable amount of tries. Under such circumstances, your car's warranty has failed in its essentail purpose. Usually, four times in for the same problem will do it.

The remedy is a buyback/replacement + costs and attorney's fees.

But beware. Most lemon laws have short statutes of limitations, and you often have to go through dispute resolution before you can go to court. Attorney's fees are usually not awardable at that stage.

It all depends on how bad the problem is, and how much you'd like to be done with your particular car.

FastFast

Keep on it and get your refund!

DJG

Am having the same problem and dealer used the same fix of switching gas to low octane. Car has lost its quickness. Have you had any luck in finding a better fix. Also, dealer said it is a problem in cold weather states. Where are you located and when did you first have the problem? Audi told dealer that it is a general poblem with 2.7Ts and that they do not want to have to replace all the computers to fix it. Anyone else out there experiencing these problems? Any ideas of how to pressure them into doing something.