MAYER-M

Good evening! Unfortunately, with the age of the car, the rubber is detached from the metal and it is necessary to check the condition of the PULLEY and drive ROLLERS at every maintenance.By the way, the PULLEY is now on all 3.0 TDI with the same part numbers.

Dudeness30

Mine just came apart at highway speeds, a noise and noticed the loss of power steering before charge light came on. A tow home and swapped it since I had it already. 10mm triple square for pulley and a T60 for the tensioner.
More info: Mine is a 2014 with 50k miles. Water pump is driven by the belt so you can't drive long at all once it fails, so pay attention. Hardest part was turning the wheel to park it at home with no power steering. Time from breaking to back on the road including waiting for roll back and a 35 mile tow was 3 hours. Can be replaced in a hour with no problem. Sometimes I don't use the warranty depending on time/expense. It would take longer for me to drive to a audi dealer and have them do it, so I had the pulley at home already. If I had the tools with me I could have done it right there LOL. I ordered a belt ahead of time from ECS Tuning but the belt they listed was too short so I reinstalled the original for now. ECS listed the belt as 6PK2475 but my belt is a 6PK2518. If anyone wants the 6PK2475 let me know.

'10Q7TDI_Prestige'

For the rest of the folks out there; the failure of the crankshaft pulley/harmonic balancer is covered under the extended TDI warranty. Both my local Audi dealer and AUDI North America have confirmed this. My local Svc Mgr gave me the # for Audi towing services for when mine let's go on our '15; he told me the towing coverage was reinstated for the extended warranty period, although I haven't seen anything on that in print as yet. Basically yours needs to be 'wobbling' or be hanging off the serpentine belt already separated & failed in order to qualify for Audi to replace it under warranty, but it is covered,

gozman

'10Q7TDi_Prestige, Thanks for the info; do you know if this is reimbursable(parts cost) by Audi if performed in the past (but within the warranty period) and a genuine Audi replacement balancer was installed? Not expecting 3rd party labor to be covered/reimbursed bit it was the part that was pricy...

'10Q7TDI_Prestige'

Unfortunately, that was not part of my discussion with Audi. I would say get your ducks in a row with receipts for towing/repair shop invoice, part invoice, etc., and if you kept the failed part or somebody took a picture of it, so much the better for you. I'm sure they will want to see either pictures, the actual failed part, and/or the repair invce indicating it had failed, car towed in, etc.

I would 100% request to be reimbursed for the covered failure; you just need to make your case to the correct person, and if they say no, escalate it up to big Audi.

Believe me, this is actually a much bigger issue impacting multiple cars using this TDI engine or that use the same pulley, which should really have a recall assigned to it, but they are trying to keep it as a 'reactive', covered warranty repair rather than being proactive and simply replacing them with the revised part#. I'd suggest lodging a complaint with the NHTSA (National Highway Traffic Safety Administration....www.nhtsa.gov) as well for anyone that has experienced this failure already either in/outside of the warranty window, so they can get some numbers and details around the issue, which may result in a formal, proactive recall on it, since Audi has chosen not to issue a formal service action campaign related to this part failure.

drjonez

Just a bit of a bump here for all you TDI guys: REPLACE YOUR CRANK PULLEY. Coming back from a camping trip mine fell off in a parking lot. It was in good shape as I've been keeping an eye on it based on this thread....but it failed in exactly the same fashion as all the others. Still waiting for a tow...

dreadlocks

Got any pics, wondering how good of shape it really was.

drjonez

Not yet. Certainly wasn’t new, but the separation was minimal. I guess the less is any separation = replace.

dreadlocks

yeah mine is just surface rust with no cracking, delamination or any other signs of fatigue at the failure point.. well it was the last time I looked, will inspect it again soon.

if you see any signs of fatigue there yeah replace it.

IlirianR

I recently purchased a 2015 A8L TDI with 51k miles. I drove it home 860 miles without an issue. The next morning I get alternator fault light with engine overheating I check under the hood and there it is…

I ordered a replacement from ECS.