Raven S4

For last several months, I have been enjoying my new S4. The occasional flash of the headlight leveling icon/beep didn't happen often enough to bug me, I convinced myself the transmission would loosen up and the brakes would stop squeaking once they were broken in, and I'll check the fuse to see if that's why the horn no longer works.

So I was driving home from work today during rush hour, was rolling at 10-15mph to make a right hand turn that I was just going to make. The guy ahead of me brakes (we have a green arrow to turn right), so I try to honk at him to go... no horn. So fine, the guy goes, and I'm just going to make it so I put it in second gear and accelerate. The weirdest thing happened. As I am releasing the clutch pedal and giving it gas, the clutch pedal stops half way up and the revs shoot way the heck up, and I can't go more than 20 mph. I've got two lanes of traffic bearing down on me, and I can't get the car to go! So I pull off immediately into a gas station, brakes squeaking (2500 miles on the car), the car stinking to high heaven of burnt clutch material, and I'm coughing and pissed off. On the drive home, everything seemed to be OK again, except for the stench of clutch material that I'm trying to air out with windows down in 18F weather.

I get home and decide I'm going to check the fuse for the horn. Of course, the fuse looks fine, so something else is wrong... grumble...now I have to get a service appointment to get it fixed.

In general, I find the transmission on this car uneven and quirky, and it isn't the smooth "snicking" into gears I read about prior to buying. I still have hope it's going to loosen up and really flow between gears. All in all I still love my car, but some days...

UrQ

every day when the service manage come in he looks around to see if my car is back.

There does seem to be some strange electric issues with the S4.

AvramD

This sounds similar, although not identical, to what happened to me. I felt that something was uneven myself, and in my case, it turned out to be that the clutch was engaging at different pedal heights at different times.

When it actually went though, the effect was the opposite; I put the pedal on the floor, and it still wasn't disengaged. When I picked it up, it only came half-way up.

Maybe it is the same, just you were doing something diffent at the time; you were downshifting to accelerate, I was just doing so to coast around a corner. Maybe yours simply failed to disengage as well, so when you revved to synch the shift, you were partly engaged, and that allowed the clutch to get beat while you were revving. Then it just kept going. Maybe?

Sorry man, I feel for you.

Strong advice: demand that they dismantle the clutch & assees it's hydraulics immediately. The will probably figure out early on that they need a parts from Germany, and they will probably tell you they don't want the car sitting on the lift while they are waiting for them to come from Germany.

You need to convince them to suck it up, because they won't figure out *all* the parts they need from AG until they actually take it apart. The key to a speedy repair is to have the orders to AG in the pipeline together.

With me, I had to wait 7 days for the first part, then 2 days for them to work on it, then find another part they needed locally, wait 2 days for that, then do more work & find they needed another part from AG, wait 7 days for that, then finally it all got done.

In the end, the car sat onthe lift for as long as it would have in the first place (10 days, the time the 2nd part took to come from AG). The remaining 20 of the remaining 24 days it took to fix my car served no other purpose that to avoid the expense of my car tying up while waiting for the other two parts, b/c at that time it was only a possibility that more parts might be needed.

Sorry if that was confusing. The moral of this story is: Make them do all the work they can up front; if they say "we're going to wait to start working until we get a replacement <blah>, say "no, start now, and work right up till you need that part; I don't want to wait a week for you to find out you need something else."

JDBlueAudiS4

I had a similar hydrolic problem in my A4 after the clutch was serviced. I ended up dropping the clutch because the hydrolic pressure became to low and the clutch locked. I would get them to look at the hydrolics ASAP!

Cipher5170

I can always count on you for typos JD. :P

Raven S4

So I'm guessing I shouldn't chalk this up as an isolated incident then?

Thanks for the forewarning... this ultra sucks of course if it is a problem with the hydraulics. I'm wondering if this has anything to do with the extreme difficulty on getting a smooth gear transition. I figured I just need more practice since this car has more hp than any of my past manual cars. Even just starting off in first is a challenge to make it not: start accelerating, gap in power causing a slight lurch, then going again as the clutch engages more fully. I never have/had an issue on other manual transmissions. Maybe I'm reading more into this, maybe not. Can anyone confirm any similar experiences? Obviously I'm hoping I do just need more practice and everything is fine. Really, nothing wrong, nothing to see here, move along..

I'll be calling my dealership tomorrow to schedule a service appointment ASAP. This ought to be fun, since I don't think any of them have seen an S4 in any detail (they get anxious to *see* an S4).

...preemptive groan...

JDBlueAudiS4

My spelling sucks. Its the age of spell check. It has ruined people like me. One day message boards will have spell check and all will be well :-)

AvramD

hydraulic systems are really simple, just tubes, cylinders & fluids. It's about the simplest problem you could hope for except for the parts having to come from germany.

However, you probably melted your clutch. I never had an experience 1/4 as bad as what you described regarding clutch smell. I was skeptical when they bothered to replace mine, and after they took it out & looked at it, they said "you did not want that clutch staying in there."

As for the car being hard to drive, this has been the subject of great debate. There is one camp that thinks you just have to get used to it. People in this camp think they just happened to have the magic gene that enables them to adapt to any clutch. They refuse to believe it is possible that some cars have problems and are actually unpredictable. People in this camp tend to be named after rap stars that are so full of themselves that they make entire feature length movies about themselves, and call them "8 mile."

The other camp believes that some cars actually have problems with the electronics or sensors, that causes the drive by wire throttle to actually react differently at different times. If you do a search on the forums for "avramd throttle" you will find several posts in the first page of results that go into great deal on all the analysis & experimentation I've done with this.

To summarize, my throttle sometimes waits a while before reacting to being pressed *or lifted*, and sometimes it does not. The later is frightening if you've had it floored going into an on-ramp. My car was out 5 weeks, and while it went home Tuesday, I haven't yet. I go home tonight.

In the mean time, they found a bad coil pack (like a distributor but per-cyl). My hope is that the whacky throttle was the ECU compensating for this coil pack misbehaving.

But I bought a VAG-COM with the full intent to map out delays between accelerator position and throttle position in numerous scenarios, and over time. If my car isn't better, I'll be getting into this.

Really, do the search. You will learn a lot & be amazed, I promise.

AvramD

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Raven S4

Last night after posting I read through a lot of the reports on here on car problems, and I saw some similarities to the things I've experienced. At this point I don't know if I should be comforted by the thought that it's not just my car, concerned that I'm going to have go through the Service Department Trials (add dramatic music here), or both (probably both). I understand your point on the two camps on shifting this car. (edit) I can only speak to the experience with my car, and I believe there are issues with friction-point consistency on my car. I still don't know at this point whether all 04 S4 manual transmissions are just quirky, or if my car has issues to be fixed. All I know is that I'm not a n00b when it comes to manual transmissions, and this car is way more difficult to shift smoothly than I've experienced with other cars.

I called my dealership this morning to set up a service appointment, and I can tell I'm in for a ride. The service guy seemed kinda of annoyed that I was bothering him, especially when I asked if I would be able to get a loaner car, because apparently they're all booked for 2 weeks and I'll get a rental car. I tried to tell him that others here have reported similar problems and required a new transmission, and the parts took a while to get, but I don't think he cared. I asked him if he read these forums, or would like some information from them... again, no interest bordering on annoyed.

The car seemed to drive normally this morning (no difference from past behavior), so maybe nothing will be wrong other than the horn. I think it would be easier if I had something concrete to have them fix. I guess I'll find out more on Monday.

Would you guys provide some contact information I could give to the service guy for your service guys/dealerships? I realize this is probably a futile attempt to save some time and effort both on my part and the service guy's part if the service guys can share notes. It is probably worth a try though.