noneckjo

Yesterday the wife calls me up and says, "The oil light came on then the engine light came on and now the car is making a funny noise." At that moment my head began to swirl as I yelled for her to pull over. Damage was done to say the least, I'm not sure how long she drove without oil. One of the elbows to the after market oil cooler cracked, draining all oil.

Engine starts but makes a horrible thump sound along with what sounds like chains being wiping around inside. Called a local Audi tech, trustworthy in our area and he gave me the low down on what to expect, nothing good of course.

We really don't want to get rid of this car, but it sounds like its going to cost anywhere from 5-10K to fix, is this true? I'm not even sure the car is worth that much. It's a 2001.5 Silver/Black Audi Avant S4 with all the goodies except navigation.

I've been the only owner and have babied it for its 78k miles and to hear that now the engine will need to be torn down or just replaced kills me. Is it worth it fix? Not sure if I should buy a new car and dump this. Anyone else come up against making a decision like this?

donromani

Hard to say what kind of work you will have to do without opening the engine up to take a look at the extent of the damage. It could be as "simple" as replacing all of the cylinder rings.

noneckjo

I really hope so, I know i need to go in, just wondering if what they find is really "engine replacing" damage, I should fix or dump. Maybe now is a time to go with a turbo kit from ASP or AWE. I was just told I should replace the turbos due to possible metal in oil.

complacentsee

You can pick up a long block for around 2,000-2,500k. Figure 1k-2k to get it refreshed if you desire. New gaskets, seals, timing belt fluids and that jazz. And 2k for the install. Shipping $500+.

Probably spun a bearing so you would need a new crank to use your old block, depending on the damage maybe quite a bit more as well. No telling what damage could have been done.

shawnoc2003

At a minimum, your going to need new bearings as these will be the first thing to go since the crank rides on a film of oil and without any oil pressure the crank journals will touch the bearings.

The bearings will smear on the crank. Hard to say if this will polish out or if you'll have to have it reground. Assuming you can find thicker bearings, you can usually get a crank reground a few thousandths.

Camshafts will probably lose there temper as the oil keeps them coil, but it depends on how long it ran. Similar thing happens with the cam chains although these run on polymer guides.

Worst case, the pistons will be scuffed and the turbos will fail if they haven't already; however a lot of this depends on just how much load there was on the engine and how long it ran.

Bottom line, you're going to need to rebuild the engine since its already making a lot of noise.

donromani

If it actually still runs then I doubt she damaged it badly enough to require an all new block, but it is possible. However, if it is that bad Jibber Jive is selling a few blocks if you end up needing one. I suppose you could buy a salvaged engine, but I would be wary of going that route.

Deciding to repair a damaged engine is a tough call, I know. I would probably pull it, pay for an acid bath for the block, get the cylinders polished, replace the pistons, rods, all the seals - but that's only because I like that sort of stuff. If you have a shop do all that for you it will run you several grand. As for replacing the turbos due to metal in the oil, uh, that's a bit of stretch. There may be metal in the oil, but if you have bits large enough this will cause problems everywhere, not just in the turbos. This would require some of the more serious engine work I listed above anyway, as those piece of metal were likely stripped off the cylinder walls or cylinders themselves.

complacentsee

Spun crank bearing, at a minimum.

noneckjo

Looks like I'll be putting in a RS4 turbo kit now that its the engine will be out. One question I have is which I should choose. Im looking and have been reading tons on ASP and AWE kits which both seem really solid. ASP seems to be the cheaper priced kit. One major question I have is customer service after the kit is bought. I have seen a few post about the service from ASP as not so good for a few when they need to get a hold of them. Also Marks account here has a line through it, banned? Why? Can anyone tell me what happened?

Thanks.

shawnoc2003

Bottom line, call Prince at VAST and talk it over with him or Mike. They can even help on all the other things that went wrong.

complacentsee

Old advertiser account with the switch over to IB.

No revolving banner add = banned. IIRC.