RobC

Car was fine last night when I parked it, but his morning I had a solid check engine light. I checked the code and it's the Secondary Air Injection System. I haven't driven it enough to know whether the camshaft issue was fixed by the ECM update they just did, but it drove fine even with the new fault code. Not much more to say until the dealer gets done.

The dealer was very apologetic and didn't think twice when I asked for an A8 4.0T for a loaner vehicle. I would have asked for an S8 if I thought they had one in their loaner fleet :P.

In the A7 I couldn't wait to get my car back. In the short drive back to the office in the A8 4.0T, I think I could live with it for as long as necessary for them to figure out what's wrong with the S6.

More comments later when I've had some more time in the car.

s5blitzer

Rob,

I am trying to stay patient (on your behalf) but after my experience with my previous S5 and a known clutch issue and multiple trips to the dealer and a 3 week stay without my S5, I can feel your inconvenience.

Thanks for keeping us posted and good luck.

RobC

I got my S6 back yesterday evening. Everything seems fine now. The problem turned out to be a cracked T-fitting in one of the vacuum hoses. I'm trying to get the SA to identify the exact part that was replaced. I'll update once I get confirmation.

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Thoughts on my loaner:

After driving the A8L 4.0T for almost a week, my S6 felt almost foreign. I'd grown accustomed to the throttle response form a stop: press on the throttle and nothing happens, press a little harder and the car starts to move just a little, get pissed and press it even harder, and the car takes off with a jerk, making your passengers think you're a moron :P.

After you get past the throttle response, the car will actually move quite swiftly. Even with the engine in DYNAMIC mode the throttle feels softer and lazier than the S6 in COMFORT mode. But once the ECU is convinced that you really do want to accelerate fast, the car will haul @ss. C&D measured 12.4 @ 112 and 0-60 in 3.9.

The exhaust on the A8L is even more muted than the S6. In fact, my S6 sounded loud coming from the A8L. With the windows down you can only hear wind noise on the A8L.

Everyone says the S8 handles very well for its size. The A8L handled as I would expect from such a large vehicle. The whole car felt soft, like a big 80's Buick with a little German stiffness thrown in. There's a good bit of body roll and you just feel so isolated from everything. I suspect it's fine for the targeted demographic.

The 8-speed tiptronic is quite good. I can understand why the journalists like the S8 transmission since it's tuned to respond even more quickly. In normal driving you can't feel the upshifts, much like our DSG, but when hard on the gas you can feel the steps.

The BOSE system in the A8L is better than the BOSE system in our C7 series of cars (A6/S6/A7/S7). The bass response was good, front imaging was good, but the overall tonal quality is still better in the S6 B&O. Makes me want to spend time with the B&O in an 8.

With all the instrumentation/buttons/controls in front of the shifter, you lose the compartment where I like to put my wallet and cell phone.

I find it easier to use the finger touch pad on the S6 since my hand position is awkward for me when I have to drape it over the shifter. Perhaps folks with long fingers find it comfortable.

The A8L trunk is not as deep as the S6.

The cool things I really liked about the A8L:
1. LED strip lighting at front and side of interior roof, makes you think airplane
2. Panoramic sunroof - rear tilting sunroof with power shade
3. Power rear side window shades (ours are manual)
4. Power trunk lid
5. Door closers (when you don't completely latch the door when shutting)
6. Much more substantial door/cover over the CD/SD-card slots.

snagitseven

Sometimes it's the smallest, dumbest thing that goes wrong. Frustrating. Glad to see they didn't have to tear your car completely apart to solve the problem though and at least you didn't end up with an Enterprise Yugo for a loaner.

RobC

The fitting that was cracked was #4 in the diagram below, part number 2D0 133 381, called a "Y piece"

S4thrills

I recently had to replace the coolant expansion tank in my 2007 S6. In that process, I broke three of those connectors moving pipes around. I think the material they use for those fittings, at least back in the 2007 model timeframe, was pretty crappy. They got super brittle likely from the amount of heat they have to endure coming from the V10 engine, and they broke with hardly any pressure on them. It was a total pain to have to dig out the remnants from the vacuum hoses so I could use new fittings.

Hope they are using better material these days that can withstand more heat without eventually going south.