I have a 2003 1.8T A4 (just hit 78k) and recently - 3 weeks maybe - had my timing belt serviced at Carousel Audi in Minneapolis for $775ish. Expensive, but not a bad deal compared to what other people claim to have paid. Everything had been good, but I haven't had it on a long drive until today.

I was driving home for the holidays and about 180 miles out of the cities the cel came on (solid.) I called back to the dealership and my service guy returned my call saying as long as it was solid I should be okay to keep driving and we'd get it taken care of when I got back - about time for an oil change anyway.

When I started my car tonight - it had been on and off a few times since the initial light this afternoon - the light didn't come on. I made it about 1 mile down the road and came to a stop. When I accelerated I heard a pop sound and my check engine light immediately started flashing. My car started sputtering and sounded horrible. I made the next turn and pulled over - luckily at my fiance's house.

So now I'm stuck 400 miles away from the dealership - I do have an Audi dealership here, but probably not as good as the dedicated guys in the cities - and it's Christmas Eve! I'm not really worried about the money - yet - because the Carousel guys are good people and since they recently worked on it, I'm guessing they'd take care of it if it was at all related to anything they touched.

Any ideas on what the issue could be? Is it probably/possibly related to the recent service? Is there any way to tell what the problem is without having a scan?

 

Dude, I definitely don't have a clue but wanted to say WTG on getting to your fiancee's house like that. Few people are that lucky..Merry Christmas

 

That sounds like a coilpack. Its a $25-30 part available at any autoparts store. If you have access to a vag-com, you could save yourself some time in determining which one (or you could just replace all 4, which is the best idea anyway). otherwise you can buy one, and swap it out with each coilpack one by one until you find the one that blew.

 

I just spoke with my service guy at Carousel and he said the same thing. They charge $150-200 to do the service, but that it was fairly minor. I'm not very experienced with this car, but don't want to spend 10x the part cost on the repair. Is this something a novice could do or is it best to have a service guy take care of it?

 

Its probably the easiest fix you can do. If you can change your spark plugs, then you can do this. The coilpacks are the things you see sitting on top of your sparkplugs in the center of the valve cover (under the plastic engine cover.) all you have to do is unplug the electrical connecter, pull out the old one, push in the new one, and plug it in. Its literally that easy. If you do all 4, it should take you maybe 10 minutes (being its your first time doing it.)

p.s. to get the electrical connectors off, you take a flat head screwdriver and place it in the small slot at the connection and twist gently while pulling the connector.

 

It worked! Thanks guys! I only did the bad one for now - where my parents live there was only 1 in the city. I checked the others and they looked worn so I'll do the other 3 when I'm back up in the cities. I spoke with my service guy and he said that the MIL should go out on its own. Thanks for all your help fellas!

From a first timer - DO THIS YOURSELF!! IT IS VERY, VERY EASY! You only need one flat screwdriver!

 

Awesome!! you just saved yourself about $100.00. If the CEL doesn't go out, just pull the battery for about 30 seconds and then put it back on, that should reset the ecu.

 

...just make sure you have the radio code before you do this though.. or you WILL be out that 100 bucks if the radio resets

 

Yeah... blown coilpacks suck

 

Get a couple spares and keep them in your trunk, blown coilpacks are a plague for B6's.