Yesterday my dad's Audi decided to start to dying or something. We were supposed to drive 2000 km on our vacation starting next Sunday, but i guess this won't happen if it's not fixed by then.
We were driving about 70 km/h with a trailer when it lost power and started to release a lot of smoke through the exhaust. Afterwards the top speed is about 50 km/h, but the strange thing is that not a single warning lamp is flashing.
Depending on this information and video, where would you put it in a scale from 1-4 when 4 is a new engine and 1 is something like a leak of oil to the engine or a wrong supply of fuel.

blown rings?

White smoke could be what? Oil or coolant? Or both?

The lack of speed might be because your car is in "Oh fuck, get me to a garage now!" mode, although you think in an Audi there would be a warning light...

did you check the oil level ? Are there any hoses that might have come off? Is the engine rattling?

White smoke is coolant, oil has more of a blue color. And just plain running rich is brown/black, but not as smoky in appearance.

What engine does it have?

The oil-level was fine and I searched for lose and damaged pipes while the car was still running but I couldn't find anything. The engine doesn't rattle or anything like that, but it sounds a little like when the spark plugs in a petrol engine is igniting in the wrong order. Only problem about that is that it's a diesel so it doesn't have spark plugs. The smoke also smells a bit like when you have a barbecue so my guess would be it's oil leaking to the cylinders or the exhaust.


It's a 2,5 TDI quattro (180 hp instead of the 2WD's 160hp)

smoke screen mod!

My first impression is that it might be a blown head gasket, but that's just a stab in the dark...

Don't worry, it will buff right out.

Haven't thought about it before but it does sound like a really good explanation: If one of the gaskets burst there'll still be 3 cylinders left to run the engine (because it's a V6), and it explains the oil in the cylinders!

And lack of power. I'd imagine the gauge cluster would look like a Christmas tree with warning lights if this happened though.

Check the glowplugs?

The non-flashing warning lights is really weird. After all It is an Audi so you should think there would be some kind of warning when your engine is about to be destroyed.

We've had a problem with the glow plugs before but it doesn't affect the driving except for the first kilometer or so because the cylinder chamber's aren't heated enough. From there on it's all running on pressure and temperature in the chambers.

I'll have an answer to this in about 12 hours from now, and maybe before!

Vote depends if you do your own engine work

i say blown headgasket.

and if youre not going to do the work yourself. prepare to pay a shitload of money to get that fixed.

Head gasket. Same thing happened to me about week back with our Camaro. Thankfully it's our third car, and my dad's out of town. So it's just going to sit in front of our house until we need to have it fixed.

We won't fix it ourselves because we have no experience in repairing cars at all. My dad knows about nothing about cars and I don't want to try my skills of on a car worth about 56,000$

After a couple of minutes in the hand of our mechanic, he believes it's a problem with the turbo where oil is leaking into the turbo mill and blows oil into the combustion chambers.
His reason for saying this instead of the blown head gasket, is that the engine doesn't sound like something is seriously wrong with it, but only ignites a little early (or late?) because of the extra oil.
The lack of power is therefore a combination of wrong ignition and (almost) no turbo.
Does this make sense?

damn... does this mean that the car needs a new turbo?

Turbos can be rebuilt.

Yes it does. And it's going to cost about 6000$

Unfortunately our second car (Peugeot 406) needs a new radiator in a hurry. The only good thing about it is that because all the mechanics are busy, I'm going to replace it myself. Have anyone done this before so I could get an advise or so?

the radiator? its pretty simple... drain the cooling system. Undo input and output hoses from the radiator... unplug some wires and unbolt it from the radiator support...
and $6,000 to replace a turbo??? you can probably buy a whole new motor for that price!

Yeah you can pick up a new turbo (or even a used one) for a fraction of that and do the job yourself.

I know it sounds expensive but I guess it's because they're going to clean the whole pipe system and combustion chambers for oil. The salary for the mechanic is also pretty high, and I simply don't want to do it myself because I don't have any experience at it.

Fixed.

You wont get far in life with that attitude.


Although I do understand the possible consequences if something is messed up. I did the rear brakes on my Jetta last week, something no one in my family has ever done, and I knew the potential consequences if I messed something up (car damage, property damage, death). I had no experience with it, but I didn't let it stop me.

lol

Haha I know what you mean aircooled, you've got to try new things and hope for the best, but you made it sound like a huge crapshoot

I know that you should take chances in life, and I would be extremely excited if my dad came in and said that I could try to fix it if I wanted too, but the fact is that I now have 4 days to fix it and I don't have a clue about what I'm supposed to do. Actually we're not even 100% sure it's the turbo yet, and I probably have to disassemble the whole engine to clean it for oil.

I wish more people knew stuff about cars :(

I don't know how much help it would be now, but if you want you could post up on AudiZine (http://audizine.com) and they could offer some help too, especially if you're looking for replacement parts. Maybe you could provide the mechanic with the parts and save some money?

And make sure you unscrew the radiator cap, remove the overflow tank cap and squeeze multiple times the upper hose of the radiator so all the coolant flushes out. Otherwise, you'll get wet. Good luck! I did it on my car sunday and it took me 2 hours. BTW if the drain plug is plastic and doesn't have thread (not thread but where you put your screwdriver) anymore and can't be unscrew, take a hammer and hit your screwdriver, it should create new "thread" so it can be removed!

Thanks Matt. Was supposed to do it this morning but the new radiator won't arrive before tomorrow.
The solution to the problem with the Audi seems to be that we'll tow the car to Germany where we wait until it's fixed (should take about 15 hours) and from there we'll be driving to Slovenia on our vacation. Just really hope they don't mess up at the garage so we won't stand on the German autobahn without a car.

eh

I do majority of the work myself on the car but there are certain jobs that are just too difficult to do with out the proper tools... by the time you purchase those tools, it will cost the same to have a good shop to do the job.

Finally got the radiator changed! It took about 4 hours but I guess I could do in about 2 now I know what I have to do and what tools to use. It was actually pretty easy, but quite a hassle, because I had to remove the tubes to the intercooler, to get the radiator out.
This is how I've done:


Halfway: only need to assemble it all again, put on some coolant and get the air out of the system.

+1 to working on your own car.

Yeap, everytime you tackle a job on your car, you learn a lot.

I usually learn what not to do next time which I find very valuable.

haha speaking on working on your car, i just painted my bumper valences today (I also had no confidence what so ever, i thought I would screw it up and end up buying from the dealer.) Turned out okay! I guess you really need to pursue it.

Update on the Audi:
The mechanics have located the problem: The intercooler is broken and the turbo is too because of the intercooler. The price is for getting it repaired: 2000 Euro (2800 $), which is about half price of what it would have been if it was repaired here in Denmark.
We can pick it up tomorrow noon, and from there start our vacation!

EDIT: I guess this will be answer 3 on the poll so most of you guys were right