Behavioural issues were cited as the reason for me not being allowed to take GCSE Biology, but even with zero knowledge of the science of living things, I can now tell you that a car which absolutely reeks of wet dog when the weather's cold becomes unbearable when all those bacteria are woken by warmer weather.
Just how much damage can wet dog inflict? Lots.
Last week was the final straw. I switched on the air-con, the windows were closed and as I breathed deeply I gagged on the pong of wet dog. I immediately called James Walker of
Ti22 Vehicle Services
. He's a car detailer, so for me this was tantamount to treason, but needs must when your car can make you be sick into your own mouth.
A few days later James arrived. He was in full possession of the facts of the situation, but was gracious enough to admit that the S4 was the most disgusting example of a road legal car he'd ever seen. My diaphragm swelled with pride at this acknowledgement.
He spent a full day digging around and removing stuff - finding quite remarkable levels of grime in places I thought were impervious to dog-hair ingress. After removing a few hundred woodlice, a millipede and a decent selection from the aphid family, he set to work hoovering the dog-hair away and decontaminating the headlining. The products he was using did not look like car care liquids. They looked like industrial chemicals.
Our man could have spent three days on it
I popped out between sessions bashing a keyboard and saw vacuum cleaners, steam nozzles and large parts of Audi trim lying around. James reckoned much of the pong was lurking in the headlining, so he lathered that with anti-bacterial stuff and then, when he'd scrubbed the seats and picked the bits of dog-biscuit from under the rear head-rests, he let-off what he described as a 'bomb' into the air conditioning gubbins. This deodorised and cleansed the system itself. He also changed a filter somewhere in the passenger footwell. No idea what it was, but it cost £12.00.
And now the car smells of lemons. Really, it does. James reckons he could have spent three days on it, but that's just silly. He says driving it will shake further nastiness loose and it might benefit from a follow-up in the next month or so.
The newfound cleanliness is actually very pleasant, not that I'm especially interested in such things, but the lack of smell is a joy. This deep-clean has also revealed the sheer quality of the S4's cabin materials. It hasn't quite come-up as new, but given what it was like yesterday, the seats and stitching are superb. I'm now hoping that they will be able to release a pleasant leathery odour over time.
Now that's sanitary the quality shines through
As for driving, well, we're now 3,000 miles into
the REVO remap
and most things are well. I say most because the gearbox was a problem before we increased the power, and clearly adding numbers was never going to help. Once you're running it remains fast and smooth, but at low speed in automatic mode, the dual-clutch 'box can make some nasty noises and the final second to first shift when rolling to a halt can be very harsh.
The easiest and cheapest potential remedy was a gearbox oil change. You need a special tool for this, and I wasn't about to buy it, so went to Bristol Audi to have it done. Booking the car in wasn't especially easy, but salesman Graham Turks rescued the process with great skill and kindly lent me a new S4 while mine was under the knife. It took a few hours and cost £180.05. At this stage the car was a pig sty, so I declined their offer to clean it.
The gearshift certainly felt better, but some of the low-speed lumpiness remained. I'd say it was 20 per cent better now. Curiously, I find that when crawling in a traffic jam I can smooth the first to second shifts (and those the other way) by using the manual function and pulling paddles myself. This makes me think there might be a lingering fault with the control unit and specifically the bit of the brain that controls the auto shift function.
Exterior war wounds and grime to stay put
For now, it's fine. But I suspect the car will need some kind of gearbox work in the next 20,000 miles.
The motor remains extraordinary. It's so fast, so usable and the torque delivery is so well matched with the gearing for motorway (Autobahn) cruising. In seventh gear, you just tap the throttle and it hauls: no down-changes are needed. For some reason it's a very relaxing car at speed too. It gives the impression of being bigger than it actually.
The big Stasis brakes are probably a necessity rather than a luxury, given the added oomph. There's a slight judder when they're cold, but once warm the pedal is firm and they do a fine job. I quite like the way they lurk behind those utterly shagged rims. On that note, the motor does churn out some soot under full load. The upside to this is that the REVO tail pipes are now much more subtle.
Fuel economy is no different to before in everyday use. On a trip I see somewhere around 27mpg, dropping severely when we do silly stuff like drag races.
This man's about to get a nasty shock...
This really is the perfect car for my life, my only regret is that I spend so much time using other machinery I don't get to use it as often as I should like to. With clean innards it's now pleasant to sit in, but the shagged exterior means I abandon it in T5 business parking with nary a thought as to what might happen to it. I find that very liberating.
Next steps are to pre-empt the gearbox situation and see if anyone is working on these early DSG units yet. I hear that Audi won't sell parts for them, and the only fix is a full replacement unit, but surely someone out there is being a bit clever? Also, I'm going to have a look at some other suspension - perhaps Bilstein PSS9 - and use that as an excuse to have everything rebushed and checked.
Anyone looking for a fast, subtle estate should try one of these now.
FACT SHEET
Car: Audi S4 Avant
Run by: Chris Harris
Bought: March 2013
Mileage: 58,000
Purchase price: £15,000
Last month at a glance: Three years worth of dog hair cleaned to make interior hygenic