£10k gbox bill on 4yr old Audi. Was it ever fit for purpose?

[Dave Hedgehog]

funkyrobot said:

Filibuster said:

You can change the battery of an iphone! Not that easily but there are shops everywhere that do it for you!
And because Apple products are well built and look good, you can upgrade them and thus keep them for much longer than that cheap plastic stuff!
I still work on an 12 year old Apple Pro that I heavily upgraded. No plans to change that in the next few years!
And they still sell for good money on ebay.
I think Apple is a bad example as I'm sure that a greater percentage of apple products is still in use than of any other consumer electronic brand!

I can swap the battery on my phone by taking the back cover off, and swapping it. You can't do it that simply on an iPhone.

wont need to, the iphone battery wont fail if you use it as directed

OHs iphone is 3 years old, the mic failed on it, took it to apple who fixed it for free

[SWoll]

funkyrobot said:

Filibuster said:

You can change the battery of an iphone! Not that easily but there are shops everywhere that do it for you!
And because Apple products are well built and look good, you can upgrade them and thus keep them for much longer than that cheap plastic stuff!
I still work on an 12 year old Apple Pro that I heavily upgraded. No plans to change that in the next few years!
And they still sell for good money on ebay.
I think Apple is a bad example as I'm sure that a greater percentage of apple products is still in use than of any other consumer electronic brand!

I can swap the battery on my phone by taking the back cover off, and swapping it. You can't do it that simply on an iPhone.

Off topic I know but we've got iPhone 4/5/6/7 in our house, the oldest of which has been through the hands of 4 different people as it's been passed down the line and it's still going strong.

I also have a draw full of Samsung, HTC and Sony phones that were falling apart within 2 years of use. I've never been an Apple fanboy but IME it's tough to argue that they aren't the best made phones out there.

Back on topic, I've just taken delivery of an A6 with the 7G S-Tronic box as a company car so will be interested to see if these issues are as common as suggested on the thread.

[Filibuster]

bungz said:

What on earth do you manage to do with a G5 era Mac Pro

It's a 1st Gen Mac Pro, but only 9 years old... (I do got a G5 Power Mac that I maxed out for the fun of it tough...)
With 2x 3GHz Quad Core processor, 32 GB Ram, upgraded graphic card and running the latest OS on an PCIe SSD I work as an Architect all day long for a year now. Never let me down!

Yes some Apple fanboys buy a new iPhone the day a new one comes out, but the old one doen't get thrown away, does it?
You'd be surprised what old iPhones and iPad are worth, even broken ones!
We do have a company that specialised in dealing with old Apple products. They are about to open their 3rd store in a year now!

[Filibuster]

BTW I'm neither an Apple nor an Audi fanboy, altough I have way over 10 Apple products, from museum stuff to the latest, and drive an Audi S4 Avant.
Both build some quility products! Some more so, some less. And neither is excepted from selling something that may brake after some time...
Do fix it and stop crying about it on the internet!

[Durzel]

funkyrobot said:

Of the people I know who use Apple products, they swap to the next model as soon as it is out.

That's the rub. Apple are amazing, perhaps the best, at this kind of anti-consumer positivity spin. I say that earnestly with no ill will against them. They have managed to make the whole upgrade/obsolescence cycle something that consumers crave rather than resent.

There is next to no meaningful backlash really about the fact that batteries and other previously user-upgradeable components (e.g. memory, storage space, etc) are - if not impossible then certainly actively discouraged through engineering - not user replaceable. Their phones, tablets, etc get suspiciously less capable of running newer iOS software versions, and people swallow the company line about the software being too advanced for older kit etc. It is quite a fascinating case study really in practices that ought to on the face of it turn consumers against them, but actually achieve the opposite. It really shows the power of a brand that consumers eschew many rights and expectations they ought to have, and demand elsewhere.

[Sa Calobra]

After being told I was wrong and must be fibbing over faulty (a few) iPods, a few weeks after the last one a news report came out of faulty iPod units from China I decided never again to touch apple products.

[bungz]

Filibuster said:

It's a 1st Gen Mac Pro, but only 9 years old... (I do got a G5 Power Mac that I maxed out for the fun of it tough...)
With 2x 3GHz Quad Core processor, 32 GB Ram, upgraded graphic card and running the latest OS on an PCIe SSD I work as an Architect all day long for a year now. Never let me down!

I was being slightly flippant due to the age, I knew it would likely be a Intel one

Nice machines, better than the bog brush design they have at the moment.

[Willy Nilly]

405dogvan said:

Willy Nilly said:

So, what you're saying is, that modern automatic transmissions have been designed to be less reliable, almost impossible to maintain and prohibitively expensive to repair. Them, when they do fail, the manufacture will look for any excuse to wash their hands of them?

Firstly, modern automatics are different beasts from what we had 20-years-ago - "they change gears for you" is about the only similarity they have to modern DSG/SCT/DCT etc. That means they are VASTLY more complex things and so they cost more to fix/replace and have more issues on the way there.

The "cost more and have more issues" thing applies to the rest of the car as-well. All those toys, all that tech, all that horsepower comes at a price.

Manufacturers have a priority list when they make a car and "what happens once the warranty is out" doesn't feature very highly on it - if at-all.

Spending time in a few indie garages I see plenty of broken cars - most are older (6+ years) but there are younger cars, some just 'just out of warranty' and some "lapsed warranty"(excess miles/lack of services etc.) and they all have the ability to RUIN you if something breaks.

The other thing I've learned is that people THINK their car should last regardless of how they treat it, if they tune it, if they thrash it, if they ignore the servicing schedule etc. etc. The resentment you get from some people because their car broke when it's absolutely obvious that they "rode it hard and put it away wet" is astonishing - the level to which they think the person who sold them it is responsible (I bought this 2 years ago and it's broken already) is also dead funny.

I have a motto - buy a used car and keep it 2 weeks and it's yours, all of it, problems and all - the last owner rode it to death too - so be prepared for that

Electronics in transmissions should make them more reliable and durable, save for the odd electrical gremlin. The reason for this is that every shift should be a perfect shift. The ECU and controllers/sensors should know exactly when each clutch pack or gear is engaged and disengaged. No slipping, no shock loads. It should also be quite easy to limit torque being pumped through the transmission.

Car transmissions have an easy life. Even if you have a lot of power, it is quite hard to actually use it in a low gear (which is probably limited anyway) for anything more than a split second without the tyres loosing grip. So you are hardly likely to see a car running at full load in 1st for hours at a time, are you? No oil immersed brakes running in the same oil. No running at high loads in a low gear in a cloud of dust when a hydraulic valve decides to stick and cook the transmission oil. The bulk of the time the car will be in a high gear, probably top, which will put little load on the components.

It's not like car transmissions get oil contamination as a matter of course when the transmission oil doubles as hydraulic oil with all that entails, so they can't use that excuse.

The sort of transmissions in the machines I use at work are massively complex, way more so than car transmissions. They certainly go wrong, but have to put up with some brutal working conditions. Were they to chuck up big bills and the manufacturer washed their hands of them, they would get repeat sales.

It strikes me that VAG just haven't put these transmissions through good enough duty cycle testing.

[C. Grimsley]

Did this get any further?

Carl

[405dogvan]

Willy Nilly said:

It strikes me that VAG just haven't put these transmissions through good enough duty cycle testing.

As I said 2 pages ago, they last long enough to (mostly) get out of warranty and that is all that VAG give the slightest st about. Engineering stuff to last 20 years isn't in their interest - hell, 10 years - hell, 2 months longer than the warranty.

Also - your other comments on how the electronics should make the things MORE reliable miss a few points

1 - more power
2 - used more often
3 - more parts to fail
4 - electronics + water = ohst

There are specialists who will rebuild these things - it's not cheap but that's progress for you. This isn't just a VAG thing, Jaguar have issues, BMW have (fewer but still notable) issues and I'd NEVER EVER buy a 'stter' with an auto, it's like buying a russian roulette pistol with half the chambers ;0

Edited by 405dogvan on Wednesday 22 March 20:41

[giggity]

Update OP?

Audi auto boxes are chocolate st.

[briang9]

giggity said:

Update OP?

Audi auto boxes are chocolate st.

really? I have 126k on mine, and a mate has nearly 180k on his, the mistake most people make is believing that they are sealed for life, get them serviced and ...well you probably won't understand anyway...

[Gary C]

405dogvan said:

Willy Nilly said:

It strikes me that VAG just haven't put these transmissions through good enough duty cycle testing.

As I said 2 pages ago, they last long enough to (mostly) get out of warranty and that is all that VAG give the slightest st about. Engineering stuff to last 20 years isn't in their interest - hell, 10 years - hell, 2 months longer than the warranty.

Edited by 405dogvan on Wednesday 22 March 20:41

Which is a shame.

Manufactures used to really care about how long a car lasted as residuals used to be a real selling point, but this age of PCP (isn't that angle dust ?) seems to have removed that from the new car buyers equation.

[Sa Calobra]

OP?

[deadscoob]

405, you are spouting some bks.

If people were to believe you, every VAG car would have some issue as soon as its out of warranty, if not before.

What data exactly are you basing your comments?

[405dogvan]

deadscoob said:

405, you are spouting some bks.

If people were to believe you, every VAG car would have some issue as soon as its out of warranty, if not before.

What data exactly are you basing your comments?

I'll tell you but as you've decided I'm talking bks what's the point - you'll just continue being ignorant and rude I'm sure?

Of course not every car fails 2 mins out-of-warranty BUT I genuinely believe (based on spending half my working life staring at broken cars and talking to dealers/owners) that we're going backwards in terms of how long a car can be economically used and the cost of maintaining some cars is getting out-of-control.

Manuf. focus is on meeting Govt standards (worldwide), offering toys and getting new lease/PCP prices to the absolute rock bottom. What happens to cars once their initial ownership is over is of less concern and what happens to cars that their dealers aren't even interested in (which can be as young as 5-years with some dealers) is really not a priority.

People who have problems with 'older cars' do not deter people buying new cars "because they're new". Hell, I've met people who had bad experiences used and so bought THE SAME CAR new instead!!

I'm not convinced that many manufs really cared that their cars lasted 20 years - at least not anytime in the last few decades - but I'm thinking now that 10-years is ambitious for some modern cars and the local scrapyard has plenty of cars FAR younger than that...

and no, I have no idea what they think will happen to the middle-ground of cars 'too old to be new and too new to be cheap' either...

[Guybrush]

There was a time when Volvo in their advertising stressed their cars could be relied upon to last 19 years. Now they and all manufacturers stress all the lane assist etc bollux and low monthly payments. That seems to be encouraging people to consider cars as a throwaway commodity.

[xjay1337]

deadscoob said:

405, you are spouting some bks.

If people were to believe you, every VAG car would have some issue as soon as its out of warranty, if not before.

What data exactly are you basing your comments?

I've owned 3 VW's, all modified, all over 100k, never been let down by any of them. Aside from when a clutch pipe let go on my Scirocco but with my upgraded clutch what can you expect.

[Jonno02]

The OH's 1 year old iphone 6(something) button on the side (volume I think) felt a little spongey and wasn't clicking like her friends one. We walked into an Apple shop, told them the problem and they opened a brand new sealed box for her, transferred her data and wiped her old phone without so much as a complaint.

You might not like them, but that's damn good customer service.

[funkyrobot]

Jonno02 said:

The OH's 1 year old iphone 6(something) button on the side (volume I think) felt a little spongey and wasn't clicking like her friends one. We walked into an Apple shop, told them the problem and they opened a brand new sealed box for her, transferred her data and wiped her old phone without so much as a complaint.

You might not like them, but that's damn good customer service.

I bought a blu-ray player from Argos. It failed at around 10 months old. I went to Argos and they gave me a free replacement, which happened to be the next model up.

Argos are just as good as Apple in my book.

If I were paying a premium for something like an Apple product, I'd expect that level of service.