Claims Court - Balance Shaft problems on TDi's

[weggie]

Into (but skip down to problem)
I has a 1995 Audi A4 for 9 years with 145K mileage it was a great wee car with few problems, but due to age and cost of a repair excedding £500, I decided to buy a new car. Naturally with Audi's strong reputation for long life I naturally decided to go for an Audi again, And with a new baby i hoped to go for the A4 Audi Avante 2.0 Tdi. The car I got was an ex bank of Scotland fleet car that I bought from auto trader with full service, it had 73,000 miles on it.


Rattly Engine
When it got to 75,000 miles I took it into my local Indi mechanic who I used every year on my last Audi. He was to service it and put triming belt on it. I also asked him to check out the increasingly rattly engine which having never had a deisel car before i wondered whether this sound was normal or something to be concerned about. After the standard service, he told me that he would postpone the timing belt change as he thought there was something more serious with the engine and recommended I speak to Audi first.

Audi dealership response
I went to an Indi Audi specialist garage, and they instantly told me that this was a common problem with this model of engine which is in Passat, Seat's and Audi's and that it would need a complete conversion from an oil pump chain drive to a different system. He said it was approx £1500 which includes £800 for conversion kit. he recommended I go to Audi dealership and try and get goodwill. On the positive side , he said, you were lucky oil light has not come on as this would have fecked the engine and costing several thousand to replace.!!!! And he confirmed he had seen a few situations like this.

Goodwill refused
I have now gone through this process, ( and paid £70 for the pleasure of Audi dealership confirming this being the problem). They applied for goodwill from Audi UK on my behalf, this has since been refused. Audi UK apparently said that -

1) the car was not bought from a dealership,
2) last service not from Audi, and
3) they say not a recognised problem (LOL - NOT).
4) out of warranty

Terrible Design
Note that when I asked the Audi Techs, they more or less confirmed it was a common problem. The price is going to be about £2000 incl vat. It is caused by a worn oil pump and balancer shaft drive chain. Reading the treads on here and also Passat, it is fairly common and caused by poor design. This was recognised in later models and so the design was changed. I asked if I could not just replace the oil drive chain, its gear and the tensioner, they said they cannot because they could not give warranty on this change, (does this not prove the original design was poor?)

Should i take audi to small claims court?
I am now faced with costly repair, the car is parked up, and I am wondering if I should continue with chasing Audi UK, perhaps taking them to Small Claims Court (SCC) or take it in the chin and get loan to repair off road car?. I say this as I have read on some thread on here and other sites that an engine should be designed to run at least 100k miles, If it hasn't done that then it's not fit for purpose, and providing the purchase was less than six (I think) years ago then does the the Sale of Goods Act not apply??

The Question is is it worth pursuing? has anyone got any here have any suggestions or tips? I feel pretty aggrieved with Audi, they say that it is only a small percentage of cars affected in this way, but nobody from VW or Audi is warning owners this could be a problem, many cars may only have done 40 -50k and they don't know they may have this ahead of them, and if the chain fails, the car could a be right off!!!!. I bought Audi due to excellent reputation for engineering (LOL!!!!) NOT


PS checkout the Passat site, it has the same engine, seems like VW and i assume Audi have know about tis problem for 4 years and will not own up to it, as it will cost them a fortune.
http://forums.tdiclub.com/showthread.php?t=257815&...