RS6 Water Leak

[Freewheeler]

Can anyone shed a little light on this on-going problem? I've recently sold an RS6 to a friend of mine, it's a 2003 car, 56k with a full Audi main agent service record!
A couple of weeks into his ownership, the car develpoed a gearbox problem and was reluctant to engage drive/first gear! Car went into our Audi local main agent and the fault was diagnosed, basically, the dealership said the plenum chamber on the car's bulkhead was filling with water and not dispersing, then, said water was finding its way down one of the ventilation pipes and soaking the gearbox ECU which is mounted in the driver side rear footwell! Total cost to repair the car, fit new ECU along with section of wiring loom (contaminated/corroded) and rectify water leak was just shy of £2.5k!! I paid the bill for my pal but then, two weeks later, exactly the same problem!! Car back into the same main agent, same problem, dealer said 'we've repaired one leak but there seems to be another leak, so to do the job properly, we need £7000, maybe more!!' WTF??
Audi have stated that the factory welds on the car's bukkhead are at fault so allowing the rain water to run into the ventilation duct and onto the ECU but are prepared to do nothing about it!
Has anyone else experienced such a problem? We're about to have the car independently inspected as it does seem to be a manufacturing problem/defect. Any help or advice anyone could offer would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance

PW

[lambogenie]

I'm not actually sure you have a claim for the original fault, audis bodyshell warranty only covers rust for 12 years not weld failure, this would have been covered on the original 3 year warranty but if the car is a 2003 its 4 years old so unless you have an extended warranty they don't have to do anything, you wouldn't have any legal claim against audi due to the cars age and mileage it has already been considered "fit for purpose and use" since manufacture and this would be probably classed as deterioration rather tha a manufacturing defect.

YOu do however have some hope.

You have paid 2.5K for a fix to the problem as diagnosed by an Audi agent,

Read the Audi Warranty Network:

http://www.audi.co.uk/audi/uk/en2/owners_area/Supp...

Audi Authorised Network Workmanship Warranty

Members of the Audi authorised network give a warranty for their workmanship on all repairs and servicing. Should any repairs be required in that period on work carried out by a member of the Audi authorised network, the original repairer will carry out such repairs free of charge provided:Repairs are required as a direct result of faulty workmanship by that member of the Audi authorised networkRepairs are not required due to normal wear and tear or other exclusionsItems replaced under the terms of this warranty become the property of the member of the Audi authorised network. A member of the Audi authorised network may choose to pay for work under this warranty to be carried out by another member of the Audi authorised network.

The important point here is the audi dealer has diagnosed the problem and charged you 2.5K to replace the parts and fit them, within 2 weeks the SAME problem has reoccured because of the failure of the Audi dealer to diagnose correctly and fix the original fault, therefore the repair has failed under the terms of their warranty they are duty bound to now rectify the fault at their cost.

Since the repair has failed you have them under the "faulty workmanship" - i.e tehy fixed the ECU whilst failing to diagnose and fix the cause (leak) first, so it becomes their liability.

They cannot really say "oh but we didnt know it had a leak guvnor" because they are an audi approved repairer and it was their job to diagnose CORRECTLY the cause of the failure and take the appropriate action, they clearly didn't so they have been negligent and caused the subsequent failure of repair so they should now carry the cost of the entire repair.

[Freewheeler]

Thanks Genie, I totally agree with you but it's like
My pal spoke with the independent engineer earlier who said he's seen similar problems with the RS6 before! The extra power and torque of the big V8 seems to put undue stress on the shell thus causing structural problems and similar!! We've also put the matter with Audi UK who've all but washed their hands with it!! I was wondering if any other owners have had similar issues?

[lambogenie]

I've put a post up on rs246.com for you to see if the RS6 guys can shed any light on the subject. TBH i've owned nothing but S and RS audis for 9 years and never seen anything like this before, they are usually over-engineered in that respect and lots of the RS cars are heavily modded with suspension and power increases and nobody has reported anything like this so i'd be surprised if that was the reason. Not surprised Audi UK don't want to know with a new RS6 on the way, but that may be a good line of attack for a contribution from them - the last thing they need is a stink in the motoring press about faulty welding on RS6's when theres a new one coming and customers to be found.

I think your best line of attack still will be the repairs warranty, they should at least stand the 2.5K work you already paid and at most only charge for fixing the other leak. 7 grand seems at 70 quid an hour thats 100 hours labour - you could strp a RS6 compeltely and reshell it for cheaper than that.

[Freewheeler]

Thanks again mate, I'll keep you posted as to what happens later in the week!

PW