Any pre 2011 Audi Owners?
 

Im extremely interested in picking up a 2006-2008 Audi A3, so I figured I'd connect with some owners and get some voice on your cars.

My advice would be to buy the 3.2L VR6.

They sound amazing. My only issue is that I want something on the cheaper end. I'm 18 and the FRS is currently my only car, I just want something I can relax in and keep the miles down on my frs with. Watching so many reviews of the A3 it looks like a sweet car.

There's one here for $3,999 and I'm currently talking to the dealer about potentially setting up an appointment to go check it out. I really want to find one that already had the water pump and timing belt kit redone, but if not a friend of mine works on his Mk6 all the time and the setup is quite the same. The monthly payment on a car like that would only be like $75-80 and my insurance would be something between $50-80 if I went under my dad as an additional driver.

If you have to finance a $4000 car, you should probably save up for a little while longer.

Edit: If you also need to commit insurance fraud to be able to afford insurance, you probably shouldn't be buying the car

Well unless you want to do this every 25k miles otherwise the engine is pretty much a ticking time bomb. Once it goes it's a new camshaft at the very least.

With the VR6 you pretty much only have to deal with the plastic coilpack casings and the plastic pulley guides for the timing chain cracking, and no fucking direct injection carbon build-up bullshit.

My dealer used to keep a new 2.0T BPY engine in the back for warranty swaps. :lol:

[ame="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Z_cNq211bM"]VW/Audi FSI 2.0T Cam Follower Replacement DIY - YouTube[/ame]


BTW don't listen to this guy about FSI we don't have stratified mode here in North America.

And don't forget to fix the front subframe with a TyrolSport DeadSet Rigid Subframe Collar Kit otherwise the whole fucking thing would one day fall off. :lol:

There's a reason why these stupid cars are worthless. When I want to relax I drive a really old Lexus. :D

The thing is.. that really isn't that bad, lets look at it like this.

If i can find a 90k A3 that just had the Timing Belt Kit and the entire Waterpump replaced, transmission is in decent condition, thats a $36 job every 2 years and thats if I daily drive it. Good friend of mine is going to Germany over the summer to go to school at Audi / VW so I'm not extremely worried about labor, things like this will be me bringing my car over and some lunch kind of thing.

I do completely get where you're getting at with the ticking timebomb thing, If I could find one thats 1-3 owner service records kind of thing thats what im aiming at.

I am not sure I get the relax thing, I think the 86 is a pretty nice place to be...at least as nice as an A3...as far as keeping the miles off, eh, I don't think our cars are special enough to worry about - especially at the cost of $150+/mo (not including the maintenance of an older Audi which would certainly be higher than your twin)

well..
 

If you have to put "not a troll" as your signature and you reply like this ^^^^, perhaps you need to reconsider your signature.

Jaden

You just got trolled son

Cole is definitely not trolling. He may be blunt and rude, but its the truth.

At least there's some members on here that can use their brain for a bit of critical thinking, rather than knee-jerk-butt-hurt reactions that lead to smashing a keyboard out of frustration.

I"m sorry that's opinion, not the truth...
 

Firstly, who is he to decide that someone should or shouldn't finance a 4000 dollar car? That's not truth, that's opinion.

Secondly, You can be on your parents insurance if you live with them or are in college until you're 25, so who says he's committing insurance fraud?

He's just being a douche is what he's doing and for no other reason than to be one.

Maybe he should change the signature from, 'not a troll', to 'not a troll, just a douche'

Jaden

p.s. Cole? Critical thinking? LOL spouting off opinion and uninformed b.s. is NOT critical thinking...

:popcorn:

At least where I'm from, if someone else is listed as the primary driver of a car that you're driving the most, that's what is called insurance fraud.

Typically, when you're on your parent's insurance, you're not driving full time.

Yep!


Second Driver Insurance: Important to consider

Second driver insurance should be chosen only if the person is truly a secondary driver and drives the car only occasionally. Remember that insurance company can always investigate the case and deny the claim coverage if they find out the fraud (e.g. that the secondary driver is actually a primary driver or that a car was used for business although it was only claimed to be used for pleasure).
Secondary driver insurance is not a way to get a cheaper insurance policy for a younger driver. Insurance companies look both at the primary driver and at the number of cars in the household. In addition to that they also look at the number of drivers in the household. In general, it is not permitted to have one primary driver on two cars in the household, if there is another driver in the household. In some cases insurers can allow it, but will require a signed endorsement filed by a parent stating that another driver will not drive the vehicle.

https://insureye.com/what-is-second-driver-insurance/

In the US...
 

In California in the US. All drivers in a household are covered under a single policy for all cars on the policy.

My wife and I have separate policies and we have to specifically have driver exclusions that are signed by each of us, stating that we are not covered under the policy.

There are no secondary drivers, just members of the household of driving age.

Jaden

Luckily both our children are too young to drive still, otherwise our insurance premiums would be much higher.

That's some Stephen King level horror right there.

It may vary by state, but I don't think there is a limit of age for auto insurance, depending on the owner of the car. For example if I own a car but my 28 year-old son drives it, I can insure it, and list him as primary driver.

That said, everyone on here is correct on the "insurance fraud" part of listing someone as a secondary driver just to lower the rate on the car. If the insurance company can determine you are the primary driver of the car they can deny claims.

In fact some companies will not allow you to list someone as secondary driver unless they also have a car where they are listed as primary.

As the father of 3 sons, I've walked this tightrope for over a decade. The insurance costs for my FRS and MomHawk's Mustang is cut in half by having a car where our child was listed as primary driver. Not having a third car but listing them as secondary would have had almost no impact on the insurance costs.

As far as financing, well you can do whatever you want, but @Cole is right. Financing a $4000 car means you likely can't afford to support a $4000 car which will need care and feeding. But, admittedly I'm biased because I wouldn't finance any car so YMMV.

I owned an V6 A4 Quattro. If you buy an Audi then make sure that all the maintenance is up to date. Most the engines are interference engines and they also use timing belts rather than chains which means that it is very important to replace the belt at regular intervals. For the A4 that was 60,000 miles and the job was very expensive because the whole front of the car had to removed to get to the timing belt cover. By that I mean, front bumper, grill, radiator etc.

Audi also has a relatively fragile front suspension system which is all aluminum. I had an a-arm and a bearing that needed replaced at the same time as the timing belt. Once the oil change, cooling system fluid replacement and the other repairs were done the end result was a tab in the area of 2 grand.

Audi and VW also share the problem of the perpetual Check engine light. Fix one problem to get it out and another one crops up in a week or two. They are nice cars but like many if not most German engineered cars, they can get expensive to own once they are out of warranty. It is like the cars should be sold with an expiration date.

The cam follower thing @krayzie posted is real. My Golf R eats through cam followers for breakfast. I've had to replace them on the order of 20,000 miles untuned and 15,000 after tune.

It's a real pain in the ass, too. You have to bleed the fuel pressure, unhook the lines to the fuel pump, bleed the remaining fuel from the pump, then pull the pump just to examine it.

VW/Audis aren't quite as unreliable as everyone says they are, but they're a little expensive to fix sometimes, depending on how common the parts are and where they're coming from. In more recent days it's been a lot easier to find equivalent replacement parts that don't have to come from Germany and work just as well.

If you're dead set on it, I recommend trying to find someone on Audizine or the Vortex that can help you with a VCDS scan to see if there are any underlying problems that don't necessarily pop up on OBD-II. It's much more comprehensive and will show you failed electronics.

Hope this helps.

By the time they started to phase out the EA113 2.0T the dealer told me the engine has had its warranty coverage extended to 7 years / 191,000km due to a lawsuit for this flat tappet cam follower issue. I think EA888 is shit too but I digress.

Also good advice on getting VAGCOM/VCDS. Best $300 bucks I've ever spent for my Golf GTI.

I forgot to mention that I always kept a bottle of oil in the trunk parcel shelf for top ups.

Yeah I would have been surprised if that didn't happen, truthfully. The motor frustrates me but I still can't call it a bad motor. Also, fucking coil packs. I never did have an issue with oil, so that sounds like a case by case thing.

I really do love VCDS, you can do so much with it. I think the only thing that might be more versatile is BMW's system. I'm actually a bit pissed off right now... I have an RS3 on order and just found out today that I need a new cable because the HEX-CAN ones are no good past 2017. Of course.

Before my BRZ I had an 2006 A4 2.0T At the 120,000 mile mark it started to nickel & dime me. PCV, fuel line, HPFP cam follower, and other common problems all over the forums. At the 154,000 mark, the engine lost oil pressure on my commute. I sold the car to a guy who's dad was a tv repair man and could fix it.

Likes were the interior, 6-speed gearbox and it was fun to drive. Dislikes, like other German cars I've owned, is durability. They just don't last like Japan cars. They also don't handle as good as the hype either.

If you have to have one, buy one with low miles and learn to do maintenance. Best of luck.

Kevin

Hmm... $3,999....let’s say from experience, anything under $7k for a used car USUALLY (not all the time) but USUALLY requires you to fork out close to double what you pay for on maintenance items (I.e. brakes, tires, oil change, tranny oil)....a used car that cheap is never that cheap.. just a thought.

Double the price for universal maintenance items? I'm confused what you're trying to say here. Maintenance should still be happening on a pretty standard schedule, just more random shit is likely to break because everything is older.

When I was a kid, I had the shittiest 15 year old $600 Ford Explorer that somehow found its way to Nevada all the way from Canada. It must have been run through the saltiest roads on Earth and was rusted like you wouldn't believe. It was mechanically sound though. I changed the ATF, brake pads, cleaned the air filter, and just followed a proper maintenance routine on it and everything was perfectly fine for two years. Well, except for having to math the KPH to MPH in my head.

Just get it looked at properly before you buy, that's the main takeaway from all this.