Audi A4 1.8t Repairs
Every car over a year old is going to need some kind of repairs. My Audi was no exception. This section will be used to go over the repairs that I've done, many of which are common problems on the B5 chassis. The maintenance and repairs commonly needed on these cars are not for the feint of heart. If you like having your weekends free I suggest buying a japanese car instead!
Repair #001 : Gauge bulbs
When I bought the car about half of the guage bulbs were out. About 2/3 of the tach was out and part of the speedometer. The other guages outside the picture were out too. The hard part was going through most of them checking for bad bulbs. The filament is super small. I got a little surprise when I took the cluster out! What the hell!? Some jackass super glued and hard wired a bulb to the back of the tachometer. I put some spade connectors on it so I could take it on and off. I'm not sure what I'm going to do to fix this for the long term. I'm going to have to cut it off.
All done for the moment. Notice the brake bulb now works. The trip meter light went out but I fixed it later.
Repair #002 : Oil drain plug
The Oil drain plug on this car was stripped off. In order to do an oil change I needed a new one, and, it turns out that there was a change in the design at some point so I had to order both. The top two plugs are the for the differential and take a 10mm hex key. The bottom two are the two designs of oil pan drain plugs. On my car the plug on the lower right.
Repair #003 : Constant velocity joint
Yum! I mail ordered for the 14mm hex key socket to get the axle bolt off. I've since seen those sockets at Autozone and on ECS tuning's website. The CV joint that I bought from Blauparts came with a regular 27mm(?) bolt. This project took me a long time because of stuck ball joints. I took the lower ones off because the infamous upper pinch bolt was stuck inside the front uprights. Once I got the end of the axle free from the knuckle I put the old axle bolt back in and used that to pop the CV joint off.
The new joint went on without much trouble. Time consuming since it was the first one I've done but not difficult. That style of boot clamp sucks! Don't ever buy a new boot with that style.
I have since done the cv boot on the drivers side front as well. I caught it before it broke but only just. There were cracks in the rubber all along the seams. As a bonus it came with the good boot clamps too. No axle bolt, cv joint washers, or c clips though! (advance auto). The ECS cv boot kit is a great deal since it does have all of that stuff.
Repair #005 : Rear lower door trim
The rear passenger side lower door trim fell off of our A4 shortly after we acquired it. I ordered the part from ECS and with it in hand tried to get the screw from the previous trim off of the bottom of the door. It's a Phillips head screw and it was rusted solid into the metal part of the last trim. With a helper to hold the other side of the screw with vice grips and my 1/2" drill we drilled through the head in about half a minute. I went slow so as not to drill into the paint on the door. I replaced the Phillips head with a 2.5mm hex key bolt to stay with the overall Audi-ness of the vehicle(this should absolutely be a stainless bolt if you ever want to take it out again). It looks so much better! A week after I fixed that one the drivers side fell off.