2009 Audi A3 Convertible 1.8 tfsi Sport with 125,000 miles. I recently bought this on a summertime whim knowing it had high oil consumption but it's even worse than the seller claimed. It's only about 200 miles per litre.

The car runs beautifully and seems to be about as powerful as it should be. Fuel consumption about 38 mpg. It doesn't leak, doesn't smell and I've not seen any smoke even though I've driven mostly with it open so I'm at a total loss about where the oil goes to! I've looked at dozens of posts and videos on the net and it seems to be an incredibly common occurrence with all sorts of car engines and, for the Audi TFSI engine, it's most likely either a duff PCV or gummed up oil control rings. Receipts show the seller had spent a lot the last few years on repairing leaking seals and, in particular had the 'oil breather valve' replaced by a new one at enormous cost a year ago.

PCV When I take off the oil filler cap with engine idling there's no blowout of fumes and the engine pitch changes very slightly. I THINK this means the PCV is OK but if anyone can suggest a better test other than trial and error replacement I'd like to know.

Oil control rings Otherwise I'd appreciate any advice out there about oil treatments. I've just learnt about Forte Oil Fortifier which you just top up with for about £15. It's the simplest and cheapest but does it really do anything? At present I'm planning to carry out a long cylinder soak for 2-3 days using Berryman B12 - I've ordered two x 440 ml containers intending really to only use one. I'll follow this with an oil/filter change using Liqui Moly Proline engine flush and refilling with Mannol Elite 5-40 high ester oil. Any suggestions, advice and comments on this plan would be very gratefully received!

BTW I recently posted about my passenger door lock problem and this is now all sorted thanks partly to the help from this forum.

For a little while some of the TFSI engines were notorious for extremely high oil consumption. As far as I recall they required re-designed piston rings from Audi to solve the problem. If yours is one of those affected engines then nothing you can do by way of additives or treatments will help. Doubtless that is why the previous owner sold the car.

Sorry, but I believe you have bought a lemon.

Thank you for your comment Cliffcoggin. I'm a chartered engineer and I think I understand the situation. I fully realise that a proper solution is an engine rebuild with the later piston design but yours is an extra-ordinarily unhelpful comment for a £2000  2009 car. What I am looking for is merely to mitigate the situation, not a proper cure. I remain optimistic despite your gloomy comment and hope that others out there are more knowledgeable and helpful.

I repeat "nothing you can do by way of additives or treatments will help". Sorry you find that unhelpful. Would you prefer me to have advised you to spend silly amounts of money on useless materials? It's your money to waste as you want, but don't expect me to condone it.

Glad the forum was helpful regarding the central locking 🙂 

I'd recommend getting it checked a a garage, an Audi independent specialist if possible. 

Is the car pumping out blue smoke? 

Have you checked for any oil leaks, such as from the oil cooler or turbo? 

You might have to remove the undertray and put cardboard under it to test for a leak or see if the engine is coated in oil. 

But as Cliff has highlighted It is a common fault with some Audi engines of that period. Piston rings were not not up to par until 2010 but my early 2010 2.0 TSI is fine. There were lots of models affected across the VAG group and we're fixed under warranty.

I wouldn't have thought your 12 year old motor would be covered now, but worth a shot speaking to Audi. This will depend on the cars service history and mileage.

But ultimately you would need new piston rings to cure the problem.

Steve Q: I'd already covered these in my post: no smoke, no smell, no leaks.

Steve Q and cliffcoggin. I appreciate your concerns to save me wasting my money on snake oil products but there is a world of difference to risk spending tens of pounds for trying out gum-loosening additives and knowing there will be thousands of pounds to rebuild the engine. My view is simply that it sounds logical and it's worth a try. I've seen many photos of the gummed up oil pasages in Audi piston rings of that particular 2 year period. The drain holes were simply too fine and, in fact, an English manufacturer supplies a better design of rings compatible with those pistons. In an effort to reduce engine friction and hence increase fuel efficiency, Audi had also reduced the spring strength. Ie the pistons were simply easier to slide up and down but at what later cost!

My post was simply asking whether others in UK had similar experience and could help me. Neither of your answers was of any help.

I don't know if either of you are aware but the internet is full of accounts of successes (and some failures) with these methods of un-gumming oil control rings on a variety of engines. It's not just the Audi tfsi that suffers: Kia, Toyota and Volvo 5 cylinder turbo have also been mentioned. There are dozens of YouTube videos. Maybe Americans are more open minded or are they all liars?  I've pasted in just one comment that I found on an American Audi forum:

"I now have 82,000 miles, I tried the Liqi Moly flush 2 times as well as running some marvel mystery oil but nothing slowed down the oil burn, it got as bad as 1 quart in 550 miles. I finally tried the piston soak method with Berryman B12 last week and it worked!!! 700 miles so far and only a small change on the dipstick level."

I'll keep you posted on my success or failure.     

Hello Andy,

I’ve distanced myself from this thread, but I’m sorry to hear that answers to date have not been of any help. 
I/we don’t know what your particular discipline is in in the sphere of Chartered Engineer, but to me, the logic seems to point that you went into purchasing this vehicle, in knowledge that it was burning oil, and it would be reasonable to expect that the seller would ‘under estimate’ the extent. I don’t like to assume anything, but we just hope that it was ‘bought cheap’. 
What I am unsure of, what was the extent of your knowledge on the issue before ( in caps) you bought it. 
 

If it was as you write now, then you entered into the purchase with your eyes wide open - unlike other poor unfortunates on this site - and if so, did you do so on the basis of placing your faith in sorting this out, via. the course of action you now intend to carryout? 
Would I be on the right line by now thinking that any contra opinion is seen as unhelpful, and what you were hoping for from here was ‘ Sounds a great idea Andy’. 
Now whether you are amenable to this suggestion, or not, but what would be great would be if you were to add to our knowledge bank, and actually try your procedure - and most important to others on here - report back on the subsequent figures regarding the reduction in the vehicle’s oil consumption.

Would you be prepared to do that for us Andy?

Kind regards,

Gareth. 

 

I already said I'd give feedback on my success or failure!

I thought this dedicated forum would have knowledgeable people like some American forums. I was expecting technical knowledge. For example, I joined a Honda forum with very detailed questions about the innards of the carbs on my son's CB600 F3. I got incredibly helpful replies from people that obviously got their hands dirty. I've a lifelong interest in bikes and cars and was doing all my own servicing including some engine rebuilds of both bikes and cars until I got too old.

I don't think a reply saying "you shouldn't have bought it" is of any use to man nor beast. I do, of course, understand and to some extent sympathise with the context but it was best left unsaid. That's the sort of useless and indeed harmful comment you should be moderating in my view.

 

I've tried to help you, and I haven't been negative just advised you. I'd missed the part about no smoke or smell. With no smoke or smell it could still be a leak. 

I find you're not being particularly nice when I've tried to help you. We're passionate about the Audi brand and are enthusiasts but not all mechanics! 

I did some Googling for you which is where my advice has come from. 

As I've never used any of the products you have are mentioning I can't advise. 

Please note as moderators we are all volunteers and try to help in our spare time. 

Well, I need someone who is technically literate Steve Q! I asked highly technical questions and was hoping for highly technical responses. Unfortunately, I don't think this forum is up to it. Being passionate about Audis is all very well but I think it's better to think of them just as glorified VWs, warts and all.

2 minutes ago, Andy33 said:

Well, I need someone who is technically literate Steve Q! I asked highly technical questions and was hoping for highly technical responses. Unfortunately, I don't think this forum is up to it. Being passionate about Audis is all very well but I think it's better to think of them just as glorified VWs, warts and all.

What's with the rudeness? 

You don't like the answers use Google, Facebook etc. makes me question what research you did in the first place regarding these engines. 

Alternatively, take it to a garage for a proper diagnosis like every car owner who isn't mechanically minded has to do. 

 

Hello again Andy,

Thank you for confirming you will respond to the forum with the outcome of your experiment, but I thought it worth repeating the question since, even at that stage, you were making it clear that  you were dissatisfied with the forum responses. 

My response included a number of questions which I note you have neglected to answer, but still….

I’m not speaking for any other members on here, but your assumption that we are not like your Honda forum advisers who get their hands dirty. I can assure you Andy that that certainly doesn’t apply to me, and I could brag for hours about my restoration, and other engineering skills developed over more than 5 decades - none of which were associated with my profession - but I choose not to. 
I feel I must apologise for the resultant dissatisfaction experienced, even though I’m not really reading much into what may be termed honest opinion. 

It might be worth sitting down with a couple of glasses of wine and just looking forward to hopefully positive results from your experiment. If it works long term - great. If it doesn’t, it’s only money that has been thrown away, and no one has been hurt.

Good luck and contentment Andy.

Kind regards,

Gareth. 

 

13 hours ago, Andy33 said:

Well, I need someone who is technically literate Steve Q! I asked highly technical questions and was hoping for highly technical responses. 

Nonsense. You asked a vague question about oil additives. "I'd appreciate any advice out there about oil treatments" were your precise words. That's not a technical question, nor is it framed in the precise terms one would expect from a supposed engineer. And when the replies failed to match your hopes of a magic solution you resorted to accusations of unhelpfulness and ignorance. An old adage comes to mind here: "You can lead a horse to water but you can't make it drink."

For an alternative argument consider the matter in a logical manner. If the snake oils you are investigating really worked, do you think Audi would have spent hundreds of thousands of pounds on an engineered solution if a few bottles of thixotropic viscosity modifiers such as polyisobutylene were sufficient?

I'm signing out of this forum but I thought you might like to learn that Audi in America advocate a long-soak method of oil flushing before oil change to try to solve this very common problem. It sounds very severe to me - 45 minutes at 3000 rpm after adding the substance - so I'd have reservations. But you can't buy it retail anyway, only through Audi dealers. 

 

Good luck with that Andy.

 

Have you progressed this matter during the month Andy? 

Yes, I did progress reasonably successfully thanks Magnet.

I waited a while before reporting back because I've done only low mileage with the Audi, my second 'sunny day car'. I posted on my partial success in September. Basically, my experience is that the cylinder soak method is at least a partial cure although I'm enough of an engineer to know that the real solution is to upgrade pistons and oil control rings. However, I'm an 80 year old pensioner and this is a 16 year old £2,000 car! 

I still think the response on this forum that nothing could be done without a new engine or at least new pistons was incredibly unhelpful. As a moderator I think you should consider 'moderating out' that sort of ignorance! Any fool can recommend a new engine. Surely an owners' forum is for helpful comment gained from experience, not parroting an Audi dealer?

30 minutes searching on the internet will reveal that loads of engines from that period suffered from high oil consumption due to sticky oli control rings, even including some from the much-lauded Mercedes and Lexus. I think it was a sort of fashion at that tme in the early 2000s to design engines with less springy piston rings with the aim of reducing internal friction and hence increasing the all-important MPG. It seems they later learned how to do it better. This is the sort of more informed feedback I believe an owners' forum is for. I hope you might bear this in mind in future.

I thank you for your comments Andrew, but your update  really leaves me none the wiser in terms of whether your system has worked to any reasonable degree, but thanks for returning anyway. 

It’s pleasing to hear that you consider yourself to be ‘..enough of an engineer..’ This would at least help more-helpful- than-I members to take due notice of your opinions.
‘I’m an 80 year old pensioner…’. Great, so you are younger than me then. I avoid personal criticism on here or any face to face dealings, based on much earlier experience of when this is resorted to, then the argument is lost.

I wish you contentment with all other forums you take part in Andrew, and as always, you are very welcome to  err your views on here, as long as they aren’t personal. 
Take care.
Regards,

Gareth. 

48 minutes ago, Andy33 said:

Yes, I did progress reasonably successfully thanks Magnet.

I waited a while before reporting back because I've done only low mileage with the Audi, my second 'sunny day car'. I posted on my partial success in September. Basically, my experience is that the cylinder soak method is at least a partial cure although I'm enough of an engineer to know that the real solution is to upgrade pistons and oil control rings. However, I'm an 80 year old pensioner and this is a 16 year old £2,000 car! 

I still think the response on this forum that nothing could be done without a new engine or at least new pistons was incredibly unhelpful. As a moderator I think you should consider 'moderating out' that sort of ignorance! Any fool can recommend a new engine. Surely an owners' forum is for helpful comment gained from experience, not parroting an Audi dealer?

30 minutes searching on the internet will reveal that loads of engines from that period suffered from high oil consumption due to sticky oli control rings, even including some from the much-lauded Mercedes and Lexus. I think it was a sort of fashion at that tme in the early 2000s to design engines with less springy piston rings with the aim of reducing internal friction and hence increasing the all-important MPG. It seems they later learned how to do it better. This is the sort of more informed feedback I believe an owners' forum is for. I hope you might bear this in mind in future.

Hi mister engineer I hate to point out that had you done this research before buying you would have walked away, from the top it had nothing to do with fashion or less springy rings, it was done to decrease friction thus decreasing emissions via the engines pistons not having to be dragged more aggressively up and down the bores, it was a cheap and nasty idea which is why they eventually offered a recall which involved the fitting of a short block assembly with the normal type of pistons and rings, that was the only way to eradicate the problem, later they found that the required emission reductions could be obtained by changing to electronic steering racks as the drag factor is 80% less, go again the advent of the freewheeling alternator pulley which only comes in when the battery requests more charge [Smart Charging], I think we have discussed this particular problem on this forum more times than I can remember which is why your earlier replies were not what you wanted to hear, we as a forum are not without any informed knowledge just a non biased opinion that the only real cure is renewal, thats why no one recommended chucking a can of Doctor Feelgood in the oil every so often it wont cure the root cause of the problem it just masks it, just like if you have a tooth infection they give you pain killers, if you are happy with a self found partial cure, knock yourself out.

Steve.