Stevey Y

Hi so far this week we have had Labour back tracking on the emissions target again due to Vauxhall and Nissan threatening to pull the plug on U.K. operations if the government dont ease up on the punitive fines if they dont meet their sales targets on new electric vehicles, how do you sell something that not many people want, then you have the European problems, VAG have thousands of brand new vehicles that have been parked up for a year or over both electric and fossil fuel, the problem there is most average Europeans can't afford to buy them as the prices have rocketed and the quality of build is no where near what it was, we know all about that, meanwhile the Chinese are flooding the market with cheap EVs but even they are not selling by the bucket load, to add to the woes of VAG Donald Trump is talking about higher tariffs on European cars,Jaguar are going to cut their dealerships by 75% and only sell all electric cars in wealthy areas, Porsche have stated that they will carry on with petrol car development and sales until someone forces them to stop, does anyone else sense Rebellion in the air, if Nissan decide to pull out the queues at the DWP offices will be outrageous in Sunderland, more waste of skilled labour with not enough supermarket jobs to go round, low wages and high prices create poverty and crime and at the end of the day recession. Steve.

Hi you can swap to 17 inch as long as you make sure the tyre/ wheel profile matches the 16 inch set up in overall diameter. Steve.

Hi most likely flywheel related as these often go before the clutch, the judder is defo the friction plate wearing or contaminated, how old is the clutch? Steve.

Hi Marta did mention give her a little oil, wait until the milage gets up and you are putting in a litre every 1500 miles that will be fun, you wont get great MPG as these cars are very heavy which why the diesels were always favourite because of the low end torque they produce, all makes of car have their faults but engine faults at the premium level they claim are actually unacceptable, I personally would never buy another one, overpriced parts, labour charges and insurance just dont stack up for a reason for owning one, the earlier cars are better and more robust but post 16 on I think they had convinced themselves electric was the future and cut back on the quality of the parts on fossil fuelled cars they built. Steve.

Hi unless you have microscope eyeballs you wont be able to see any degradation in the oil or the million parts of crud in the filter, just consider it a worthwhile expenditure as the alternatives wont be anywhere near as cheap, from experience if the oil comes out brown and burnt it is a precursor of future problems. Steve.

Sorry VCDS is a lot more expensive.

Hi it sounds like what you need, they are all going over to subscription now except for VCDS which inexpensive to buy in the first place, with regards codes the Audis will remember them for years if you dont clear them diagnostically, the systems are complex but have a monocular obsession with old codes. Steve.

Hi Terry just go on their site as often as not they are doing deals on bundles thats where I bought my Pro kit and you can only buy the tokens from them anyway, the tokens are only really used when you are doing something in depth or you have bought a car that is later with the new SFD incorporated in the software, [thats another story], if you have it you can check the car for codes relating to the handbrake and if you have none its probably the old problem of the pads sticking in the runners, if you have this advice you can do your own service mode take the callipers apart and either clean and put the old pads back or renew them which I suspect is what they want to do, and their prices for pads are eyewatering price wise, but instead go get some nice Brembo pads for about a third of the price on ebay, would suggest Carparts in motion, you can also do things that the dealer WONT DO like grease the slider pins for the calliper with silicon grease as this is what causes the pads to grip on as well when the sliders are dry and this extends the life of the pads, its the old adage before getting it to go faster, make sure it stops faster. Steve.

Hi Terry yes the OBDEleven is a first class tool for the average Diyer and at around £100 with a bundle of tokens it will save you a fortune in the long run, you can code pretty much anything on the car that you have replaced, read and clear faults, in fact it will pay for itself a thousand times during your ownership and if you dont quite understand the codes come back here, WIN,WIN. You can even reset your rear handbrake perimeters. Steve.

Hi its probably the EGR valve is knackered thats what kills the turbo and will keep blocking the DPF as there is no real control over the amount of exhaust gas the unit allows in so it blocks the DPF which in turn clogs the variable vane side of the turbo, all turbo diesels work on the same principle that everything has to be working properly, if one part of that process breaks down it affects the other two. Steve.

Hi Southend Audi and I think they were at the Eastwood end of the 127 until they moved up to the Rayleigh Weir. Steve.

Hi dont worry about yesterday its an Audi and sooner rather than later it will put a light on, to get the answer you will need a decent diagnostic platform like OBDEleven to find out what's wrong, the final analysis is that you will have to use your spanners and acquire a fair range of male and female torx bits in 1/4 drive and 3/8 drive as well as some hose clip pliers large/small, its all fun. Steve.

Hi my experience of this sort of thing comes from the late eighties when my friend had a water mist injection unit fitted to his car, £300, it was great for the first thousand miles, then not so great when it over injected and cracked two of his pistons, what new engine, needless to say the company that fitted it swore on a stack of bibles it was nothing to do with them. Steve.

Hi the Adblue is not a problem if you use an anti crystallisation additive in the tank and a fuel additive in the fuel tank that sort of holds the dreaded P2002 code at bay, everything in the engine bay of the Ultra equipped cars is agg to get to and generally speaking the part prices are blood, you probably own one of the last cars that were well built, cars after that were well built but with inferior quality parts especially rubber bushes on the suspension which frequently fail and crack or go soft, I bought my car off of the back of the legendary reliability, its not true on the newer models which have become far to complex electronically to the point where even the dealers can't fix them sometimes, I wish you luck. Steve.

Hi most of these wonder chips are designed around as Steve stated fooling the ECU, [Dangerous hobby] when you consider the amount of testing during development to achieve the best drivability under all circumstances, as Cliff stated you may be better served by getting things like the throttle body checked to make sure the butterfly valve is not sticking, the way the world is these days do you think you are going to get something amazing for that sort of money, if you are really keen you will spend three times that for a good solid re map. Steve.

Hi, well done, a lot of that is accumulated rust and crud from the block, I would recommend a complete drain down of the system and a refill with good quality antifreeze to prevent it happening in the future. Steve.

Hi try English, the code you have is for particulate filter bank 1 which is the low pressure cooler inside the DPF, its probably full of soot and Adblue crystals, the only real cure is to replace it. Steve.

Hi have you tried E bay Europe loads of breakers over there, alternatively PM Magnet [Gareth] he mentioned a place the other day that makes subframes but for the life of me I can't remember the name of it. Steve.

Hi most modern engines post 2009 wont have a pre set cold start enrichment process as the ECU looks after all that so the emissions are kept lower, you might notice that the idle revs are about 100rpm higher in really cold weather, it doesn't need it as the vehicles are all fitted with close coupled catalytic converters that heat to running temp in less than a minute and over enrichment kills the cat in record time. Steve.

Hi no way you will be blackballed as a non Audi owner, I as an ex Audi owner thought the same when mine went but due to open minded attitude of the moderators I have just been able to carry on, they all seem to realise as I do that all VAG model diesels operate the same way regardless of different engine designations, they even share a lot of the same DTCs and I would be more than happy to help you should you need it, just PM me, after all its a sad world when you can't help someone else, the small capacity TSFI units have to work a lot harder to get you what you want so longevity is not guaranteed and when you consider a lot of Audis, Q3,A3 share the same engine design you could still learn loads. Steve.

Hi if you connect up then start the car, go to engine and then select live data, you will get a white box come up with select channel put in 106 this should alter the display so you have the fuel pump pressure second display down the top display should be the fuel rail pressure if the pump display is doing anything over 45% at idle and rises way up when you rev it the pump is working overtime and is probably knackered, also watch for massive drops on the fuel rail pressure . Steve.

Hi excellent tutorial, well done. Steve

Hi post 15 is about right but get a late 16 if possible, with regard to the Passat I have one for a cab now and can't speak highly enough of it when bought it in feb this year it had 58k on the clock, it now has just under 90k on it and apart from discs and pads all round and the usual servicing its been brilliant, its only 150bhp but gets down the road a bit lively and returns about 40mpg around town and sixty on a run, the part prices are about a third of what I was paying on the Audi. Steve.

Hi dont be afraid of giving it some GBH as they are held on with spring clips, personally I would start from the top of the panel as most of that sort of panel have locating prongs in the bottom where it joins the solid plastic, also make sure you remove the parcel shelf first for easier access, Steve.

Hi the best idea is remove the rubber boot and see if there is enough slack to pull the plug out, other than that a suitable range of trim removal tools should supply you with the right tool to persuade the panel to come off, try looking on YouTube for a guide on how to remove the panel. Steve.