katherine Goodrich

Hi, I thought I would give you an update on my A4 Avant. Our local garage stripped the head down and found that a spring on one of the inlet valves in cylinder one had broken, causing no combustion and therefore zero compression. It was nothing to do with the cam chain! This explains why only one cylinder was affected and why the engine had NO power. The head is going to an engine specialist on Saturday to be fully reconditioned and will basically be returned like a brand new head, complete with new strengthened timing chain, all new gaskets and seals, etc. Hopefully the bill won't be over £1,200 all in. I love Audi's! I have a 21 year old Audi TT Mark 1 Quattro Coupe 1800 225bhp and a 9 Year old Mark 2 Audi TT 1.8 S Line TFSI. I am SO relieved about the diagnosis of the A4! I went to the Audi Beaulieu event as I'm such an enthusiast! Thank you for your input!

Hi Gareth & Ninjag, Thank you for your posts. All I know so far is there's no compression at all on cylinder one. The car will start but goes straight into limp mode and it would be impossible to drive it now. It was towed to a local garage. It has a camchain & has only done 77,000 miles and has been serviced regularly and until this disaster it drove like a dream. The garage have now been in touch & have contacted an engine rebuild specialist. Apparently this engine rebuild business say this is a fairly common problem with Audi's that have a cam chain - that the chain becomes loose and it misses a groove. Audi have told me these cam chains are not a serviceable part unlike cam belts and they say they can last the life of a vehicle. So - the plan of action is that the local garage will take the head off on Wednesday and it will go to be rebuilt. This will cost about £1,100. It will come back with a new strengthened cam chain, new gaskets, new tensioners. Then the local garage put it back together. The big concern though is if the the valve has damaged the piston, then it would apparently need a new engine! Fingers crossed........

Our A4 Avant 1.8 tfsi suddenly ran rough could only achieve 20mph. RAC tried a coil which made no difference. Got towed to local garage who diagnosed a stuck valve. They say it will cost 6 or7 hours labour to strip the engine down to get to the valve and we would be better to pay them to put a recon engine in!? Not being mechanically minded is this a sledge hammer to crack a nut or really would fixing a bent or stuck valve cost more to repair than an engine swap. Anyone else had this experience? Should I go to my audi main dealer and risk their coasts?