Morning all,
My first post on here despite lurking and reading for a little while to learn a bit about the C7/general issues.. I bought a 2016 A6 Allroad (218PS) in Feb and have had no issues with it since then - until now.. (It was only a matter of time, it's done 86k miles..). The day I bought the car and drove home, I notice the coolant was a little low so I bought some and topped it up to max and thought nothing more of it - since that point, I've done 2500 miles in it and thought I'd give it a check again. It was on the minimum line, and I think I can see the likely area (given a small drop of red water on the undertray) - is this likely to be a water pump issue given the location which is looking into the engine bay, from the front of the car on the right hand side of the floor (picture attached)? Or something else that the 3.0D is known for? I've got a warranty on the car but as I bought it from a dealer, the onus is really on him to fix it as the fault was there on purchase.
The second issue is an amber MIL light which came up on the dash a couple of days ago (not driven since). I've plugged a very simplistic wifi OBD fault code reader onto the car and had code P20EE & 17277 come up which I believe relate to a NOx sensor below threshold, but I can't get much further than that to work out which one with my device. I probably should just take this one to get sorted under warranty (but I know how these places like to squirm their way out of paying for things like this) so I'm trying to do a bit more homework. Do the codes I've mentioned relate to a specific NOx sensor or is it too difficult to tell that from those codes and more investigation is required?
I'd quite like to get VCDS at home as I'm a fairly competent home/amateur mechanic and I suspect it won't be the last time I need to diagnose something - what's the best way of doing so? I've seen lots of cables and CD's on ebay claiming to be the real deal - should I trust this or is there a better/more sensible option to getting access to some more advanced diagnostics for it?
As far as the car goes, I absolutely love it. It does everything I wanted it to and I'm even growing fond of the "brown" paintwork.. Picture of the car attached on a recent trip into Wales because why not!
Any thoughts / help you can give would be greatly appreciated.
Thank you!
Chris