cliffcoggin

As Steve said, it's likely to be the instrument cluster at fault. You have the options of a new one from Audi for silly money, (don't even consider a secondhand one,) or repair of yours for about £180. Search this forum for other examples of this fault.

Kaci. Please add a text version of your advertisement. Not everyone will open links to external sources.

I reckon white smoke rules out electrical insulation burning because that would be brown, so that leaves exhaust fumes and scorched glycol (coolant). If the exhaust is leaking to the extent of filling the cabin with fumes I would expect you to be able to hear a lot more exhaust clatter than normal, and possibly even see or hear the gas escaping if you put your head under the car. Is that so? If the cooling system is leaking I would expect a need to top up the radiator header tank frequently, and possibly overheating of the engine. Is that so?

And what colour is the smoke?

What does the smoke smell of? What colour is the smoke? The stink of burning electrical insulation and that of exhaust fumes and that of scorched coolant are very different. If you do not know the difference it is not advisable to use the car until it is fixed. You have not mentioned the fuel, so be aware that the fire risk is much greater if your car is fuelled by petrol than diesel. Diesel is surprisingly hard to ignite.

The oil grade will depend on the climate it is to be used in, so there no one single grade of oil that is ideal around the world, hence the need to consult Audi in your country of use. I have never seen any oil data stickers on cars in Britain, either under the bonnet or elsewhere on the car. Perhaps that is a uniquely American practice. As Magnet mentioned, get the information from Audi.

Ask the dealer if he will guarantee, at his expense, that a new unit will solve the problem entirely. That should tell how much confidence you can put on his diagnosis. On a more general note, it is a shame main dealers do not allow customers to have direct communication with the mechanics, or technicians as they like to refer to them nowadays. The more barriers between the man who pays the bill and the man who repairs the car leads to distrust and unneccesary costs. It is one of the reasons I abandoned Audi main dealerships in favour of a small independent specialist where I could talk directly to the man who got his hands dirty.

Adrian. There is no magic oil, no insider knowlege, and no secret fix for your problem. To state matters bluntly, the engine is a clapped out heap of scrap iron which needs to be either repaired or replaced. It really is as simple as that. You know the cost of repair, you know the cost of the huge amounts of oil it is drinking, and you know the cost of repeatedly throwing money at a mechanic. It's time to use that knowledge to arrive at a decision on the car's fate. I am sorry to add to your misfortune, but this problem is well known in the trade so car dealers are unlikely to offer you more than a few hundred pounds for it, no matter how good the rest of the car may be. Bear that in mind when making the decision.

Given that Adblue is part of the car's emissions control system, I wonder if its deletion will affect the MOT test.

Are you saying you bought the car without being able to test drive it?

Good job. The right tracking should treble the life of the tyres. PS. I like the humour in "ditch finders" and "Norn Irn".

The DSG should be comparable to a manual change box in terms of power transmission efficiency. One of the incentives to develop DSG was to eliminate the hydraulic slip associated with torque converters. (As an aside I might add that later torque converters sometimes had a device to lock the TC at high speed, thus reducing the overall loss.)

Assuming you don't mean Extra Sensory Perception, what exactly does not work about yours? Some details might help to get some more helpful replies.

Take it back to the dealer. It may be a simple fix or it may be an expensive one. Either way you should not have to bear the cost.

Sorry if you feel insulted, but to quote your own words "The jack looked ok but I dont know much about jacks."

Oops. Silly me. I read so many topics elsewhere concerning electric cars I have got used to mispelling of Li-ion by many folk.

There's no point having a jack and wheel if you don't know how to use them. Isn't the information printed in the car handbook? I don't know about the A4, but the A3's jacking points are just behind the front wheel arch and just before the rear wheel arch. Fot goodness sake don't jack up at the wrong locations else you will push a hole through the floor of the car and possibly injure yourself.

Yes it was a battery problem all along, as we all suspected from the start. The ABS pump was a red herring. Have you had the battery coded to the car yet? You will need to in order to get all functions working properly.

As the driver of an electric car that is reliant on a lithium-ion battery for motive power I don't believe Li-ion technology is inherently rubbish, however it does require a sophisticated BMS (battery management system) to ensure safe, reliable, and durable operation. I doubt that the simple charging circuits on a 12 year old car will have that capability, so it seems to me that to fit a 12 volt Li-ion battery to the A3 is both wastefully expensive and a retrograde step in terms of performance. A plain lead-acid battery would do the job adequately.

Yes you should, though it is not clear to me if you refer to the engine fan or the cabin fan. The fan will knock it self out by continually running at high speed, and will increase fuel consumption a little.

Speak up. I can't hear you.

I very much doubt it, unless you go to a breaker's yard which would be more time and effort than finding the original. There can't be that many places for the knob to hide in such a small car.

The service history gap means either that it was not serviced at all, or the servicing was done by somebody without access to the Audi record system. In your position I would walk away from the car.

You need to get the new battery coded to the car before some of the sophisticated functions will work.

If the car is in good shape and has been well cared for then I see no problem in driving there and back. However I would test its condition well in advance of the holiday by putting it under stress on a long fast drive of at least half an hour. That should reveal any defects to be sorted out before departure.