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Hi. New member here - but not new to car forums. Thought I wanted to share my experience.
If you have an A6 (C6) with the 4.2 V8 or and S4 with same engine or a V10 Engine with a shaft driven power steering pump, where the power steering has gone completely then - continiue.... :-)
The car (a 2006 A6 4.2 V8) lost power steering completely and made a whining noise from the pump, cold as varm, any rpm. First I tried to flush the system with no luck. Then moved on to the pump.
The pump it self is located deep, DEEP, in the engine left side, and if you wanna do this your self you will need a lift to get the car up on. All the work has to be done from below.
In order to get to the pump, you need to remove left front wheel, then remove the anti roll bar. Then remove the flange on the subframe (its close to the pump) which will allow the subframe to get loose and drop a few mm. Then unscrew the big bolt that holds the subframe (front right bolt on the subframe). Then unscrew the left engine mount. Now you have acces. The pump is hold in place with two "normal" size bolt and one "large" bolt. These are "accesable" from the rear of the gear housing where the pump is mounted on to. You need to remove the front left drive shaft guard cover and loosen the bold that holds the tranmission oil cooler lines. Now you can unscrew all the bolts.
It turned out that the pump it self is fine, but the toothed shaft sleeve that connects the pump shaft with the gear train shaft lost all its teeth. All the teeth were worn and made the sleeve loose its grip onto the shaft. (thats why no fluid was moving in the system when looking into the power steering reservoir)
A new sleve from Audi is about 80,- $ Audi Part number 0 079-145-258-A
Power steering pump is 900,- $ Audi part number 0 4F0-145-155-B
I am gonna try to use the old pump since its fairly expensive and I got the car cheap. But I would recommend that if you go through the trouble to remove all this crap to get to the pump, you might as well change it with a new one - But I will take my chance.... let see how long it last :-)
Anyway - good luck with it and you need a lot of tools and extentions to do this work.
The engineer who designed it this way should be shot and left in the desert.... :-)
I had the same problem, but somehow overlooked the coupling that was stripped. I ended up spending a couple grand and went through 3 pumps and 2 racks with a couple different shops before i decided that i would just fix it myself. The only hard part is the transmission cooling lines that block access to one bolt, but are very easy to force up with no side effects.
Anyways, the pump should be fine. Theres nothing to break in them besides the pressure valve getting stuck open, which i haven't heard of happening yet.
To be honest, out of everything on this car the PS pump is relatively easy to change. I took it off so many times that i can replace it in 2 hours now. Not that i ever want to touch it again...
So it turned out the problem came back. Apparently the grooves on the pump shaft were rounded off too much, so the new sleve eventually failed like the old one. There was too much gap/clearence between the new sleeve and the pump shaft.
Because of the insane price of the new pump - I decided to do a little testing. At first I wanted to drill a hole through the shaft and sleeve to insert and tension pin. But its very hard steel to drill in and most machine shop in my area wouldn't do it.
One suggested to glue it in loctite metal/cement epoxy (and he was very specific about it HAD to be Loctite and "metal/cement epoxy"
Although I am pretty skeptic I can see the logic that the remaning grooves on both pump and sleeve, should give an optimum base and surface area for the epoxy to set in.
So I have ordered a brand new pump and brand new sleeve incase (when) this cheap solution fails... but then again.... I might be strong enough....
I will get back with an update later on to see how it goes.
Hi Christian, did the new pump and coupling fix it for good? I have the same problem on my allroad 4.2L right now. But I can't help but think that there is a different root cause then just wear of the coupling/gear over time.
Yes..... new pump and new sleve fixed the problem.
I dont know why the sleve fails.... but you have to get a new pump (the pump part it self is fine, its the grooves on the shaft that wears).... so the only solution is a new pump and a new sleeve.
Sorry..... but I tried everything.
If you can weld the sleve to the old pump then you should be fine..... except it take some kind of bad *** welder to avoid melting the bearing rubber seal....!!!!
Point is.... to fix this.... = new pump, new sleve.... no getting around it
i found out they do actually make repair kits for $80 or so to replace the splines on the pump without replacing the pump. So you can actually fix this for $150 in parts: a new sleeve and a new coupler. But given how much labor cost was to get to this part, I opted to replace the pump altogether today.
I really doubt the repair kit, and as you point out - once you decide to go through the amount of work to change the pump, might as well just get a new.
I tried the epoxy option just to share my experience if it would work or not... which it diddn't.
With a little research it should be possible to get a new pump in the $350-$500.- range, still not cheap but better than dealer prices.
Yes..... new pump and new sleve fixed the problem.
I dont know why the sleve fails.... but you have to get a new pump (the pump part it self is fine, its the grooves on the shaft that wears).... so the only solution is a new pump and a new sleeve.
Sorry..... but I tried everything.
If you can weld the sleve to the old pump then you should be fine..... except it take some kind of bad *** welder to avoid melting the bearing rubber seal....!!!!
Point is.... to fix this.... = new pump, new sleve.... no getting around it
Hi, just about to do it and engine mount as I’m doing it.
Can I do this in my garage using jacks under the car ? Anything I need to be aware of ?
How long did it take you ?
09-06-2016, 05:16 PM
2006 A6 4.2 shaft driven power steering pump.
