skrabba

I've an 2006 A8 (short version)

I've been waiting on a Cooling Fan Assembly & Module since Dec of 2021 from my Audi repair guy. I've since gone back to the dealer who also says the part is not available and they have to get it from Germany. That was 4 weeks ago.

So is this unusual, and will this become an increasing problem for me with parts in general for my car?

Thanks for any advice. I love the car, but not much point if I can't drive it; it only has 75K miles on it so plenty of life left in it.

BTW, is it safe to drive for short distances of < 10 miles in this condition?

dvs_dave

Any reason you can’t source a used assembly from eBay or breakers yard?

Is it safe to drive without cooling fans? Depends if you want to risk overheating it? Will there be any traffic on the way, or open roads with no stopping? You can always put the heating on Hi so that you maintain some sort of cooling.

TSHong

Since I have a W12, a lot of my parts come from Germany. It usually only takes 2 weeks but that's from pre pandemic times. I did have to wait about 4 weeks for one of my oil separators because it was back ordered but i did get it.

skrabba

Beautiful looking car. The finish and detail looks a lot like mine.

Good to know about the parts eventually getting here. I will continue to wait I guess. As part of the repair they will do a timing belt change (to get at a thermostat) - I can only trust the dealer when they tell me all this (a $9K repair in total).

Re the Ebay parts, I don't trust them. I'd prefer to go with something that I know has an expected long lifespan as I don't want to do this again in the near future.

TSHong

Thanks for the compliment, I did but some few select ebay parts and have been lucky so far.

fjord

You should really go to a junk yard or pick one up from eBay. I had a spare and sent it to a forum member here for free a year or so ago. They are really expensive new and might cost as much as your car.

If you know how your cooling system operates you can run your car without fans for a long time. Regulating the heat and avoiding heavy traffic. I'm currently 850 miles away from home and have bad coolant temp sensor and the jet fans are annoying me so I disconnected them. I'll replace the thing for $6 when I'm back in my garage.

skrabba

If I keep the car moving and closely monitor the temperature, I'd think I could do 15-20 min trips without a problem. Am I correct?

I have a monitoring device on my ODB port and I see the coolant temperature get up to 175 and not much higher.