Mister Bally

Based on the price I paid for the car, service & maintenance parts costs, tires, insurance, license plate fees and of course gasoline; the car cost me $74,850.00 with 286,000 miles. That works out to 26.17 cents per mile. I did not factor in parking fees or road tolls but they were not significant. In case I missed something, please chime in.

Remember I donated the car with 286k miles so the tax write off was not much.

I also did not factor in any value for my time for virtually all of the labor I put in to the service & maintenance. If I value my spare time at $40 per hour and estimate 300 hours of my life put into service & maintenance time add anothe $12k to the cost and my cents per mile goes above 30.

Dad was a carpenter, he said that personal time is worth DOUBLE of what your salary & fringe is worth. I won't go there though. We all know cars are a big time waste of money. Especially anything beyong basic transportation. Then again, that's why all of us are here!

I would like to thank CBS or ABC for the unintended acceleration feature story even though quattros were not affected due to manual transmissions. They helped me save almost $8,000.00 which was better than the $5k rebate Audi was offering on automatic transmission cars during the summer of 1987. I picked mine up on the friday of the stock market mini-crash and then it really went to hell the following monday.

dwengi

I did the fuel pump at 225,000 miles and one more recently that I forgot to log.

The last time I did control arms the rubber was completely separated from the metal. The OE control arms were much more robust. I've had wheel bearings go and they are a PITA to change on the car - when everything is apart is is so easy to press them in/out. Same with CV boots - The inners never seem to wear out but while they are sitting on the garage floor I took the opportunity to just deal with it.

The downside of a TB failure is painful and expensive on an interference engine. Besides I think it is unusual for a water pump to go much more than 75K miles. Well, I own the tools so it easy to do and not too expensive.

I've seen pisc of rust-belt cars and that really would tend to dampen your enthusiasm. This is an original California car and is really clean and rust free. Even the driving around Tahoe does not have a negative effect because they don't use salt out here.

I don't mind the maintenance because i have 3 other vehicles to drive. At this point it has become a curiosity for me. Just how long will it go?

dwengi

I had a long commute, doing about 80 miles a day. Plus a lot of trips from the bay area to Tahoe which turns into a 600 mile weekend.

dwengi

I could see Audi sending me a big honking grill badge that would cause the thing to overheat and catch on fire.

Mister Bally

I remember when I bought mine I told the salesman I planned to get 250k miles out of it and he looked at me like I just threw up. Since I did not fit the typical demographic who purchases that car, I said it will have to last me that long to be worthwhile. Which it turned out to be.

We'll se how my '04 A8L works out. Only exterior thing to rust that everyone sees are the wiper arms. I just worry about salt & Magnesium Chloride disintegrating the crossmembers and other structural elements.

I recall only one outer CV joint boot and no inners during the life of the car. I just replaced the outer CV Joint because I ran it without much grease before I noticed that it was torn.

I'm also like you in that there are three other vehicles in the "fleet" to use in case one or two are broken!

Anything in your 1988 maintenance booklet about timing belt intervals? I bought the tools from Zelenda (they didn't have any used ones when I needed them) and figured they were paid for with the first water pump job. I never had to use them again!

Mr. Ben

Congratulations!

Haawill

Wow! Nice job, and thanks for all the details ... OK ... do you have the answer for me on the following that I posted today? I'd apprecdiate it !
Will
haawill@yahoo.com
or 201-788-2887
NJ

>>>
1990 Audi 200 Turbo Quattro Stick Wagon - How to compress rear brake cylinder?
Does anyone know how to? I'm use to inserting a strong screwdriver or flat metal bar against the cylinder and just applying an even steady pressure and the cylinder piston moves back in so I can install new brake pads. Works fine on the front brake. On the REAR brakes what a pain! Some one told me you had to turn and push. I've taken the caliper off the car, set it up in a vice and with someone pressing down on the cylinder piston I've used pliers to turn the piston, all the while having steady pressure applied. Still NOTHING! no movement of piston. What am I doing wrong here???!1 HELP!

Mister Bally

I usually leave the caliper on the car and tighten a C-clamp to slightly compress the piston. Then I grip the edge of the piston with large Channel Lock pliers and rotate the piston clockwise a half turn. Then tighten the C-clamp a little more and keep repeating to get the piston back into the caliper. With my method, you have to be really careful not to damage the piston rubber boot when you get close to having the piston fully retracted. You will chew up the top edge of the piston which never caused a problem for me.

For my next brake job, I'm going to splurge and buy the disc brake piston compressor kit from Auto Zone that someone referenced here for something like $45. I just searched and see that Harbor Freight Tools has a kit for $39 so I'll probably keep the Chinese economy going and buy it there. Link to their kit is attached.

If you really pressed the piston hard without turning it, you could have damaged the rotation/ratchet mechanism. You may want to try reconnecting the caliper, bleeding the brake line and try to push the piston out with the brake pedal etc. Then go back using the proper tool or my method.

Good luck!<ul><li><a href="http://www.harborfreight.com/cpi/ctaf/displayitem.taf?Itemnumber=40732">http://www.harborfreight.com/cpi/ctaf/displayitem.taf?Itemnumber=40732</a</li></ul>

somekidwithanm4

I'm just curious dwengi, where is this car at now after nearly 8 more years?