bjjones1

My wife drives a 2015 A4 and it now has 85k miles on it..... The car has been perfect. One morning before work, she noticed the engine light on. We called our local dealership and scheduled service, scheduled for a week later. The car drove fine, so we weren't worried. Within a few days, she noticed that the car started to take a little longer to turn over when hitting the start button. No worries, we had an appointment scheduled.

Today was our scheduled appointment. After about an hour, the service manager came out and said they found the problem..... a mouse chewed wires for the cam sensor, an easy fix. About an hour later, they came back out and said they fixed the wiring but the issue did not go away. She watched as they manually pushed her car out of the service bay while they explained that the timing chain was stretched and they don't feel safe starting the car. They said we were very lucky to get the car there when we did.

Luckily, we bought this A4 in 2015 as a CPO with less than 2k miles, so it will be covered under warranty. My wife was sent home in a sweet 2019 A6 Prestige that we'll have for a week.

jlbell

Might want to see if this MY is still effect by the oil consumption issues, while it is already in service.

bjjones1

We haven’t had any oil consumption issues outside of what is described in the owner’s manual. Is this something I should be asking the dealer about??

jagtoes

This MY did not have the oil consumption problem so a check engine light would not be triggered by low oil. You would have a low oil warning if that were the case. As for the timing chain I would be suspicious of this as to the problem. This problem usually doesn't show up until around 100K miles.

jlbell

I also thought they weren't suppose to have timing chain issues either?

SMac770

Did you ask them how they concluded the chain was out of spec? It sounds like they didn't turn it over, yet how then did they conclude the wiring issue was resolved? No codes. Lot of lack of details; just like the service department likes it.

Anything can happen to any year, it's just the difference between a surprise corner case and widespread commonplace.
You know that tensioner is a engine killer if you still have the original. But the chains still wear and even the K tensioner can have isolated problems.
Being a 2015, the tensioner or chain problem would be not like that of the typical B8.0, so it might not be within the same kind of parameters (like dying early).

Caelismadison

You can pull a small circular plug on the lower timing cover to check the number off teeth showing on the tensioner. If there are too many teeth exposed then the vehicle would be out of time due to chain “stretch”.