Brett Dziedzic

I recently took my new to me 2009 S6 with 64k miles to the mechanic for a basic inspection, initially they found nothing but after an oil change the tech reported new misfire codes and found oil in the spark plug wells. The immediate solution they gave was an engine out cam girdle replacement costing over $5k including a carbon clean. On cold starts the engine idles a bit rough but before this I never saw any misfire codes and since then I haven't been able to see any misfire codes after clearing the codes from the inspection.

So I have a few questions for you guys:
Is the cam girdle the only cause for oil in the plug wells or could this be a valve cover gasket issue?
Idle on cold starts isn't very smooth but I never see any misfire codes when scanning using my OBDLink LX. Could this be an issue with the OBDLink or is it not actually misfiring?
If the cam girdle is in fact the issue how detrimental to the health of the engine is it to ignore the issue for a few months until January when either I sell the car or have enough saved to fix the issue?

I'll attach the Carfax of the vehicle if that helps with the diagnosis. Thanks in advance for your help!

Brett Dziedzic

Here is the car's history.

09mazda6

since cam girdle gasket/sealant in further down the well, could you pull plug, clean the well, reassemble and restart car to see if oil leaks from top down (valve) or just lower in the well (cam). Did they tell you which spark plugs had oil and if it was on one or both sides?

Brett Dziedzic

I don't know the status of the left bank but I checked out cylinders 6-8 and the it looks clean from the valve cover gasket to the cam girdle and the rest of the well is oily so the seal there will need to be replaced eventually. But there isn't really any major pooling, I can see just a tiny amount in the bottom of the wells and a little along the sides. So far I haven't been able to see any codes for misfires and the car runs totally fine. At the mechanic codes P0300 and a couple P030x codes showed up, but since I cleared them no misfires are reported and there are no noticeable symptoms of most of a cylinder bank misfiring.

Sallad

Do they mean they have to pull the engine? You don’t have to pull the engine to replace the cam girdle sealant... I’ve just done it a few months ago.

A6Gary

You're correct that you can replace the cam girdle sealant w/o pulling the engine for either of the V6 engines. However, for either the V8 or the V10 engines, you have to remove the engine because you need to access the timing chains/sprockets on the rear. IMHO and as a mechanical engineer, Audi AG engineers made a very bad design decision to place a known maintenance item (sealant) on a separate part secured to the heads that requires removing all of the timing chains/tensioners/sprockets to access.. The industry standard for decades in engine design has been to incorporate the valve camshafts into a one-piece, machined head with a valve cover, which requires a sealant or gasket and needs to be replaced as miles and age accumulate. So, a $5.0K estimate to remove the S6 engine is all labor to replace the $10 sealant is probably valid.

kelisko

No offense but I am tired of the "bad design" excuse every time there is a complicated engine maintenance required. These were among the first direct gasoline injection (DGI) engines introduced by Audi and I doubt they made these design choices without weighing the upsides and downsides. Furthermore, you cannot be comparing DGI designs to old non-DGI designs. Different technologies.

I did this job on my V6 3.2 to fix the oil in spark plug wells. It was complicated mostly because of limited room but would have been much easier with the engine out. And by what I have seen during the job, I do not imagine a better way of setting up things. This is a GREAT design and this is a hell of a powerful and efficient DGI engine. I am referring here to the V6 3.2 because I have no experience with the V8 and V10 but I heard these are incredible too.

These engines were not designed with the customer DIYer in mind. They are highly sophisticated and require the expertise of trained technicians and engineers using expensive special tools and testers. If you buy one, have that in mind and stop cursing the world because you are unable to fix it the way you wished.

Again, no offense intended.