jschrauwen

Congrats. FWIW, if it were me I would probably follow a pseudo rebuilt engine protocol and do the first engine oil change within the first 1k miles at the latest. Then another in about 3k miles and from then onwards every 5k miles.

GotMyA5

Thanks for the advice on that. Yes that's my plan, get an oil change pretty soon and do it more often than the official recommendations. I do want this car to last a long time and everyone out there with a high-mileage car says the same thing, "I get an oil change every 5k miles" or whatever, more often that the official schedule.

GotMyA5

A quick little update on this old thread:

New engine is working fine.

Now I have a new engine, with a new part number, which has been working great, no problems. I got an early oil change on it. Everything seems good.

Between Audi and my warranty company, they probably spent about $30k getting this car working. Consumer Reports just this month listed the 2012 A5 as one of the worst used cars with the most repairs. I can easily believe it and I would never recommend anyone to buy this particular model and year.

At this point my car is no longer really a 2012, because it's got a different engine in, so I'm not worried.

I'm extremely extremely happy I paid for the warranty because otherwise I would have had a total loss of the car and it would have all been on me.

I can't believe, I can't even understand, how a major German corporation like VW / Audi could have let this happen. The first time they realized it needed an engine rebuild, they honestly should have taken the car back at that point, or at least done the engine replacement without hestiation. In fact they should have offered to replace the engine as soon as they knew there was a design problem with this engine.

I would expect that this warranty company should put this particular model / year on a blacklist of vehicles to never ever cover at any price. This had to have been a major loss for them. If I were them I would sue VW over this or at least demand VW covers it.

For me, it has cost me zero money and given me a car with a new engine, plus I've spent about three months total driving around in brand new rental Audi A5s that are really nice.

findalex

It's why the VW and the Audi CEO are going to jail. Those guys wanted profit at any cost, and didn't give a damn about the customers. They figured they could just get away with it, then dieselgate came along.

I normally don't like lawyers, but they actually proved to add value in this instance.

jschrauwen

I thought it was due to the deliberate coding of ecu's to falsify emissions tests.

GotMyA5

Yes that's what the charges were but the underlying cause was they had taken on a belief that they could benefit by cheating. This does not work, at least not in Germany. They suffered the consequences of that belief. And my car suffered from it too, costing VW and my warranty company $30k on a car that's worth about $15k.

Really, as soon as they realized there was a fundamental problem with all the engines in this model year, they should have taken the step of doing a recall and replacing the engines.

And what happened there that let them ship engines like this? They were BURNING OIL, losing their oil within 1,000 miles. That's not been acceptable in German-made engines for decades now. How does that happen in 2012? Someone started thinking in a way that doesn't work there.

jschrauwen

Actually the 2012 year wasn't initially identified as one years included in the 2008 to 2011 2.0T oil consumption debacle. You were lucky it got covered. The CAEB being the main offender, the CBND and CNBD engines were also offenders. What engine code was yours?

GotMyA5

I have to look it up. Maybe mine is technically a 2011 model year? I have to look. I bought it used, off-lease.
I never drive it aggressively and I've always gotten regular maintenance head of schedule on it.
Obviously some incorrect way of thinking took root in VW's leadership at some point, and this engine, plus the emissions scandal, are symptoms of that. I hope they have learned their painful lesson and will stay on course.
I hope my car will work well because my warranty expires I think in October. If it has any big repairs coming up I'm going to have to get rid of it. I'm a little bit tempted to do a private party offer right now and see if there's any interest in it.

GotMyA5

A sad update:

Took my A5 in for a regular oil change and they said the upper control arm bushing needs replacement, which also means it needs alignment, for a total of about 2k. No problem, thought I, it's covered by my extended warranty.

Wrong. Turns out that Assurant has a cumulative limit on coverage of the lesser of the vehicle purchase price or the black book value at the time of repair.

Unfortunately for me, after the engine rebuild failed and the engine needed to be replaced, that replacement was covered by Assurant! It should have been covered by Audi because that was Audi's botched piston replacement that caused it, but they are arguing that because I didn't pay for the piston replacement, they aren't responsible that it didn't work.

Clearly Assurant is tired of dumping money into this car which is only 8 years old and has 50,000 of mileage.

I'm going to call Audi USA and see if they will do anything, but this is probably a waste of time.

What this means is that my warranty has run out of money at this point. I didn't even think about the cumulative dollar cap on repairs. I didn't imagine it would be possible to even get there but I did.

Obviously I need to get rid of this car and it leaves me not super enthusiastic about Audi quality. A relative of mine also had a diesel Jetta which VW ended up buying back and shredding. Seriously, something went completely wrong in the mentality of VW's executives a few years ago to let these things happen. If anyone at Audi USA is reading this, I can say, the right thing for you to do is to buy this car back from me, or else handle these repairs. It's unbelievable this much money could be sunk into one pretty basic car like this.

Edit: Just got off the phone with Audi USA. They were really sympathetic about this and don't like the fact that I'm having such a terrible experience with my Audi. They are reviewing it to see what they can do. From the call I got the impression that they will take some action on this. No one should have an experience like this.

GotMyA5

The sad story continues. Audi USA called back and said they wouldn't reimburse and I should talk to the dealer. The dealer had told me I should call Audi USA. I'll try to talk to the dealer and see what they say, but I have very low expectations. Basically what I need to do is sell my car and not buy another Audi.

I can't believe the company is handling it this way. My car has 50k miles on it and it's ready to be junked after going through about 25k in repair costs (fortunately almost all covered by my extended warranty).

Seriously Audi? This is acceptable?