Hi all,
I am new to these forums, so please bear with me. I had an interesting experience yesterday with my moms 2003 Audi Allroad 2.7T. It has 88,500 miles on it. We drove to Portland yesterday morning, and everything was fine. Then, we were leaving Portland yesterday afternoon, and i noticed that the coolant temperature gauge was actually going down, and we were not coasting, that car was working, hard. So, it kept going down until it got to Cold, and then it just stayed around there. The oil temp was normal. So we get on the highway, and it is still doing the same thing. It would go down as we went uphill, and then the temperature would go up as we went downhill. We stopped in Sandy (about 45 minutes from Portland) and I opened up the hood and the engine felt unusually hot. Then, when I started it up again, the coolant temperature gauge went back up to normal operating temperature, and then it went down, and down. So later, when we were up around Mt. Hood, we were constantly climbing hills, and I noticed that the Allroad just didn't have the kind of GO that it usually has at highway speeds. It is an automatic, so it has the 5 speed, and because of this, the engine sits in the high-2000 RPM range when at 60 MPH. So, usually you can just put your foot down, even a little bit, and it just takes off. Not this time. When we were climbing those hills, I put my foot down, and it hesitated, and then would slowly accelerate. So we get to Madras, which is about 45 minutes out of Bend (where we live) and we stop for dinner. So, the car was able to cool down substantially, and when we got back in, the coolant temperature gauge was working, and when we were at highway speeds, we still had a few hills to climb, and I could just put my foot down and go, it was much better than before.

Now, do you think that the turbos were not functioning properly earlier, because it seemed very down on power, like we were missing a cylinder or something.

This guy had a similar situation. Read the fourth post.

I should add that my mom is a hard driver. She DOES NOT do the warm up/cool down procedures for the turbo, and she pushes that thing hard. Should we be concerned about the turbos possibly going out?

Any help is appreciated! Thanks!

 

Turbos usually go out gradually and don't self fix. Noise and/or blue smoke out tailpipe are tell tale signs.

Scan with VAG-COM and pull codes. More likely it is a boost leak or bad coolant temp sensor.

 

Sorry, I meant to say to read the seventh post.

 

I drove it around the block this morning, and all seemed well, there was just a little white smoke out the back, albeit for quite a while, and it seemed to whine a little bit more, but that may be because I was listening for it.

 

white smoke is coolant, could be a blown headgasket, if you had a miss it would throw a code and you would feel a slight vibration durring accel.

 

So could the white smoke being coolant have something to do with the strange coolant temperature gauge behavior? It seems like the engine is unusually warm after driving it.

 

I am kind of thinking that it may not be unwise to start passively looking for a new car? This one has been driven hard, and I wonder if it is going to start falling apart on us. What do you think?

 

Just drive it. You'll make yourself crazy trying to figure out what an intermittent problem might be. Log the coolant temp signal with VCDS to see if it's acting funky. Check for codes. Put some money in the bank for repairs and keep driving it.

Boost leak test, or at least TBB check, coolant level check, take the coolant cap off then start it to see if the running engine is pressurizing the coolant. Head gasket failures are relatively rare on these motors. Boost leaks are common, as are temp sensor failures, and they can make a car run pretty weird if the computer gets confused by bad temp readings.

 

How do I know if the engine is pressurizing the coolant?

 

The coolant will bubble up and start coming out of the reservoir.