sashir

I have a 2013 Q7 TDI PP with 56K miles on it.
The low coolant warning came on yesterday. After the car cooled down, I checked the the coolant reservoir, and sure enough, the level was well below the "minimum" fill mark.

I checked a couple of local stores and they do not seem to carry the G13 coolant. So I may need to get this from the Audi dealership.

Is it normal to have to add coolant? Should I be worried about possible leaks? The car was always serviced at Audi dealership because I had the Audi Care Plus plan.

dreadlocks

its not normal to loose coolant, are you seeing any smoke come out of the exhaust? If its leaking coolant (headgasket) into the engine and burning off you'll get white smoke that smells sweet.. espically on startup after sitting for a day or two.

B490MTL

Well it is normal to lose some coolant from very small leaks because of the water evaporating. Whats not normal is putting coolant on a regular basis. That being said, look around for a pink crust, that would signal a leak somewhere. If you are not able to see any, then I would suggest you to go to your dealer or indy to have the coolant system pressure tested. What they will do is apply pressure to the system by the filler cap and look if there is any pressure loss on a given time, then you will be able to know exactly what is wrong.

sashir

Thanks for the responses.
I took it in to the dealer, and they topped it up for me. They were just going to top off with distilled water, but i insisted on using the proper coolant. However, I was not impressed with the way they added the liquid. They first put in some coolant directly from the bottle, and then topped it off with some water. The warning light did not come back on again.

This was the first time I have had to do this in over 4 years of owning this vehicle, so perhaps they never really topped it up during the previous services. However, the level of the liquid was well below the "min" mark so wondering why the warning light did not come on earlier.

I did not see any pink crust around any of the hoses or connectors, but will ask them to take better look when it goes in for the next service.

smith2010Q7

The warning light comes on when the coolant container is empty. Your low res switch is on the bottom of the container. The min mark to let you know it is time to add some more.

Check your cap sometimes the dealer tech does not close the cap all the way, I found mine not tight when doing my once a week checks. Your cap has a tighten switch to let you know it is fully close. (take the cap off ; then tighten the cap until it clicks.)

I think the dealer did check it, but did not tighten the cap all the way which cause no pressure to build up (19lbs) for you system to work. What B490MTL said the coolant had no pressure so it burn and evaporated.

sashir

Thank you! I checked the cap, and made sure it clicked!

rye_a

I recently had that warning on my '13 Q7 TDI and topped off my coolant. It turned out that my water pump was leaking and needed replacement.

smith2010Q7

Thats a little early for the pump to go out.

rye_a

I know. Apparently the gaskets had worn out and were leaking at 75k miles.

jarcyp

My wife has a 2013 Q7 TDI with 56,500 miles. We have had the coolant light come on twice now. The first time they could not find anything wrong and just topped it off. The second time they said there was no leak and topped it off. The mechanic said "This model vehicle has a common problem with coolant leaking internally at the EGR cooler into th exhaust and the coolant burns away."

The mechanic said there was not a way to be sure this was happening and recommended we drive the car and add coolant as needed rather than do a costly repair that did not fix the problem.

Does this make sense to anyone else? I do not even know what an EGR is.