Mickf29

Audi service strikes again. Had my oil replaced last monday, been leaking oil all week, found a quart on my garage floor saturday when I get home. Check the dipstick, and its way too high in my opinion, its over the top of the upper plastic piece. My past experience has told me with audi's and vw's that the oil level should be in the ranged of the knurled crosshatched section on the metal, in between the upper and lower plastic pieces. Can someone verify this for me? I drove it back to Audi yesterday afternoon, gave it to sales guys to get it in the shop today since I am again out of town. They called me and said the leak was from them using the wrong o-ring on the drain. Nice.

CanyonRS4

My experience is that you want to run the level mid to low cross hatch on the stick...

silverRS4

If the car is still breaking in (has less than 8k miles) any additional oil will just be consumed by the engine anyway. My experience is if I leave in the middle, it pretty much stays there. Audi may want to rethink what they do to "qualify" their techs and other personnel on the RS4. I had my oil over-filled so I decided to start doing it myself. Then I was given the incorrect drain plug washers and filter element. From quick observation it appears as if everyone up and down the service chain is making assumptions that could be avoided with 2 extra seconds of thought.

JELRS4

Always change the oil yourself, just too risky for dealer trainees to do it

cit1991

The seal on the drain is a crush washer, not an o-ring. There is a replaceable o-ring on the filter cap. Messing up either can cause a leak.

The oil level should be checked on a level floor, with the oil hot (145F or higher, preferably 175ish) after the engine has stopped for about 5 minutes to let it drain back.

The level should be in the crosshatch area. If it's there you're fine. If it is on the top red plastic "full" tab at all, then there's too much and it should be drained out a little bit.

If it's too high, it gets whipped up and either separates out in the cyclones or gets ingested into the manifold. Either is bad. You don't want the crank to hit the oil level, it causes drag on the crank, whips in air, and puts extra heat into the oil.

If your dealer can't read a dipstick, then I'd check the belly pan and Dzus fasteners. There's no telling what they did to all that.

As you can probably guess, I don't trust anyone but myself to do oil.

RVTS4

I always read the oil level at the dealership before I leave the lot after a service. At Criswell in Annapolis, I checked my Acura's level...two times they did not put enough oil in it. So, after seeing it was not filled correctly....I went back to the service desk and had the manager see that it was wrong. Then I had them do it right. I was going to chew out the tech, but I gave them a bad rating instead on the follow up call. I hope they do better wit the Audi. In the past they have done my Audis correctly.

daveak05

although it's called "oil foaming" if overfilled and immersing the crankshaft.

Also leaks can be caused by overfilling.

The knurled area on the dipstick is the oil operating range, with top of knurled area max full. You don't want to be at the lower end of that area, because any consumption could put you in the "below add" danger zone...although you'll get a low oil level warning indicator.

daveak05

You better hope that it's only the plug washer and that they didn't strip out the aluminum plug into aluminum drain pain. They've been know to do that.

Mickf29

OK I am convinced I need to accelerate my purchse of ramps.

The dealer techs swear up and down teh oil level needs to be at teh plastic stop. I swear to them its not supposed to be there, but in the crosshatch. I am in Los Angeles this week so I can't wai to get home friday and have a little chat with them.

As far as the drain plug, they told me they used an oring from an A4, they assumed it was the same. Since they didn't have the part in stock, they used another o-ring from some other part not even related. WTF? Can't wait to have this conversation friday, i can't deal with it on the phone.