In preparation for performing the first oil change on a new Audi A4 1.8TQ, I jacked up the right side of the car to more easily access the drain plug and oil filter. The oil drain plug was in the normal easy to reach location but the oil filter was not. It was mounted on the back left side of the engine making it difficult to see and reach with just the right side to the car raised. I did manage to remove the oil filter, however, by reaching back and blindly inserting a filter wrench over the end of the oil filter. What was not apparent until after the filter was removed was that the wire for the electric speedometer got caught by the filter wrench. I had pulled the speedometer wire out of the axle housing and broken off the other end of the two wires somewhere on the firewall. It took a long time to located the missing wires. Only after a friend with a VW Passat traced this wire and told me where it went was the mystery solved.

Hopefully no one else will ever do this but, if you do, let me spare you the agony of finding the firewall wire ends. There is a sleeve that runs along the firewall and picks up a number of wire bundles wher the engine and transmission meet. By rolling the sleeve up, I found the missing wire ends. By soldering the wires back together and covering the soldered connection with heat shrink insullation, everything was returned to its original position. As a precaution, I tied the wires out of the way.