Audi Q7 Drive System Failure

Posted: Thursday, December 26, 2024 at 07:52 PM | Categories: Miscellaneous

I am an Audi driver, and have been for many years now. Until recently anyway. I was even making plans to trade in my current vehicle, a 2018 Audi Q7, for an Audi SQ5. However, while driving to Asheville NC to help with Helene cleanup, I experienced a nightmare *Drive System Failure and haven't had access to my car in over three months. This post describes my nightmare and the apparent Audi design flaw that ruined my vehicle and therefore dramatically reduced the value of the car.

The Incident

While driving to Asheville with a car full of camping gear, a chainsaw, chainsaw tools, and other implements of destruction, I rounded a corner on the highway and my car loudly announced that the car experienced a Drive System Failure. I immediately pulled the car over and started to assess the situation. As soon as stopped, the engine started shaking violently in the bonnet. I quickly turned off the engine and never drove it again (this was three months ago).

I called the leader of the church group we were working with in Asheville and he pulled up a few minutes later and took my wife and all of our camping gear to the campsite while I dealt with getting the car towed.

Getting a Tow

I immediately called AAA and arranged a tow truck to pick me up and take the car to the Audi dealership in Asheville for assessment and, hopefully, repair.

After waiting about an hour for the tow truck, I started looking in the AAA app to see where my tow truck was only to find out that they sent the tow truck to Charlotte even though I clearly told them I was about 20 miles east of Asheville. Sigh.

I called AAA back and explained where I was, and waited for the tow truck. After about another hour, I started checking status of the tow only to find that AAA sent the tow truck to South Carolina. As I said, I was parked on a highway about 20 miles from Asheville, nowhere near South Carolina. Well, that's not entirely true, but I was certainly closer to Asheville than I was to South Carolina.

I called AAA back, the third time now, and successfully convinced them where I was. Less than a half an hour later, a tow truck finally showed up and flatbedded my car to the Asheville Audi dealership, dropping me off at the campground on the way.

Staying in Asheville

Since the car was in Asheville, I had to find a hotel room so I could be at the dealership Monday morning. The church group took my wife home and dropped me off in Asheville.

Asheville was a mess, but at least I found a hotel with Potable water. Restaurants were open, but had very limited menus and only beer, wine, and canned sodas.

Audi Asheville (Horrible Experience)

When I called the dealership to make sure they were open (due to the hurricane) before towing the car to them, they explained to me that I needed an appointment for them to work on the car. I dutifully made one and went on with my business.

The dealership called me Saturday afternoon and let me know that they hadn't looked at the car yet, but they'd look at it first thing Monday morning.

Monday morning, I took an Uber to the dealership to see how my car was doing. The service agent told me that they wouldn't look at my car until after they worked on all of the "waiters". I explained that the person I spoke with Friday didn't tell me I needed a "waiter" appointment, I also explained that my car was there before all of the other waiters. Eventually they looked at the car, and informed me I had two broken valves in a single cylinder and I needed a $30,000US replacement engine. Crikey!

Rather than continue to work with these idiots (and either stay in Asheville or drive home and back when they finally fix it), I decided to have the car towed to my local Audi dealership so they can fix it.

Extended Warranty

Fortunately for me, I purchased the Platinum extended warranty for my vehicle which should cover the complete cost of the repair.

Wrong!

Since the current value of the vehicle at the time of the breakdown was approximately $20,000US, that was the maximum the warranty company, in this case Audi (I purchased an Audi extended warranty), would give me to fix this.

So apparently nobody repairs catastrophic engine failures anymore. When this kind of failure happens, they sell you a new engine and move on.

In this case:

1. My engine was broken
2. Nobody wants to fix it
3. The Warranty Company (Audi) won't pay enough to actually fix the car.
4. If I don't replace the engine, the value of the vehicle drops to about $4,000US. This is essentially selling it for parts.
5. If I install a used engine, at a cost of about $22,000US, the value of the vehicle drops from $20,000US to about $14,000US

So I got almost $20,000US for the repair, but my cost for the repair is either $30,000US (new engine) or $22,700US (used engine).

No matter what I do here I'm out thousands of dollars of my own money and, simultaneously, the value of the vehicle drops dramatically. Its like I'm throwing away the money I'll spend fixing the car.

Imagine This

Imagine if I didn't have the extended warranty? Then I'd have to spend at least $22,700US to get the car running with an unknown (used) engine or spend $30,000US for a new engine. All this for a car that's only worth $20,000US. No matter what I did, I'd never get the value of money spent from the vehicle when I eventually sold it.

How could anyone afford this? Audi's are supposed to be great cars. Why did this happen?

Audi Design Flaw

Apparently, Audi Drive System Failure is a known issue.

One of the things I noticed recently was that I had to put a quart of oil in the engine more frequently than I expected.

When my wife started looking around, she found this: Mechanic says I have a burnt valve. It describes an Audi flawed engine design and failure that follows the engine burning more oil than expected.

When you look at that post, the images of the broken valve matches what happened to my car.

Here's the first response to the post:

Sorry to hear about this situation - here is a thread that discusses this issue and potential cause (flawed engine design) which leads to burnt valves in spite of proper maintenance. This tends to happen when the 3.0T engines that has moderately high mileage. You can try reaching out to Audi corporate, but it is unlikely Audi will compensate (or admit fault) as others have tried. Only thing left to do is sell the car, file a report with NTHSA and hope at some point there will be a class-action that you can be a part of. My Q7 has less than 20K on the ODO, love the car and would generally hold on to it for 10+ years - but not in this case.

The most telling comment I found was:

When they start using oil or out of warranty get rid of it.

I even shared those links with my local Audi dealer and they mentioned that they had seen a few of these. I spoke with Audi and, of course, they said they were not aware of any problem with the engine.

Class Action Lawsuit

My wife did some more digging and there's a law firm investigating a class action lawsuit for this issue. Here's the link: Audi 3.0T Engine Oil Consumption – Class Action Investigation.

There's even a Audi oil consumption class action settlement that wrapped up this year for other Audi models (not the Q7 sadly).

Current Status

Even though the local Audi dealer took the car, they were booked out 6 weeks so didn't look at my car for 7 weeks. When they finally got it in the shop they verified the problem and worked with the warranty company on a resolution. After three more weeks they finally got final approval and agreed to install a used engine in my car.

The repair's more than the money allocated by the warranty, so I'm out of pocket at least $2,700US. The used engine they ordered has a 12 month/12,000 mile parts and labor warranty, so I'll be able to drive it for at least a year before I have to get rid of it.

My car has 84,000 miles on it, the used engine they ordered has 75,000 miles on it, so after a year it will be at the same place as the one that just blew up.

I've been asking the dealer for loaner car for months now and they can't seem to find one for me so my wife and I are sharing her car. The warranty pays for a rental car during repairs (which haven't started yet), so if Audi doesn't find one next week, I'll likely rent a car. The warranty only pays $35US a day for 10 days of car rental, so I won't be able to get much.

Conclusion

What a freaking mess. More than three months without a car and this is supposed to be a high quality Audi. I'm seriously considering never buying an Audi again.

Next Post: Upgrading Old Flutter Apps

Previous Post: Parkit Scam

Header image: Photo by Marcos Paulo Prado on Unsplash