Learn Me: 05' Audi S4 convertable

Contemplating a change of vehicles from the mazdapseed6 to an auid s4.... moar power yeye.... One of the docs i work for is looking to unload it and I am suspecting I will get a very favorable price, and with some rust creeping up on the speed6 this might be a good opportunity to move up a bit:

05, 75K miles, 6 speed convertable

Reliability issues? Major known problems? Is it remotely mod freindly, is there an aftermarket? Lastly and potentially deal breaker: Can i get by DD it with a 6yo and a 3 yo in the back, I can use the wifes MDX for most major family trips but i would have ot be able to p/u and d/o the kids ta day care.

Thoughts?

Up to the point of dailying with small kids you had me sold. I'm a fan of Audis in general but two doors is truly miserable when dealing with wee ones every day.

I bet ingress and egress are poor to the back seat and that it likely has a two bucket back seat. It will probably be inconvenient, but doable for a 3 and 6 since the 6 is probably in a booster. Strapping the 3 year old in will be a pain.

I wouldn't fear the rear seats. We had a 04 A4 as our first mommy mobile and I drove a MINI Cooper S and now a Mustang and the kids are 4 and 7. As long as it isn't raining hard, it doesn't take any time to get the kids strapped in.

BUT, Audis suck for reliability. Open the hood and see if you could drop a nickel and have it hit the ground. I had a friend with the same year S4 sedan and he pulled I to work leaking coolant. Took three of us, including two senior mechanical engineers crawling over and under the car to make sense of the cooling system to figure out where the leak was coming from.

9-year-old Audi S-car vert? what could possibly go wrong?

Beware the siren song of the sexy Audi! She will promise you intense and delicious ecstasy, but when things go wrong (and they will go wrong eventually) she will make you rue the day you met her!

I have not owned a S car (yet) but after a 5000 turbo, two A4's 1.8T and an A6 2.7T, can pretty much agree with the above. While there will be some minor maintenance issues, these cars are pretty reliable for 100K miles at which point, you must do all the factory maintenance (expensive!!!) but the car will then take you for another 100K miles. My last A6 cost me around $4,000 for the 100k maintenance and other wear items and then other than a coil pack issue, was very reliable for the next 85K miles before I sold it. Audis with 200k miles have long lasting interiors that still look new and are fun to drive. But they are not as inexpensive as a Mazda to maintain...... But once they have depreciated, you are getting a 50K car for 10k, so figure you will need to spend another 5K to keep it happy and you should be okay, in my opinion

Look into whether or not the bushings/control arms in the front have been replaced. If they haven't, they will need to be. The valve covers like to leak oil.

The flapper door in the intake manifold can either stick in the high RPM position due to friction on the plastic shaft bushings, or sag to the low RPM position if you've got a vacuum leak. Some of the B6s have a vacuum line running all the way to the rear bumper to actuate the flapper doors in the mufflers (to meet German sound requirements), and this length of line is prone to failures.

Fuel economy sucks. It's rated at 14/17 EPA -- I've never broken 20 mpg on a trip, and driving in heavy commute traffic mine averages around 13. That's on California crap-gas, you might get a tiny bit better if you live somewhere that the fuel doesn't suck.

If you search on various Audi sites, you'll find references to the timing chain tensioners & guides. There are people who've had them wear out and because they're at the back of the motor it's very expensive to replace them. This isn't an every-car problem like the ones above, but it's common enough to have gathered some attention. Frequent oil changes seems to improve this.

Mine's an Avant -- on those and the sedans, the sunroof is somewhat troublesome, but obviously that's not an issue on the cabriolet. I have no idea how the reliability on the top mechanism is, however.

Expect it to deliver moderate to large understeer in stock form. Most people seem to want to address this with a large rear sway bar, but that tends to lift the inside rear wheel when cornering hard. It's a Torsen center, with open front & rear, using electronic brake activation, so lifting a wheel isn't really a good idea. Another way of doing it is with alignment. Camber is not adjustable up front with the stock setup, but you can get adjustable-length upper control links that will fix that. Adding a bunch of camber up front and tweaking the toe (I forget the exact specs, but I've got the printout around somewhere) really helped it turn in better. This is a good upgrade if you're replacing the front arms anyway due to bushing wear, although you need to make sure that you get the right ones. Some of the adjustables only work with aftermarket narrow springs, others can only remove camber, not add it.

All of the anvil reliability of an Audi, with none of that famous German chassis rigidity. Its perfect!

Just grab your wallet and light it on fire.

Having owned that generation S4 avant, I have a love/hate relationship with the 4.2 V8 in that car. I'm a huge VAG fan and generally support the marque against the bias on this board against them.

That being said, I'm not a huge fan of that motor. It makes decent power/torque but the fuel economy is total E36 M3e for the power it does make. Expect around 16-17 mpg mixed driving with it and that's not hooning. More like 12mpg if you have a heavy foot.

The motor likes to drink oil. It was one of the thirtiest motors I've ever owned, easily using 1.5-2 quarts every 5000 miles. Most of my Audi's use no appreciable oil in that same interval.

The rear timing chain/guides are an issue, especially as the cars age. The guides are made of plastic and if they break, the motor is lunch meat. You can't really tell when they're going south and to fix them is prohibitively expensive, like $6000. Add a clutch at the same time and you're staring at an $8000 bill.

Because of the rear mounted timing chain, all the accessories save the alternator are driven off of it, which means everything is rear mounted. Big labor to replace the A/C compressor for instance.

They can also suffer from cylinder wall damage, specifically #7 and #8. If that happens, again, new motor. Oh, Audi no longer sells these as a crate motor.

I'd only buy one at this point if you also added a comprehensive drivetrain warranty. While these motor afflications aren't widespread, the cost to address them is so high it's not worth the chance.