People with VW 1.8T/Audi TT knowledge, get in here!

Always loved the Audi TT style (which puts me in the minority, AFAIK), and it's one of my bucket list cars. It also seems like the FWD models are incredibly undervalued, even though they're incredibly light and much less complex than the Haldex AWD ones. This $3000 example near me has all the makings of a deal if it's solid.

Some of you here probably have much more experience than I with these; all I know is that timing belt failures and ridiculous OCIs, combined with abusive flat brim-hatted third and fourth owners killed most of them. What would I want to look for on a 200k 1.8T? This would become a track car/weekend driver. I know about the 60k timing belts and the sludge issues on the longitudinal engines, but I'm not sure what I should be checking for on a high-mile transverse 1.8T. Any advice before I go look at it and see if I can fit with a helmet on?

I had a mk4 GTi with the 1.8 which I sold at 195k for what he's asking for that TT. The engine-related stuff I can remember were coils and the PCV hoses. I replaced the PCV hoses with silicone ones which should last longer.

I did the timing belt twice at 60k intervals; nothing unusual or difficult about it.

I used the ginormous TDI oil filters and Mobil-1, and when I pulled the valve cover at ~190k to change the VC gasket, it was very nice and clean in there.

They're beautiful, drive well (a bit more GT than sports car) I liked the 1.8. They are also plagued by electrical gremlins and we sold ours when everything made of plastic under the hood started breaking when you looked at it wrong.

In reply to mazdeuce:

Luckily the aftermarket has come up with tons of aluminum/silicone replacement packages for all the plastic junk under the hood.

The electricals...yeah May I ask what kind of troubles you were having? Curious if it's the kind of stuff I could live with for a non-daily driven vehicle.

On ours the biggest annoyance was the door handles. The inside ones seem to activate an actuator I stead of having a physical connection to the door, so sometimes you couldn't get out without unrolling the window and using the outside handle. We could have lived with that, but the windows were also unreliable. They would usually go down, but not always back up, at least for a couple of minutes. A couple of times my wife had to exit the passenger side. A few times she had to drive out from her parking garage in the rain with the window down playing with the switch until it started working. I cleaned and adjusted everything, and it never helped. It wasn't that the switches failed, it's just that the car sometimes didn't acknowledge the signal.
She did lose a plastic coolant elbow rather dramatically once, but that wasn't the big deal, it was the electrical connectors breaking, and finally the tabs that held the HID bulbs in the $600 (at the time) housings.

The PCV system is the most complicated one I have seen in my life.

The valve cover gaskets leak and dump oil into the spark plug holes.

They do have their 1.8t foibles so make sure all the oil systems have been upgraded as they liked to sludge up with VW's fantastic 5k mile oil change plane. Lots of fun and still look fresh and different despite their age. The baseball glove leather seat option is still one of the coolest seat treatments out there.

To be honest, if I had one, I'd tweak the Motronic so I could disable the air injection system. A lot of the drivability/emissions failures/underhood repair PITA comes from the air injection, the airpump is in a difficult place and the hoses are all brittle corrugated plastic, which cracks and fails when the check valve on the head fails and allows exhaust gases to blow up into them. Which also fills the air pump with water, which kills it gradually, or instantly the first time the weather drops below freezing after the check valve fails.

I like driving them, although to be honest I'd prefer a front drive version. I don't think the AWD system brings anything to the table with a car that nose heavy, and replacing the clutch is not something I would want to do if I wasn't being paid for it. Not difficult, just tedious and it has to come apart/go back together in a specific order. (Like the right axle output flange has to be in the bevel drive before you put it on the trans, you're not installing it in-chassis)

NGTD wrote: The PCV system is the most complicated one I have seen in my life. The valve cover gaskets leak and dump oil into the spark plug holes.

I had a seizure the first time I saw all those PCV and vacuum lines . My dad told me that if you put a bunch of VW engineers in a pit with a ladder, they'd break it up to make shovels and tunnel out .

I'd forgotten about the the coolant elbows. I changed them with the TB/WP while the coolant was already drained intentionally.

Great, my son just texted me a CL ad for a local TT. he must be surfing GRM on breaks at work or something...

The PCV system makes sense if you bear in mind that it is intended to function if the car spends its whole life under boost. Which, given that Audi put that engine in A6s for the home market, is not a bad assumption to make.

All of the underhood plastic will be brittle and break, like the dipstick tube.

I had a 2000 TT coupe Quattro. Bought it when it was 3 years old and had around 40K on it. One of the worse financial decisions I have ever made. I loved the car, but every other month it was in the shop for some sort of $1K repair. I was in college at the time and it killed me financially. I took a loss selling it just so I could get rid of it and be done.

I did love driving it though, especially in the snow. I always wanted the ALMS 225 coupe with the red leather interior.

If it's FWD it's just a fancy looking Golf. There was a similar version of that concept in the early 90's called a Corrado. They are the same bad idea.

If you can get a hold of a 225hp quattro, it makes slightly more sense.

In reply to Paul_VR6:

In a sense, yes, but the TT has a few advantages. The FWD TT is the lightest A4-chassis variant VAG ever produced, and it already has the corrected front suspension geometry only seen elsewhere on the R32. If it wasn't for those saving graces, I wouldn't be remotely interested.

Personally, I will never understand why people have such a hard-on for Haldex AWD. The system is awful for a performance car, and as Knurled noted it complicates service exponentially. Lots of weight, complexity and power loss for minimal rear power transfer.