drobinson3662
07-20-2023, 05:37 PM
*** Disclaimer: I am an absolute nut. Cars are a passion of mine and I've spent my entire adult life in the car business. I'm out of it now, but I still go absolutely insane for special cars with good stories. Nice, 30k mile cars do absolutely nothing for me. People like me should *really* have a good mechanical skillset, but when it comes to this car I'm completely out of my league. ***
So I found a 1 Owner, Black/Black, 2016 A7 Prestige TDI that was exceptionally taken care of. Literally, pages of records from the audi dealership. Apparently the head gasket was even done 20k miles ago (at the dealer). He did not skip on maintenance. (Unfortunately, he also did exactly what Audi told him to do and stuck with 10k oil change intervals) Additionally, the car looks almost brand new. Every single thing works, works well, and is clean. It presents like a 60k mile car.
As of this morning the odometer was sitting at 346,004 miles. Yes, you read that right.
Let me add - he never had the TDI modification done. This thing is exactly how it was driving off of the lot in 2016. I checked with Audi, and if I were to have the modification done my Emissions Warranty under dieselgate would still start for 48k miles, effectively giving me a 400k mile car still under some form of factory warranty. Absolutely insane!
I drove the car 750 miles from Maryland to Alabama on monday. Drove flawlessly, only filled up once! Unfortunately, the next day when I was finally off the highway and had the music off (and actually enabling factory carplay!) I started to notice a noise. Yes, it rattles for half a second when you start it - worse when warm. That part I'm not too worried about, but what I am worried about is this odd thumping/knocking noise it makes between 1.2-2.3k RPM. It's really more noticeable when the revs are dropping after you let off the gas. I also noticed that when you're driving around a parking lot, after slowing down when the car downshifts and the revs hang at 2k but you aren't pushing the gas you can hear it very loudly. Normal acceleration - fine after 2k. Unnoticeable at speed.
Here's my short video. It's hard to capture because it's not super consistent when it does it, and just general cell phone audio quality - but you can kind of hear it when the engine revs down.
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/_O31qiwTEN8
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/rczWiiWI7xA
I'm just extremely curious what it could be. It doesn't sound too rattley like most of the timing chain tensioner videos I've listened too. I have an appointment at Audi next week, they're going to try to work me in but who knows when that'll go, they're backed up to mid august!
Also worth noting, I truly do not believe the guy I bought it from would have hidden anything from me. I think he either didn't notice it as he was mostly on the highway, or believed the noise to be fine and just normal diesel noise. Maybe the dealer told him that? Who knows. But he wasn't the type to do undisclosed issues. Two days before I picked it up he had it at the Audi dealer by his house getting the oil changed for me. Sadly, I don't have the invoice from when the Head Gasket was done, but I have a hard time believing Audi would've slapped it back together with a screwed up tensioner. I *will* reach out to him and get copies of all that, but would rather not call mentioning problems until I had a clue what was going on. I'm just not that kind of guy!
So I found a 1 Owner, Black/Black, 2016 A7 Prestige TDI that was exceptionally taken care of. Literally, pages of records from the audi dealership. Apparently the head gasket was even done 20k miles ago (at the dealer). He did not skip on maintenance. (Unfortunately, he also did exactly what Audi told him to do and stuck with 10k oil change intervals) Additionally, the car looks almost brand new. Every single thing works, works well, and is clean. It presents like a 60k mile car.
As of this morning the odometer was sitting at 346,004 miles. Yes, you read that right.
Let me add - he never had the TDI modification done. This thing is exactly how it was driving off of the lot in 2016. I checked with Audi, and if I were to have the modification done my Emissions Warranty under dieselgate would still start for 48k miles, effectively giving me a 400k mile car still under some form of factory warranty. Absolutely insane!
I drove the car 750 miles from Maryland to Alabama on monday. Drove flawlessly, only filled up once! Unfortunately, the next day when I was finally off the highway and had the music off (and actually enabling factory carplay!) I started to notice a noise. Yes, it rattles for half a second when you start it - worse when warm. That part I'm not too worried about, but what I am worried about is this odd thumping/knocking noise it makes between 1.2-2.3k RPM. It's really more noticeable when the revs are dropping after you let off the gas. I also noticed that when you're driving around a parking lot, after slowing down when the car downshifts and the revs hang at 2k but you aren't pushing the gas you can hear it very loudly. Normal acceleration - fine after 2k. Unnoticeable at speed.
Here's my short video. It's hard to capture because it's not super consistent when it does it, and just general cell phone audio quality - but you can kind of hear it when the engine revs down.
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/_O31qiwTEN8
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/rczWiiWI7xA
I'm just extremely curious what it could be. It doesn't sound too rattley like most of the timing chain tensioner videos I've listened too. I have an appointment at Audi next week, they're going to try to work me in but who knows when that'll go, they're backed up to mid august!
Also worth noting, I truly do not believe the guy I bought it from would have hidden anything from me. I think he either didn't notice it as he was mostly on the highway, or believed the noise to be fine and just normal diesel noise. Maybe the dealer told him that? Who knows. But he wasn't the type to do undisclosed issues. Two days before I picked it up he had it at the Audi dealer by his house getting the oil changed for me. Sadly, I don't have the invoice from when the Head Gasket was done, but I have a hard time believing Audi would've slapped it back together with a screwed up tensioner. I *will* reach out to him and get copies of all that, but would rather not call mentioning problems until I had a clue what was going on. I'm just not that kind of guy!