Originally Posted by
rtk8892
Wow thank you, you have been a great deal of help. Is it okay to drive my car this way for now and deal with the noise while I gather the funds to do this job? Also do you have any idea ballpark area what a shop might charge for this job? Thanks again!
If it's already making that noise and the AC doesn't work, the damage is already done and won't get any worse. I might be slightly concerned about the potential of something inside the compressor to bind up which would probably cause the driveshaft to snap. A new compressor driveshaft is only about $90 and as I said I replaced mine with the compressor so that option is there, but there's ALSO the chance of the splined portion causing damage to the drive unit on the engine, which is NOT cheap and would have to be replaced with the engine out of the car. It's unlikely, but you never know what can happen with these cars...sometimes the worst possible things.
Someone else will have to chime in about the labor costs because I do all my own work. As far as parts go, though, the compressor will run about $400-600 depending on where you get it; I used a Nissens brand unit from FCP Euro. Denso is the OEM and costs more, but I did find a few reasonably priced ones; unfortunately, they were out of stock at the places that had the reasonable prices, hence my decision to go with Nissens. Don't buy a compressor straight from Audi (which is what a dealership will do) because it is literally just the Denso part, but marked up to $1200.
Condensor is about $350 from Audi. If you don't have a factory power steering cooler, you can probably buy an aftermarket one, but most of them out there lack the mounting holes for the factory PS cooler. I found this out the hard way, but was able to return the part to ECS Tuning without trouble due to this design problem. Receiver/dryer can be aftermarket for about $30, orifice tube straight from Audi is like $20, and all the O-rings (ALWAYS replace all O-rings) are less than $10.
As I said, the job is pretty involved timewise, so I would imagine a shop would charge you at least 8 hours if not more, but I honestly don't know for certain. It took me a lot longer because I'm not a pro and also I spent a LONG time on the flushing process to ensure I didn't have to do this repair a second time. If you do use a shop, I would recommend a place that is known to take care when doing these kinds of jobs. The shop I bought my car from, as I mentioned briefly in my previous post, had replaced the compressor and screwed up the job. They didn't flush the system or replace any of the metal-clogged parts (the orifice tube looked horrible) but that never even mattered because they also smashed one of the O-rings partially outside of the fitting on the discharge line from the compressor, so it leaked massively. This was just sloppy, careless work that I was able to spot almost immediately upon gaining access to the compressor despite my relative inexperience with this type of work. So be sure you know the shop is legit. Small indie shops are good for that type of thing because they tend to rely a lot more on word of mouth reputation and are often family owned.
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) 2005.5 Audi S4
2011 Dieselgate Q7 TDI..... patiently waiting for my warranty to expire!!
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