Apologies in advance for the long post.
Wanted to share my experiences with my 2018 RS5 and why I ultimately had to get rid of it. All service was performed at Audi Chandler (Arizona).
I purchased the car used (6k miles) in March 2019. Since then I have had CEL come on 7 times (4 this year), all related to Turbo Wastegate faults. The dates of occurrence and the work performed by AC was as follows:
Feb, ‘20 – software update
June, ’21 – software update & replace wastegate vacuum valve
Oct, ’21 – software update
June, ’22 – software update
July, ’22 – water pump replaced (they believed vacuum leak coming from water pump)
Aug, ’22 – N75 wastegate solenoid replaced
Oct, ’22 – ECM replaced & some vacuum tubing replaced
At the June, ’22 visit I asked my SA to start looking at the hardware side (if it recurred) since the software updates were obviously not addressing the root cause. I feel like if I didn’t push on them, they’d just keep doing the bare minimum and getting the same (null) result. Unfortunately, even when they started replacing hardware, the issue kept coming back.
When I dropped the car off in Aug of this year, I spoke with the service manager. He assured me they could fix my car and I made it clear that with my factory warranty nearly expired I wouldn’t continue ownership if it recurred. I was just about to purchase an extended warranty when the CEL came back on. They had my car for 1 month waiting to source the ECM (during that time the factory warranty expired). I had the car back for 1 week and traded it in yesterday (38k miles).
Extremely frustrating since it is such a nice car when it’s on the road. For those who have RS5’s without any issues I am jealous. Wish I could have spent more time with mine.
I do regret not taking it to one of our other local Audi dealers for some of the service visits this year. We have 4 others in town, but AC is just a few miles from home so the most convenient. I do wonder if things might have turned out differently if a different dealer had tried to work on it.
When I took the car in for the Oct, ’22 CEL, I did contact Audi of America to open a potential vehicle buy-back case. While they did not offer to buy back the car, they did cut me a $6k check for my “inconvenience”. Car was gone less than a week later.
Reply With Quote
Originally Posted by VVG
Bookmarks