Hi All,
Completely new to A2's let alone Audi's, but in a haste to get a new car for the family (and on a budget), I recently bought an Audi A2 2001 1.4 TDI SE. The car has a bit of a horror story behind it; it's done 200,000 Miles on the clock, No previous service history (none at all!), only one set of keys, FIVE previous owners and it looked like it had not been drove for a while. The dealer we bought it from had it in a cattle pen style showroom, cars all tightly parked next to one another.
I first took the car out for a test drive and upon starting the car, I was greeted with warning chimes (which really get your attention!). The car needed to be MOT'd as well as a service, and warnings for the brake pads were also present (turned out to be a broken sensor). After driving for less than a mile, the fault's as far as I could work out were as follows: Steering was stiff, gear changes were agonisingly stiff (something's broken down there!) and 3rd and 5th gear changes had a tendency not to engage at times, the clutch was jittery and using the keys to unlock the car wouldn't always work... BUT there was something about the car, the engine and funnily enough the noise of that engine was very attractive.
I took a gamble and bought the car, won't go into prices but it was cheap; probably not as cheap as it could have been to be honest.
However, 2 weeks later and the A2 is already shaping up to be a great car. Day 1 after purchasing the A2, it was serviced throughly and it actually passed the MOT which I actually laughed about, because I honestly thought it would fail. Day 3, a new clutch was installed and the gear linkage was lubricated, then on day 7, the power steering issue was fixed by topping up the PS Reservoir. By this point, the car was really feeling road worthy and the remainder of niggles were superficial to me. However, I have sorted out a majority of those too now. The keys just needed a battery change, the aftermarket Sony head unit which was incorrectly fitted and wired was also sorted; simply fastened the cage, and swapped the battery and ignition feeds.
The car feels quite healthy now, and I feel to some extent I've restored it back to it's former glory (might sound a bit naive!). The engine is absolutely fine, and albeit it is quite noisy, the type of sound that it makes is actually quite nice! And to think that it's coming from a 3 cylinder engine is almost silly! The gear changes in my opinion are restored to some degree, something is still broken, but when trying to change to 3rd, the spring that moves the gearstick from left to right (back into neutral) doesn't work and when actually engaging 3rd, the stick gets caught somewhere between 1st and 3rd, if that makes any sense? So I have to manually move the gear stick back into neutral and carefully push into 3rd, but they don't feel as stiff anymore; although I read on the forums that the gear change is pretty stiff in A2's compared to most cars anyway. I've already done 250 miles or so in the car, I drive it absolutely EVERYWHERE and all is well! Planning her first motorway run soon as well hopefully.
So what's next? Well I hope to do some interior work; I've already ordered mats, contemplating if I should get a new interior though? And I am definitely considering a remap for the car, although I am weary of how far i'm willing to push, because I am quite happy with the way the car performs and I wouldn't want the change to have any negative effect on the car. Also hoping to reach 300k relatively soon
I've been lurking on the forums for a little while now, hoping to actually learn something though! By the way, nice to meet you all!
-- Omar.
Completely new to A2's let alone Audi's, but in a haste to get a new car for the family (and on a budget), I recently bought an Audi A2 2001 1.4 TDI SE. The car has a bit of a horror story behind it; it's done 200,000 Miles on the clock, No previous service history (none at all!), only one set of keys, FIVE previous owners and it looked like it had not been drove for a while. The dealer we bought it from had it in a cattle pen style showroom, cars all tightly parked next to one another.
I first took the car out for a test drive and upon starting the car, I was greeted with warning chimes (which really get your attention!). The car needed to be MOT'd as well as a service, and warnings for the brake pads were also present (turned out to be a broken sensor). After driving for less than a mile, the fault's as far as I could work out were as follows: Steering was stiff, gear changes were agonisingly stiff (something's broken down there!) and 3rd and 5th gear changes had a tendency not to engage at times, the clutch was jittery and using the keys to unlock the car wouldn't always work... BUT there was something about the car, the engine and funnily enough the noise of that engine was very attractive.
I took a gamble and bought the car, won't go into prices but it was cheap; probably not as cheap as it could have been to be honest.
However, 2 weeks later and the A2 is already shaping up to be a great car. Day 1 after purchasing the A2, it was serviced throughly and it actually passed the MOT which I actually laughed about, because I honestly thought it would fail. Day 3, a new clutch was installed and the gear linkage was lubricated, then on day 7, the power steering issue was fixed by topping up the PS Reservoir. By this point, the car was really feeling road worthy and the remainder of niggles were superficial to me. However, I have sorted out a majority of those too now. The keys just needed a battery change, the aftermarket Sony head unit which was incorrectly fitted and wired was also sorted; simply fastened the cage, and swapped the battery and ignition feeds.
The car feels quite healthy now, and I feel to some extent I've restored it back to it's former glory (might sound a bit naive!). The engine is absolutely fine, and albeit it is quite noisy, the type of sound that it makes is actually quite nice! And to think that it's coming from a 3 cylinder engine is almost silly! The gear changes in my opinion are restored to some degree, something is still broken, but when trying to change to 3rd, the spring that moves the gearstick from left to right (back into neutral) doesn't work and when actually engaging 3rd, the stick gets caught somewhere between 1st and 3rd, if that makes any sense? So I have to manually move the gear stick back into neutral and carefully push into 3rd, but they don't feel as stiff anymore; although I read on the forums that the gear change is pretty stiff in A2's compared to most cars anyway. I've already done 250 miles or so in the car, I drive it absolutely EVERYWHERE and all is well! Planning her first motorway run soon as well hopefully.
So what's next? Well I hope to do some interior work; I've already ordered mats, contemplating if I should get a new interior though? And I am definitely considering a remap for the car, although I am weary of how far i'm willing to push, because I am quite happy with the way the car performs and I wouldn't want the change to have any negative effect on the car. Also hoping to reach 300k relatively soon
I've been lurking on the forums for a little while now, hoping to actually learn something though! By the way, nice to meet you all!
-- Omar.
