@A2Steve Steve with all the respect that I have for you and you know that; you break A2s while helping many others out including me. So your supply of parts is plentiful; maybe.
If you haven't got a second car to use while the FSI spends most of its time resting on jack stands waiting for parts then you are stuck. Really stuck because most stuff that breaks on the 1.6 are expensive and fiddly to replace.
I will list some of the nuisances that make the 1.6 far from a dependable daily driving partner:
1. Cannot read the dipstick. Either it is broken off or unreadable. Well, we still got the oil level sensor. Wait that is broken too. Even if it is on the 3rd genuine sensor from Audi's latest revision. Half an hour later of back and forth with the dipstick you still can't decide whether to top up or not.
2. You try to replace the oil filter. Wait, I have to take of the sump funnel first but before that, I have to lick my elbow. And if you are unlucky and you have the all plastic one, oh dear. You have to wait until the replacement arrives with the correct dipstick for your car because it will definitely break of at some point. So you try and do an oil change and you are left with an undrivable car.
3. Well, the plumbing system is entirely made of plastic in which the coolant can rise up to 105 degrees Celcius. At some point the cooling system pipework becomes like a sieve. There is no good way of finding the leak. The only way is to replace everything with better hoses, better clips and NEW plastic parts because it is a chain. The next weakest link will break. Trust me. Or you can mold them and cast them in aluminium (heck isn't everything supposed to be Al in the A2 anyway) but I suppose a foundry and a CNC mill are not in your toolbox.
4. You get a dash warning but wait, so it happens that it is on a hot day. Well you cannot expect the dash screen to work on a hot day do you? So you have to guess from the colour of the warning what the error is and wager whether you are actually losing oil pressure or coolant or most likely both.
5. I will not mention the interior because it does not serve in any way the mobility capability; which is what an automobile's primary function is supposed to be. I will also not mention other major issues that may or may not be parts of your daily struggle.
Please don't take the above notes as being a rant. They are not. They are the basic ingredients to the frustration cake that the 1.6 is. We still got ours but we find ourselves sharing the other car more often than not. The A2 is on jack stands at the moment waiting for a brake job and 2 weeks before that is was also on jack stands for CV joints. This is basic maintenance though. Pretty easy to do. I take it as a challenge now just to see how far this will go.
The 1.6 definitely exceeded my expectations when I first took it up. Not too sure of everyone else's expectations though.
Evros