Long distance drive - any tips?

Ashley had his diesel head gasket replaced recently.

FlyingScot said:
You're probably correct Tom, that thought has been niggling away in the back of my mind for a while.
There's a local diesel specialist here called Argyle Diesel, they're very good but also very expensive. I'm going to get them to check it and if that's the problem I'll get them to quote me for the repair. :(

I use the car mainly for my 40 mile daily commute so I'm hoping it'll last until the weather is better and I can use my bike, my Evora is in storage for the winter and I'd rather not use it on the salty roads if I can help it.
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Just been quoted £550 to strip the engine, skim the head and rebuild with new gasket.
Sounds reasonable to me, certainly cheaper than buying another car.
 
I think that's a pretty reasonable quote too and as you say much cheaper than chopping the A2 in for something else!
My car has an oil leak eminating from somewhere which I need to solve - hopefully it's not the turbo seals!
 
£550 is certainly a good price. Last year I paid about £1000 for a Mercedes independant to do the same on a 2200cc petrol engine.

John
 
I've not had this done yet, we've decided to try K-Seal in it first as it's a very minor leak.

I'll post up if it works or not.
 
For info I've read that Audi don't recommend using cooling system sealers in engines fitted with Webasto heaters.

Cheers Spike
 
Well after much messing around with sealant which made matters worse rather than better we ended up getting a new head gasket fitted.

The mechanic confirmed that the gasket had gone between cylinders 2-3 and also heading towards the turbo. I'm not too sure what he meant by the turbo bit but I'm not familiar with the layout and haven't looked at it so maybe that'll make sense to someone?

The repair bill came to £730. The original quote was £550 but the car needed one new injector and a few other bits n pieces.

The car is running OK now but it feels a bit flat compared to before. I'd say it's got 80% of the performance it used to have.
The mechanic is telling me that nothing he has done could be the cause of this, that what he has done should've made it better than before. He has suggestedd we look at the air flow meter as nothing is showing up as a fault.
I'm pretty dissapointed by this, in fact I'm getting fairly fed up with the car.

I like the idea of the A2 but the reliablilty is very poor. I've had more problems with this car than any other car I've ever owned. Hardly a month has gone by without something going wrong. Now we also have a warning light coming on, looks like one of the wheel speed sensors is faulty.

So now I'm not sure what to do. Spend more money trying to get it running better and fixing the latest fault, or trade it in?
I'd not feel comfortable selling to someone as I know it's not running correctly even though to a first time driver it would probably feel OK.

It would probably be an OK buy for someone if the lack of grunt was sorted as it's got it's new head gasket, reset injectors, new timing belt and water pump, new lateral acceleration sensor, two sets of tyres on fairly new 15" alloys, new rear shocks, new rear brakes, two new track rod ends, four wheel geometry just done and I've looked after it well service wise. We've also replaced both rear wheel cylinders and the driver side electric window gear.

Maybe it's time to buy something else............

I'll wait until I run the A2 a bit longer but if something else breaks in the next theee weeks before its MOT I can see me sending it to the crusher!
 
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