I hate my A8 so much

[IT]

Originally Posted by brasiliangringo

I think this is propagated to some extent by the forums. Im not sure how many have actually failed ?

D2 vs D3 is chalk and cheese.

At one point we were being offered 5 speed A4/A6/A8's daily in perfect condition for breaking, but with failed gearboxes.

Likewise, the demand for working D2 gearboxes was very high.

In 6 speed land I can count on one hand, using only a few fingers how many gearbox failures we've seen....

Likewise, the 4 speed boxes were rock solid too.

There are a handful of stories of 5 speed boxes making it north of 150K miles, but they are very much the exception, and to be honest unless it was 1 owner from new and verifiably the original box, I'd still suspect it had been changed at some point. They were that bad! As a rule of thumb the A8 made about 120K miles, the S8 made about 100K miles and the Rs6 was lucky to see past 75K miles. Obviously driving habits vary, but those were the failure points we saw time and time again.

[brasiliangringo]

Your position as shop selling 2nd hand gearboxes will naturally dictate you are largely only going to hear of the failures / people offering you cars only good for breaking, than someone like me who had a 175k S8 with the original box in perfect condition. Plus, in this context, people largely go online to complain / fix a problem than advertise the fact when something is behaving as it should, so the majority of published 'issues' are not necessarily reflective of the whole.

In either my or your instance, its only anecdotal, so i would be interested to discover how many of these boxes actually failed as a % of total production, albeit nigh on impossible to find out, my hunch is not as many as people think!

[tintin]

I think (as the owner of a D2 S8 with a failed 'box), I am going to agree with IT/Ian on this one: I can't think of many owners on this forum with a D2 that has survived much beyond the mileages that Ian's listed, and as I would argue that this forum is frequented by the majority of D2 enthusiast owners, I think it's fair to conclude that these boxes did have this inherent problem.

The good news is that the boxes can be rebuilt, and a failure avoided if the oil service is carried out regularly (which I wish I'd done). Either way, I've now got a fully working D2 with a rebuilt box which is better than the original one, so it doesn't have to be terminal..

[smokey4.2A8]

I have a D2 4.2 Quattro Sport with the 5 speed tiptronic (or whatever it's called) box with the plus minus manual mode, and to the best of my knowledge my gearbox has never been replaced. It was first registered 26/11/98 and used as a demo car, although to be honest i'm not 100% sure what that means, but i'm assuming Audi owned the car? The guy I bought it from, then purchased it from Audi in 2000 for £29700 (I still have the original receipt of sale) I have a lot of history with it, I honestly couldn't say full history, but there seems to be receipts for every service, MOT, tyres, etc. But I have found no evidence of a new box being fitted, and like I say the guy I bought it from went to the effort of keeping everything else, so i'm quite sure he would have kept a record of it being done, had it been done. I bought the car from him in 31/7/2013 and I haven't changed the box, I just had it serviced 30/8/2013 with 153521 miles on the clock and is still going strong now at around 167000 miles on it and counting. The only complaint I have with it is, if i'm driving "gently" i.e not being harsh on the throttle, then it seems to hesitate and feels like it is jumping between 2 gears, not sure whether it wants to go up or down a gear, which can be easily remedied by giving it some beans, and it drops a gear and away we go. So although annoying, I don't think is a major problem. Although to be fair if they are that bad I could be sitting on a ticking time bomb!!

[HPsauce]

Hi Smokey,
One thing you might want to look at is the gearbox coding.
There are various options that can be tried (not all apply on all boxes) to change the way it responds to conditions and style.
A few threads here about it and on Audipages.

[smokey4.2A8]

Sorry to go off of the original topic. Sorry to hear of your unfortunate luck with your car Andy. I've had some sh***ters in my time but that was down to the individual car and how it had been cared for in the past, it doesn't necessarily mean they are all bad. You should definitely get another D2, i've had mine about 18 months and it's the best car i've ever had!!

[smokey4.2A8]

Originally Posted by HPsauce

Hi Smokey,
One thing you might want to look at is the gearbox coding.
There are various options that can be tried (not all apply on all boxes) to change the way it responds to conditions and style.
A few threads here about it and on Audipages.

Ok thanks for the info, I will try that.

[ainarssems]

then it seems to hesitate and feels like it is jumping between 2 gears, not sure whether it wants to go up or down a gear

That could actually be caused by MAF sensor , which no doubt have contributed to some of the gearbox failures so get it checked out or replaced.

One thing you might want to look at is the gearbox coding.

Not sue if it is possible on early cars, I have tried all the possible codings on my 1997 S8 and it only accepts the one that was already there.

[HPsauce]

It's a Nov 1998 car. Mine was slightly earlier than that and did accept variations. Worth trying.

[Singh]

You could offer me a D3 and a D2 for the same price, I'd take the D2 every single time, without fail. I'd have no problem in justifying £3k for a box rebuild on such an epic car. Your old one was perfect, sport, 4.2 etc... Buy another one of them.