Its now 7 weeks since I last saw my £20k Audi A3. Audi have it, they cannot fix it and will not replace it or refund me.
Please bear with me as I am retrospectively posting to this blog. I am hoping to get all the posts up to date soon.
Saturday, December 20, 2003
Christmas time - Mistletoe and oil
We are about to head off to Holy Island in Northumberland for christmas today but the oil light has come back on the car - thats another litre of oil the car has used and I don't have any available.
I set out to track down some of the Special Castrol SLX oil that we are supposed to be putting in the car.
I went 10 miles to my nearest Shell garage (Audi Customer Service told us they sold the stuff) no sign of the SLX oil here!
I decide to travel another 5 miles to my nearest Halfords and manage to find the stuff in 5 litre containers - £45 poorer I head back home and have to let my engine cool sufficiently before topping up the oil once more:
3 Litres in 4000 Miles.
Thursday, December 04, 2003
£13 per litre
I got some oil - it cost £13 a litre and I'm sure the guy at Audi was laughing as he swiped my card and handed over the swish packaging that the oil comes in.
I put about another half litre of oil in the car bringing the total oil consumption to about 2.5 litres for a car thats done about 3500 miles from new.
I'm no mechanic but I sense that something is not quite right with this oil to mileage ratio and so I decide to question it with Audi Service personel at Lancaster Audi (my Local dealership). They tell me that this is perfectly normal behaviour and the the car will "settle down" soon. I really hope so because this is going to be a really expensive experience otherwise!
Wednesday, December 03, 2003
More oil please
The oil light just came back on the car again. It needs more oil but I don't have any.
The 1 litre carton that Audi gave me ran out last month and I now need to figure out where to buy this special bloody oil that goes in the car. Incidentally - If you don't put Audi/Castrol's own special oil in the A3, it invalidates the Variable Mileage Service agreement. Under normal circumstances the car would not need to be serviced for 2 years, but if you put ordinary engine oil in you have to have a service after 12 months!
Suprisingly - I find out that I have to buy this 'SPECIAL' oil from my local Audi Dealership. I am now wondering how much this will cost me...
