1 to watch on the older A4s

**Jmac** · 25-10-2007, 05:44 PM

Guys had a weird one at the weekend. I was looking at an A4 Auto v6 and it had no gears. The selector cable was broken by force. Sourced a new cable from Unique Parts in Vic VERY VERY helpful with parts! Put it on and found Park stiff and in drive no forward drive. Condemned gearbox to a body bag. Had it stripped and found it was corroded with coolant!!!!!! causing all sorts of grief to the gearbox and seals. Gearbox Gone. ANd the thing is the customer was complaining of a coolant leak too but no trace and she was overheating. Guess where it was going? Into the bloody gearbox via the split oil cooler which is part of the radiator. So radiator has cost a Gearbox!!!!!!!!
Watch out with the older stuff worth at the service to drop the oil on the tranny and check the oil. Had me stumped but now makes perfect sense.

**balkanac** · 29-11-2007, 01:22 PM

one of my mates used to drive a Saab 9000 turbo and had the same problem. The radiator cracked between the oil cooler and where the cooland goes. The car felt like it was towing a house!!
so it costed him quite a bit to get that fixed. I prefer to have a cluch pedal in my car, just because of these silly things that end up costing a small fortune

**OvaltoJetta** · 29-11-2007, 06:30 PM

Ask just about any Audi owner from that era. It's a common problem. It happened to me. The thing is, I knew about it and hadn't got around to doing anything about it .....before it went. That makes it worse. The heat exchanger for the tranny fluid is in the bottom of the 2nd radiator tank "I think" and when it goes without warning, you get coolant in the transmission and tranny fluid in the radiator. Mine was still driveable but it felt like a slipping clutch on a manual. It cost me a tranny rebuild that cost $3k. That said the same technology is in a lot of Falcons as well and a tranny build for them is also $3k

**Golf Loon** · 29-11-2007, 07:43 PM

Same thing happened to me on a Golf 3. Coolant plus gearbox = mess and no gearbox. I converted it to manual. That fixed it.

**Jmac** · 30-11-2007, 08:39 AM

Yeah great fix i concur with that one!! BAck onto the water contamination. I have since made some enquiries and found out what the water breaks down. The clutches in the gearbox is put together with water souluble glue!! THen the water gets to it and breaks down the glue thus the slipping of the clutches and very poor changes. What happened to the one i had here was that it just ceased to drive! Its tongue was hangin out and had enough.
Cheers