A4 troubles :s

Give it back to them and let them fix it, or find another car. I don't go by mileage with cars, but on condition - and by the sounds of it, this one's knackered. The reason I generally pay little attention to mileage is that on something 10 years old, you've got very little clue as to whether it's genuine unless you have a full stack of old MOTs.

The airflaps stuck

They're both fairly minor faults, the stuck heater flaps probably the most expensive, without plugging it into vag-com it's difficult to be sure though.

Or some monkey's not completely filled the cooling system. I prefer to go for the worst case scenario when I'm looking at a second hand car to avoid horrible surprises.

Exackerly. I'd not fix it myself incase the seller thinks decides it's far more expensive a repair than he expected and washes his hands of it. The OP doesn't mention if it's a private or trade sale at this point though - if it's private and they're offering you the money back then I'd take that like lightning before you turn up with a big bill and they find out they've no obligation to pay it.

You can get very bored buying older cars then. & checking the coolant levels trivial.

That's what quotes are for.

I only ever buy older cars. I do my best to check absolutely everything after hearing enough stories about people buying cars with no reverse gear or fifth gear, and silly bits and bobs that are a pain in the arse to fix.

If the system needs bleeding, you can have a half empty cooling system and a full header tank. Been there done that...

Yes, but if it's a private seller, he'll see the BFO quote and start trying to worm his way out of it as either way he'd be paying a lot to fix a sheddy car. The thing can't be worth more than a couple of grand tops.

Thanks for the advice guys. I would like to keep the car for my girlfriend as it really drives nice and the 75k is backed up with paperwork. It was an ebay sale for £920 and the seller was a complete gentleman even having a list of faults to tell me about when I arrived (cigarette lighter not working, 2 dash bulbs; out etc) so I do feel he was unaware of these issues (his work is around 1/2 mile from his home so I could see how he didn't realise the heater was not as hot as it should be or the ABS light comes on whilst speeding on the motorway). Also the seller gave me £100 back to help towards the service that is now due, as I said a truly decent bloke. When I called to tell him about these things he was genially worried and offered me a full refund or to go 50/50 on the repairs depending on the quote.

Its a nice car with a couple of niggles, I have heard that the ABS ECU on these can be a little problematic and costs £100 to exchange and hopefully the heater matrix just needs a good flushing out.

I'm off to try flushing the matrix now and hopefully that will sort it as the matrix inlet pipe gets hot but the outlet stays just warm.

Again, thanks for your advice and if you guys have any other ideas im all ears :)

rda ("rda" ) gurgled happily, sounding much like they were saying:

Ewww. Low mileage. Never got warm. Don't walk away, run away. No faster way to kill a car.

----- Original Message ----- From: "Duncan Wood" Newsgroups: uk.rec.cars.maintenance Sent: Monday, December 03, 2007 8:41 AM Subject: Re: A4 troubles :s

Well it does seem that the matrix is flowing water just fine, so looks like it may be this air flap. It is not the climatronic version and had the manual wheel that you turn to set air temp. Do you think that a stuck flap is still likely with this system and if so any idea how to get to it and unstick the thing ?

Many thanks

On 03 Dec 2007 17:25:13 GMT, I waved a wand and this message magically appears in front of Adrian:

An "Italian tune-up" would sort that out.

CHeck the radiator is actually getting boiling hot, the temperature guage is very inaccurate, otherwise it's a pain to get to behind the dash. NOt difficult but as fiddly as all dash related things. For the ABS you can either buy VAG-COM which probably pays for itself or find someone who's got it. The instrument bulbs are suprisingly easy, ignore the Haynes instructions about removing the steering wheel, just pull it all the way forwards \& all the way down, follow Haynes but don't bother removing the cluster, just tip it forwards & you can change them in situ.

That's putting it mildly.

They're pre-programmed to run at dead centre once the engine is warm, and never vary from it unless you've cooked the lump.

Hand it back and get your money back.

It would have been a good price for a car with no faults, but for a car with some possibly expensive to fix faults, it wasn't cheap enough.

The 1.8 20v engine isn't great, either. They have the economy of the

So there's a reasonable chance you just need a new thermostat

That's why they're cheaper.