mik

Lengthy post warning. Mrs mik has run a launch-edition E-Tron 55 for 3.5 years. She was really keen to get an EV, so we got an EV. Generally it’s a superb thing, with tech that all works and integrates well. It’s fast and extremely quiet, rides very well (air sus) but it’s not particularly efficient, and doesn’t therefore have a great range. Charging at home for normal daily use is awesome. Charging on the public network for longer journeys is pretty dismal. No revelations there. It’s now 3.5yrs old with just over 30k miles on the clock. I took it for a “larger car task” last month. 25 miles from home on an A-Road the car suddenly sang out some loud warning chimes whilst flashing up “Electrical System Fault – Safely stop vehicle!” followed immediately by a 4WD system fault message, and then a warning related to the drive system, with “Limited Performance Available”. Audi’s definition of “limited performance” actually translated to no performance whatsoever, so I was lucky to be able to pull up safely at the entrance to a rural driveway. Once stopped I decided “actually I’ll shuffle it forward 2m to give the house owner more space to get in and out”. Nope. Zero drive. A quick look underneath - fluid was leaking out towards the front of the car – not a very pleasant smelling one. Called the AA and asked that they just send a flat-bed. Zero drive. 2.6 tonne car. Fluid leaking – it’s not going to be possible to do a roadside repair. Computer said no, so I waited 3hrs for a patrol to arrive, who looked at it, sniffed it, and said “I’m not even going to touch it mate”. 🙄 Another 75mins for a sub-contracted flat bed to recover the car to their holding yard for delivery to the dealership on Monday morning, and mrs mik came to pick me up. In the Evora. A car she has driven for a total of approximately 1.5 miles, when I got it 8 years ago.…erk. 😐 Luckily she, the Evora, all of it's gearbox ratios, and all originally fitted pistons & valves arrived unscathed. Phew. 🙂 E-Tron is 4wd of course and has motors both front & rear. Audi took a look and confirmed that the front motor had lost all coolant. Unfortunately that doesn't require a seal and refill, it renders it junk. Yes the entire motor unit. 😬 A new replacement motor is <tap tap tap> £6.2k fitted. Thankfully I had previously opted to extend the 3yr manufacturer warranty (full cover for a very reasonable price), so this was a warranty job with courtesy hire car. Like really thankfully. Some people might suggest however that this doesn’t appear to be a particularly good advert for EV’s. I might agree with them. A quick web search suggests that – whilst its a long way from being a “common” occurrence - we aren’t the first E-Tron owners to suffer this issue. It also appears to be an ongoing low-level problem for Tesla and presumably all other manufacturers who use fluid-cooled drive motors. Which triggered me to go and learn a little more. I'm still scratching the surface as opposed to diving deep, but I understand that in order to maximise (particularly continuous) output, manufacturers are deploying motor cooling circuits that go around the stator (sounds absolutely fine, and that was what I expected), past the electronic controls (erm - probably ok, but wasn’t aware of that) and through centre of the rotor itself (blimey – definitely wasn’t aware of that). The first two seem straight forward in terms of keeping coolant appropriately isolated - in a similar way to the water jacket around an IC engine. The latter however appears to require “mechanical seals” that run on the main shaft of the motor. I know a bloke who works on ship engines (amongst other massive power units) who assures me that these types of seal are common, and generally extremely reliable, but I suspect that they might have a harder time in EV’s in terms of rapid heat cycles and speed changes (?) Below is an Audi motor graphic (front & rear E-Tron), but I believe Tesla (and others) are similar. So the point of my post? EV’s are still pretty new tech, so we remain on the lower slopes of understanding in terms of longer-term running issues. I think most folks are pretty aware of battery longevity concerns, but I have to admit I assumed the motors would last the life of the car (in as much as the vast majority of IC engines last the life of the car). Full motor swaps are clearly (potentially ruinously) expensive and quite some way from eco-friendly. The push towards EV is going to require development/creation of new skills/businesses to perform preventative maintenance (such as motor coolant seal replacement), or refurbishment of failed units that the manufacturers aren’t interested in getting into (you might suggest it’s not in their interest to get into that type of activity). Tens of decades of IC engines means we have specialist places that can strip & refurb IC engines, gearboxes, diffs, but it's not yet there for EVs, and if that doesn't change we may be looking at a lot of EVs deemed uneconomical to repair at a fairly young age. I’ll be extending the warranty on the E-Tron again this year, but at some point Audi won’t offer that any more.... 😶

Enjoyed that. 😎

All zero / ultra-low mileage sports cars destroy me. Car crime. 🙁

ie This One

The noise you are describing sounds like dry front arb bushes - which they are prone to.

And their GT11 and GT12 products are still listed - thanks Agent!

Hang on - Gliptone isn’t dead?

Worth speaking to one of the specialists - I know Craig Moncrieff up here in Scotland tends to have oem back boxes, headers etc in the workshop following the fitting of upgrades. They are likely to have what you want, and might let it go cheap.

Love that first pic 😎

@TrevS I find the car has a tendancy to skip over road imperfections if you are running the Michelin's at book pressures (which were for the series1 car OEM fit Pirellis). I fiddled about a bit and find 31.5F 34R to be a good compromise.

I have a standard back box, with 2bular manifolds & sports cat. Volume is up (but not as loud as a mate with a V6 exige who had oem manifolds with the 2bular backbox around the same time), and whilst it's lost a smidge of gargle, the sound is "harder" and it now crackles a bit on the over-run. Most importantly (for me) it's changed the character of the car : low end and mid-range grunt are still as strong, but the shove no longer drops off as you approach the redline - it's definitely more urgent at the top end of the rev range (which is where you'd expect a free-er flowing system to deliver results).

It’s pretty subtle though - particularly the dots on the knobs.

With immediate effect apparently. See this article. Real shame. 🙁 Might help Emira sales I guess.....

I think it is still region dependent? My 2009 Vauxhall VXR8 (which is a essentially a (terribly) re-badged Holden Special Vehicles Commodore Clubsport) was RHD but had the indicator stalk on the RHS. It takes a long time to re-train your muscle memory - to stop signaling with your wipers - and just as long to train it back again when you sell the car..... 🥴

Yeah, I assumed that comment was in relation to full aftermarket alternative bumpers vs OEM, as opposed to something "bolt onto existing", but fair enough.

I assume you've considered other options to make the front (a little) more agressive? I've never seen on in the flesh, but I was thinking of something like the hethelsport splitter ?

It's almost certainly a bit pedantic, but why TF would you push it along facing backwards? 😐

@BigTed I would estimate it took 5 miles running before they all showed up on the dash. After I had the wheels refurbed, nothing was showing on the dash. I wanted to ensure they were good before I left, so I sat still for a few minutes. Still nothing showing, so I decided to drive approx 1 mile, and return. Still nothing showing. I went back into the refurb place and asked if this was normal - he came out with his TPMS coder and checked (whilst showing me the screen) that they were all transmitting correctly - and reassured me they should appear on my drive home. "Come back if there are any issues and I will sort it". I left a little reluctantly, but he was absolutely correct......

Everything @exeterjeep said. If you are just looking for a single item, bibs may well be your best bet. I bought 4 of these from TPMS Warehouse a couple of years back when I refurbed the wheels on my 2014 car. (And - obviously - they fit and work).

Black doesn't look bad, but I also (surprised myself a little that I) prefer oem.

I was wondering the same @superdavelotus (and whether they actually took payment, or "just" reserved it?)

@PeterHD I haven't tried the Conti7's (mrs mik's e-tron is on Conti 6's) but there are a lot of comments on their performance vs PS4S on line. FWIW this was one from 911UK "PS4S last longer, imo still better in standing water, in fact hitting deep water with a conti takes the wheel out your hand the PS4S ride though deep puddles, this is back to back driving same cars same weather." , so maybe it is a negative characteristic vs their other strengths?

That was for the OEM-fit Pirelli’s though remember. Significantly lower pressures quoted for the 400 which had Michelin as OEM fitment. The original owner of my car had ditched the Pirelli’s - it was on MPSS originally and now MPS4S. I run them at 31.5F, 34.5R. Putting them at book pressure makes the car skip around excessively.

Fair point - although unless they do similar, you'll miss out on the lit up marker dot 😐(which is so subtle I didn't notice it for about the first 4 yrs of ownership 😆).

Very weird that it's not recognising this. As someone stated previously - chargers are pretty dumb so if the car recognises there is something plugged in - it should take a charge. It'll only add about 4 miles range per hour, but if the car isn't moving for 12hrs that's still a useful boost. What sort of 7kw charger do you have? On our Zappi I can go into the installation menu and throttle the max current it will use from 32A (which it needs in order to provide 7.4kw) to a lower number - in case it needs to be installed on a lower-rated supply. If you can do the same with your charger you can throttle it down to 13A and see if the car still charges at that, or if it stops "recognising" the charger when currents are so (relatively) low?