AUDI A4 - and the mystery key !!

I was visiting my relatives, who have an Audi TT. So my brother in law wanted to have a look at the Audi - he sat in side, played with the controls etc.

He then declared he could start the car without my key. Well I knew this wasn't possible, since I had the key and there is no other fancy option to start this car.

He then started the car, much to my amazement!

How? Well apparently there is a back up key in the glove box. Nobody had told me about this backup key. It is a plastic key which fits into a spare plastic key body. The key body fits into the socket like the normal key - but doesn't have any electronic functionality. However once the other piece of plastic is inserted..it appears to work like any other key.

So I have been driving around with the spare sitting in the unlocked glovebox the whole time. How unsafe is that. I wonder how many other Audi drivers are now in the same situation. Does the insurance cover this?

Steering noise..

noises.. you want your car to make all of the right noises.. and none of the strange ones.. well a few strange ones have started in the audi a4

Perhaps only happened 3 times... but when parking and turning the steering wheel sharply, you get this horrible noise.. almost like a poor type of horn being hit.. what is that..

also another irritating noise.. it's as if there is some static on the radio..

Audi Economics - Fuel and Tax

From the maths I did before getting the Audi A4, I knew it would be a significant saving over running the XC70 from Volvo. However with all of these good ideas, you never really know if the theory will work in practise.

One big saving area was in fuel consumption. Now with the diesel price dropping, the saving is less.. but is it significant, now after 1000miles - how is it working out. The car is saying it is making 44mpg on average since new.. now I don't know how the average works though.

One thing that used to frustrate me with the Volvo was that despite the big 70litre tank, you always felt you were filling the car up. My weekly business mileage was 4 round trips of 36miles and then one trip of around 240.. now in reality this seemed to use up the tank !! despite the average being about 35mpg. With the Audi, I can make 7 round trips of 36 miles plus the 240 trip.. on less than 60 litres. The fact I don't have to visit the petrol station every week.. is already a telling the story of saving money.. I always seemed to be at the station before.. with some bills at £85+.. I just filled up at Sainsbury using a voucher and got 58litres for under £60. So approx £30-40 saving per week less versus 6 months ago.

I am waiting for the end of the month to see if the tax saving will be identified. However tax saving I expect to be around £400 per month. So compared to this time 6 months, the total saving of tax and fuel must be well over £500 per month. There is no way the Volvo was worth £500 per month more than this Audi A4.

Audi A4 and water

Well the Volvo XC70 didn't handle water very well, so when the rains came this weekend I was pretty nervous. We went out in the Ford Focus first and managed to avoid most of the water, until we were confronted with a flooded A road.. queue of traffic either side of the flood as the cars went through one by one. Eventually plucked up courage to drive through the flood - I was holding my breath and kept the engine revving..slipping the clutch.

Given the amount of water on the road yesterday, I decided to play safe with Audi this morning - but was then stunned by the amount of mud on the roads from the previous days floods, I continued to drive around the flood roads. I do not want to put this Audi at risk.

Audi A4 - Dashboard Again

I was fiddling around the dashboard switches on the Audi A4 Avant, and realised there was some other options for the multi functional digital display which fits between the rev counter and the speedo. It usually has a clock at the centre and then some other data which can be scrolled through. I have since found a setting which provides the speed as a large central digital display, with then the trip computer in smaller digits below. Given how the analgoue speedo isn't so helpful in giving details at urban speeds - I think this setting is much better. It also reminds me a little bit of my S2000 which only had a digital speedo.

New Audi A4 Avant - Revs to next gear

The car suggests you change up early for fuel economy - however from 2nd to 3rd this really knocks the performance as you end up at a too low rev in the next gear. For more performance you need to hold the revs to at least 3200rpm to catch the torque / boost in the next gear.

The engine apparently will rev to 5000.. which I dare not do. I used to regularly rev my BMW 320D to it's rev limit.. and it was OK, but it did break a turbo at 30,000miles.. maybe it wasn't as robust as I thought it was.

Tramlining in Audi A4

On one of my local roads, the Audi has a strange feeling that runs through the chassis.. well I thought it was the chassis.. then I thought it was the seat.. it is sort of a wandering / sloppy feel. However when talking to my father in law, he asked me how the car felt with the 245/45 tyres, as his Saab tramlined with low profile tyres. Then it connected, the sensation I was getting on this road was tramlining - there is some road works and the car basically wants to follow these road imperfections like a map.. the only other car I had that did this was my Honda S2000 which would tramline a bit under braking with grooved roads near stop signs.