0 Audi Timing Belts

If you have a later model Audi, and you’re closing in on 100,000 miles you might be wondering why that timing belt change you’re looking at is so expensive, and what it involves.

The maintenance schedule simply says “replace timing belt at 105,000 miles” for most models.  They don’t really list any other parts, or talk about what’s involved.  There are two ways you can approach that work.

The first method is to slide the front bumper forward for access, take the covers off the front of the motor, and slip a new timing belt into place.  You might change a roller or two, and swap the serpentine belts, but the rest of the car remains untouched.

That’s the easiest job to do.  A skilled tech can bang the work out in a day.  But is that the best job for you as an owner?

If you plan to trade the car next month, it may seem like the way to go.  But if you plan on keeping your Audi another 100,000 miles, or you plan to pass it on to a kid or friend or anyone you care about, a different approach is probably called for.

At Robison Service, we do a lot of work for enthusiasts – people who ask a lot of their cars and really care about and for them.  Over time we’ve learned that the best repairs are the ones that last.  Often that means doing more work, not less, when tackling a big job.  Anytime we do a big job, we ask ourselves, “What else is going to give trouble soon,” and we address those items while the car is apart and it’s easy.  After all, it’s always smarter to spend two hundred dollars today, if it saves six hundred dollars next year. 

If you simply slap a timing belt onto a 100,000-mile Audi you can be assured that the job will not last another 100,000 miles.  More than likely, you will be doing the work over again, with additional repairs, within three years.  Why?  Because the timing belt is just one piece of a complex system, and the other pieces of the system can and will fail too, even though they are not on the maintenance schedule.

For example, the water pump is driven by the timing belt.  Most Audi water pumps make it to 100k miles.  I’ve never seen one last 200k.  The water pump is behind the timing belt, so its replacement calls for doing the timing belt all over again.  Installing a water pump during the timing belt job will cost a few hundred dollars, in most cases.  Replacing it two years later (and doing the timing belt and other work over again)  may well cost fifteen hundred more dollars, when everything is tallied up.

The timing belt is guided and tensioned by a number of rollers and springs, all of which wear out.  Those parts won’t last till 200k either, and if they fail, the timing belt can come off, leading to thousands of dollars in preventable engine damage.

All cars leak oil and coolant when they get old.  Audis are no exception.  The thing is, you can fix many of those leaks easily when the engine is apart.  A few extra hours may get rid of those annoying drips.

And drips can be more than an annoyance.  When oil or coolant leaks onto the exhaust, it’s a fire hazard.  When oil gets hot in summer, it makes an acrid stink that can be drawn inside the car when the AC is running.  Those are a few of the good reasons to fix your leaks while the motor is open.

What about everything else under the hood?  I believe a good technician should look the whole engine bay over carefully when doing any big job.  Who knows what’s about to fail?  There may be cracked hoses, leaking AC lines, or even a corroded and failing battery.  The time we open the hood for work may well be the only time anyone looks at those things until they fail.

As much as people hate to spend money, it’s easier and cheaper to change a battery when your car is already in the shop than it will be when it dies, in an empty parking lot, some cold winter night.  That idea exemplifies the difference in our philosophy.  We believe in identifying what may go wrong tomorrow, and fixing it while we do today's repair.  Other people believe is doing just what the schedule says, and no more.  There's a place for both ways of thinking; I believe our philosophy is more suited to long term ownership.

We apply this same preventative care approach to every car we service.  Sometimes it can surprise people.  They go to the Shop A and hear about two problems.  They come to us and we show them ten more things.  That doesn't make the first guy wrong - it just means we have a different approach and I like to think we are more through.

Robison Service is a four-star Bosch Car Service center.  We service Audi, BMW, Jaguar, Mercedes, Land Rover, Porsche, and Rolls Royce-Bentley automobiles.   We’re located right off exit 4 of I-291 in Springfield, Massachusetts.  Visit us online, or stop by the shop.  We're here from 8-5 Monday through Friday.   Phone us at 413-785-1665 

Detail: Audi Timing Belts

0 Some thoughts on Right to Repair

You may have read that Massachusetts is voting this June 28 on a piece of legislation called Right to Repair (R2R) which is touted as a law that will force carmakers to give independent repair shops (the so-called little guys) the same access to car repair data as franchised dealers.

The claim is that this law will save consumers tons of money while giving them a newfound freedom of choice. Unfortunately, it won’t.

Here’s why that law is a waste of time and money.

Right to Repair is a proposed law to give small shops access to repair information. Giving access implies that access is denied today. It isn’t.

Small repair shops already have equal access to service information. I know that because I own a shop and I access that info every day. The National Auto Service Task Force was established almost ten years ago in response to widespread consumer complaints about access to service data and test tools. Thanks to NASTF efforts and Federal legislation, any shop can log onto Ford or BMW or any other carmaker’s database and buy daily, weekly, or monthly subscriptions to service data; the very same data their dealers have.

The only data that is restricted on those websites relates to vehicle security and the coding of keys. That same data is restricted to dealer technicians to prevent vehicle theft. It’s sometimes a hassle, but the carmakers are required to do that for motorist’s own security. Would you want any schmuck to be able to order keys for your car off the web? I thought not.

There was a time when carmakers did hold back information and it was very frustrating. They also restricted access to their proprietary service tools. All that changed thanks to the Federal government stepping in about ten years ago. In my opinion, the information access problem is essentially solved. The problems that remain are being worked out cooperatively by the NASTF, with no need for new state laws.

The proposed R2R law purports to ensure customers can choose where to get their cars fixed. Customers have always had that right. The smarter question to ask is, Who is qualified to fix your car? If you have a high-end car like we work on, your choices are indeed limited. However, you are not limited by “right to repair” issues. You are limited because there are not many people who are both qualified and possessed of the specialized tools to properly service a late-model Mercedes, BMW, or Land Rover.

That brings us to the biggest issue in the aftermarket auto service industry: technician and shop competence. I can’t tell you how many times I hear xxx ripped me off, or xxx screwed me, or xxx fixed my car and it’s worse than before. 99% of those complaints stem from incompetence, in my experience. Only a tiny fraction results from dishonesty or malice.

At Robison Service everyone in the shop attends brand and system specific training every year to stay current. We would be lost without that training and the backup of tech support from Bosch and our test system manufacturers. But training is costly, and few independent shops do it. Dealers have to do it to keep their franchise. We have to do it because we’re committed to being the best.

The second (related) issue is tooling. The days of fixing 99% of the cars with a box of hand tools are long gone. It’s an electronic world, and you’ll need ten to twenty grand for the diagnostic tools for any high-end car, if you want to have dealer-level capability. Otherwise, you’ll be telling customers you can’t do this, or that. You will never hear we can’t do that, you have to go to the dealer at Robison Service. But that certainty comes at high cost; hundreds of thousands invested in tooling and more every year.

Luckily, the tools are cheaper for ordinary cars, and training is more available. Even still few independents avail themselves of it.

Training and tooling are the two principal reasons independents can’t fix cars properly. Both those things are available, at the same cost a dealer would pay. The playing field is already level, thanks to Federal legislation passed in the 1996-2002 time frame.

Another claim is that drivers will be protected because they will get notice of recalls and service bulletins. Once again, that is a problem that’s long been solved. Every manufacturer service website provides that service when you input a VIN. In addition, Alldata and Mitchell (the two principal aftermarket service data suppliers) offer the same thing. All you have to do is buy the subscription. Like us, and every other properly equipped shop or dealership.

Finally, they claim this bill will protect jobs. How? We are not losing our jobs now. This bill will not cause more cars to be fixed in Massachusetts. The problem with jobs in auto service is that we have sky-high unemployment where I live and work. Many of our customers are struggling to stay above water, and car repair is a low priority. That reality drives service workflow for most shops.

I don’t think passage of this bill would hurt me, or my shop. However, it certainly won’t help. What it represents is a waste of time, and political posturing, when we have real and pressing problems to solve elsewhere. Let’s drop this and spend time solving our employment and housing crises. Bills like this are nothing but red herrings to draw people from the real issues.

Detail: Some thoughts on Right to Repair

0 Where did the $39 BMW oil change go?

I grew up thinking of oil changes as inexpensive, quick services. Yet the simplest of services on a late model Mercedes or BMW seems to cost $150 or $200. How come?

The first part of the explanation lies in the oil itself. In recent years the European carmakers have extracted more and more performance from less and less fuel using sophisticated technologies. Anyone who’s compared a 2008 BMW 5-series to a 533 from the mid 1980s can’t help but notice the difference.

The car designers have pushed the limits of engine technology to get today’s performance. That means engines run hotter, and there’s more stress on the internal parts. Engines now contain plastics and exotic metals, which need different kinds of protection. And finally the service intervals are far longer, so the oil in today’s BMW has to last several times as long as the oil we installed 25 years ago.

The result of that change is a much higher performing car that needs far higher performance lubricants than cars of yesterday. And the costs of getting it wrong are high . . . an engine that fails from sludge buildup or other lubrication failure can easily cost over $15,000 to replace.

Important as it is, engine oil or “motor oil” is totally misunderstood by most technicians and consumers. People glance in their owner’s books and see that their car takes 5-30 oil. They don’t even know what 5-30 refers to, so they assume any 5-30 oil will meet their needs. Nothing could be farther from the truth.

In fact, all non-synthetic and most synthetic SAE 5W-30 oil products available in North America fail to provide adequate protection for North American BMW and Mercedes cars that require a 5W-30 viscosity oil.

For example, both Castrol Syntec 5W-30 and Mobil 1 5W-30 both fail to meet BMW minimum requirements. Castrol and Mobil both make products that are suitable for BMW and Mercedes engines but they are not readily available in North America. Even respected brands like Amsoil and Redline fail to offer products that are approved by BMW. In the case of Amsoil and Redline, SOME of their products will serve well but are not technically approved and do have the potential to create problems under certain conditions.

Due to the widespread ignorance of oil service ratings in North America, BMW reduces the minimum requirements for cars sold on this continent. The Genuine BMW 5W-30 oil meets the reduced "LL-98" requirements. LL-98 is the long life oil standard that BMW established in 1998. That standard was superseded by a tougher one in 2001, BMW LL-01. Robison Service and other good BMW specialty shops use the higher grade "LL-01" approved oil for improved protection. These products will improve protection and improve the effectiveness of the BMW oil monitor system.

Mercedes has similar standards for its cars, and for that matter so do Porsche, Volvo, VW, Audi and most other high end carmakers. Ignoring the carmaker requirements is to court disaster. Having said that, I see that very thing happen all the time. People buy inexpensive oils in the mistaken belief that all oil is the same, and they feel good because they saved $50 on an oil service. But what happens when the engine fails and they face a $10,000 repair bill? That’s truly an expensive lesson.

Oil is not the only component of an “oil service.” There is also the filter. At Robison Service we use genuine filters and filters from Bosch and Mann, two of the principal suppliers to European carmakers. These filters cost a bit more, but once again they meet the carmakers requirements. A filter that clogs and causes an expensive failure isn’t much of a savings . . .

Finally, a proper service includes reading and resetting the maintenance system. All late model BMW and Mercedes cars have flexible service computers, where the car keeps track of what’s due and when. You may think the car just needs an oil change, but the maintenance system may be asking for a brake fluid change and new cabin filters too. Once again, there can be serious consequences if the recommended services are ignored.

Dealers and properly equipped independents will have the necessary electronic systems to talk to the car’s service computer. It’s very important to do this, and to scan for faults, because your car’s computer is all that stands between you and a breakdown in many cases. And if you ignore a stored fault (which may be invisible from the dashboard) you may not get any other warning before the car fails.

Finally, a proper service includes a careful visual inspection by a technician that’s familiar with the marquee. You can’t find that anywhere except at a dealer or specialist.

That’s why we don’t call these services oil changes anymore. We call them small services. BMW separates oil service from inspection service. Mercedes Benz A Service is their small service. We do that because they always include an oil change but they often include additional work as dictated by the car or our inspection.

Detail: Where did the $39 BMW oil change go?

0 A simple brake job isn't always as simple as it looks

Many people have suggested that they can have a quick lube or corner garage do the "easy work" on their high end car, while leaving the "tough jobs" for specialists like Robison Service. That sounds like a good idea, but how do you know what the easy jobs are?

Oil changes used to be simple, but that's out the window on many cars. BMW and Mercedes dropped the dipstick, so you check level through the dash. Most cars have some complex procedure to reset the oil reminder. Many require special oils and the other fluids (like coolant) are often brand or even model-specific too. Can your corner garage get that right? And who buys the engine if they don't?

I'm not suggesting you abandon local service. What I suggest is that you have talks with your various service providers and make sure they can actually handle what you want of them. Blissful ignorance and incompetence are the bane of the auto service trade.

I'd like to show you an example of how simple service has gotten complex on a modern Land Rover. Join me while we slap some brakes on a late model LR3 . . .



In this photo you can see the brake and strut assembly. The new pads and rotors are in place and the wheels are hanging, ready to fit the tires. Do you see the strut assembly inboard of the brake? It's full of air, and the air charge is sometimes lost when the vehicle if put on a lift for a few hours. Most of the time it recovers, but occasionally, it doesn't, and it goes into fault mode.

When that happens, the fix is simple. Just hook your $10,000 IDS or Autologic system to the car and reset air suspension. Presto, you're set. But what if you don't have an IDS or Autologic . . . .??



If that's the case, you have an even bigger problem, because you can't set up the parking brake without one. Here our technician uses one of our test systems to release the parking brake cables on this LR3. If the tester isn't used properly the result is usually a smoked parting brake a few hundred miles down the road, and a fresh $800 repair bill.

It's still possible to do some work on these new vehicles at home, and local garages can still handle quite a bit of general service. For example, anyone can swap pads only - no special tools are needed for that. However, these particular Rovers are notorious for eating up rotors. Here's a worn out one to prove my point at 25,000 miles . . . .



The trick is knowing the limits of what you can do without special tools. In one of my last posts I wrote about all the trouble I had over a wrong spark plugs brand in another Land Rover. Sometimes there is just no substitute for experience.

Detail: A simple brake job isn't always as simple as it looks

0 Time for brakes and struts?

This is the look of new brakes and struts on a Porsche . . .



Struts need to be changed when they blow out. When that happens, the side of the strut will be black with dirty oil, and the vehicle will bounce like a pogo stick over bumps. All too often people look at struts during other service, and they say "These look okay" if they are dry.

But are struts really okay, just because they're not leaking?

In this car, the struts were not visibly failed. However, the car was 8 years old, and the struts had over 60,000 miles on them. In the mind of this particular owner - a driver enthusiast - that was reason enough to take the strut loose for inspection.

That proved to be a good call. When compressed and extended on the workbench, there was a night and day difference in the damping power of the old struts versus the new replacements. The old struts hardly had any damping left, it seemed. And when we installed them that feeling translated into much firmer handling. The car once again drove like new. It just goes to show, a quick visual check often fails to tell the whole story.



What about brakes? Can they be checked visually?

In the "before" photo above, you can see a ridge along the outer circumference of the brake rotor. That visible ridge is a sign the rotor is at or near the wear limit. How do I know? Simple . . . modern cars don't have a huge margin for allowable wear. But the time the wear is visible at the rotor edge, you are near the end. If you want to know more precisely, you can gauge the rotor and look up the thickness in the workshop manual, but this rule of thumb will serve you well most of the time.

There is also a good rule of thumb for pads. Most European carmakers say pads should be changed when the friction material is worn to the same thickness as the metal backing plate. You can't see that in this photo, but if you'd crawled into the monitor and looked sideways you'd surely have seen the worn pads.

Detail: Time for brakes and struts?

0 Check those axles before you find yourself walking . . .

With winter coming it’s a good idea to check your car’s axles and cv joints. If you read the auto magazines, you’re already getting lots of advice about batteries, antifreeze, and wiper blades. But I’ll bet you haven’t heard a peep about axles, till now. Why not, you ask? Axles aren’t cute or sexy, and they aren’t sold by mass merchandisers. Yet they will strand you more completely than anything short of a broken timing belt.

How could such an important part of your car be so badly overlooked? I don’t know. But there you have it. Today, I am going to take you on a journey toward automotive enlightenment.

Have you considered how the power gets from your car’s engine to its wheels? Many of you know there’s a transmission between the engine and wheels, and some know there’s a differential, the thing that allows the wheels to roll at different speeds on corners.

Some of you know the differential as the thing that lets you get stuck, for it’s the differential that lets one wheel sit still on dry pavement while the opposite wheel spins helplessly on ice.

What connects that differential to the wheels? Axles. The axles are shafts with flexible joints on each end, to allow them to bend up and down as the suspension moves and the wheels steer. Those flexible joints are called cv joints, or constant velocity joints.

Each joint is packed in grease and wrapped in a flexible rubber boot. Joints are supposed to last the life of the car, but they seldom do. What happens is this: The rubber boot cracks and splits, which allows the grease to escape and gritty dirt to get in. When gravel gets exchanged for grease, the joint soon fails, and it comes apart. As soon as that happens, passengers in the vehicle experience the thrill of pedestrian conversion.

Pedestrian life isn’t too bad if it happens somewhere like New York’s Fifth Avenue, but it totally sucks at 2AM on a snowy night in Vermont. Unfortunately, that’s when joints tend to fail.

You see, a boot can crack during the summer and nothing much happens. The grease escapes slowly, but nothing really gets in to hurt the innards. However, when winter arrives, everything changes. The grease gets cold, and it gets thrown off more easily. At the same time, the axle is sprayed with wet salty water from winter roads. A joint that would survive months in the summer can come apart in weeks or days in a new England winter.

And there is no warning that this is going on . . . unless you look. So that is what I urge you to do. Here are some photos to guide you.



In this first shot, you can see a complete undamaged axle. The axle is the black shaft extending across the frame from the left. You can see the rubber boot at the axle’s right end. The wheel hub is on the far right, and the tire would be fastened to that. Chances are, you’ll see something similar if you look under your own car.



This is what a broken boot looks like. In fact, you are looking at the very same axle, when it arrived at our shop. My thumb is spreading the split boot to make it more visible. You can see the beginnings of dirt working their way into the axle.



Here’s what the axle looks like removed from the car. Now the damage is obvious.



This is what the joint looks like inside. As you can imagine, it does not thrive on dirt and salt water



And here we are, fixing the thing. Master technician Bob Toti has taken the axle apart and fitted new boots on each end after cleaning the joints and packing them with fresh grease. The whole process takes a few hours, but it’s vital to the car’s health.

Today, the roads are clean and dry. Tomorrow it may snow. Check your axles and cv joints now.

Detail: Check those axles before you find yourself walking . . .

0 How much for that alternator?

How much to put an alternator on my car?

I hear questions like that all the time. Rather than pick a number out of the air, I counter with a question of my own. “Why do you think you need an alternator?

There are two common reasons a motorist would ask that sort of question. The first is that someone said their car needed an alternator, and quoted a price that was shockingly high. The second possibility is that the car has a problem like a dead battery, and the owner has decided an alternator will fix it.

In the first case, there could be several reasons for the high price. The motorist may simply be out of touch with the true cost of car repair. The repair may have been quoted with a top quality alternator, when the motorist can only afford something cheap. Finally, there may be a complication to doing the job, and the garage quoted additional time and material to cover that.

All of those situations are best resolved by a customer and repair shop that collaborate to reach a solution. A price shopping motorist is not likely to obtain a good result, because there’s more to a good repair than the lowest bid.

I’m always happy to explain the reasons behind the probable cost of a repair. Do we have to take parts off for access? If so, it makes sense to service them, too, but that costs money. Do we have choices when it comes to replacement parts? Much of the time you get what you pay for, but there are times when aftermarket parts can service the purpose at lower cost.

Motorists will do much better working through those questions with one shop, where they know the person and the vehicle. Taking a quote and simply price-shopping by phone is very unlikely to get a good result because the questions that need to be answered are not strictly those of cost.

What about the motorist who just decided he needs an alternator? Some shop owners would say, the guy asked for an alternator. Sell him one! Who cares if he needs it? I’ve never really subscribed to that school of thought. If someone thinks they know what the car needs, I say, If I put the alternator on, and the car still has the same problem, how are you going to feel?

Few motorists consider that possibility, but in my experience, it’s very real. It’s amazing how many people will think it’s my fault if the car still has a problem, even though they made the diagnosis.

Once again, the best answer is to find a mechanic you can trust and discuss the problem with him rather than make an impulsive decision on your own.

So that leads to the biggest question of all: How do you find a mechanic who is capable, trustworthy, affordable, and all the other things you want? That is the subject of another post . . .

Detail: How much for that alternator?