28 Audi A4 Cabriolet 1.8T

PART FIVE: The 1.8T VAG engines are known for the oil strainer clogging-up. Andrew Everett drops the sump.

Part five: Renewing the oil pick-up pipe and strainer bought from an Audi dealership.

Modern engine oil has a lot to answer for, and so do car manufacturers. In the quest to reduce servicing costs, oil change intervals have been extended to some frankly insane mileages – we’ve seen modern cars with oil change intervals via onboard ‘service when required’ systems at as high as 25,000 miles. One MINI was so bad that, despite sticking to manufacturers service intervals, the sump and cylinderhead had to be removed, stripped and chemically cleaned to remove the plethora of ‘black death’ at just 40,000 miles.

The 1.8T Turbo VAG engine, shoved into the A4, TT and some VW Golfs, joins the ranks of other engines known for black death syndrome – non-turbo 2.0 FSI Audis and Passats, Saab 9-5 Turbo to name a few more. On these engines, the sludge congeals on the sides of the sump above the oil level and can then flake off, getting trapped on the oil pick-up pipe strainer. This results in eventual engine death as the oil pump cannot deliver enough oil – and on the 1.8T, it’s known for the camshafts to seize in the head as they are the furthest parts away from the pump.

Removing the sump

Our A4 has a full service record over its 83,000 miles and the oil was clean on the dipstick. Even so, we decided to remove the sump and replace the pick-up pipe anyway. Not so easy on the longitudinalengined A4, though much easier on transverse-engined cars such as the Golf, A3, TT and Passat B6.

Some say you can run engine flush though it, others have suggested leaving a gallon of thinners in the sump for a few days before draining it (engine not running obviously!), but these are not effective and can even cause more problems. This is because the first port of call for any dislodged black crud is… the oil pick-up. No, drop the sump and do it properly – it’s really not such a bad job.

I was also surprised to find that the cheapest place for an oil pick-up pipe was my local Audi main dealer, Sheffield Audi JCT600. Around £16 versus 25 quid on ebay!

Finally – as the oil and filter had been changed a couple of thousand miles before, we elected to leave the filter on and just replenish with new oil, leaving it a couple of thousand miles before doing another oil and filter change with fully-synthetic 5W-40 oil.

Thanks go to Haynes for the USA manual that covers the Convertible B6 (Haynes number 15030) in some detail, as well as the UK printed version, number 4609. The US versions says that you need to pull the front radiator panel forwards, but we didn’t need to. Neither did we need to move the aircon compressor. Even so, they are good guides with invaluable torque figures.

We’re also indebted to Clarke Tools for sending us an engine support brace. These are invaluable for performing a task like this – or a clutch swap. This Clarke product will be seeing a lot of future use!

At less than £85 all-in from Machine Mart stores, they’re a seriously useful tool.

One tool we could have done with is a nice long set of slim 3/8in Allen sockets for use with a ratchet to get the two rear hidden sump bolts out. You have to rotate the crank on the front pulley bolt to line the access cut-outs on the flywheel and you really need the best fitting Allen key as the consequences of rounding a bolt out are a bit dire. While sump removal is similar on the 2.0 petrol cars, those with the Multitronic CVT and Quattro autos don’t have this issue with the rear sump bolts.