Help! Strange oil warnings!

Posted: Tue Apr 22, 2003 9:15 am

My wonderful car has developed yet another endearing feature. (A4 Avant 1.8T, 1996, 69,000 miles).

I was on a driving holiday in France last week. I had driven about 1000 miles with no problems. Then one day I pulled up at a pay booth on an Auto-route, and the computer started beeping at me. The display was showing a red oilcan. There was a queue of impatient Frenchmen behind me so I had no choice but to pay and pull away. As I pulled away the warning stopped.

It was a hot day and the oil temp was a bit higher than normal, so I presumed it was something to do with that, and I pressed on. I drove about another 100 miles, then pulled up at another toll-booth. Low and behold, it did it again! I came off at the next town and parked up. I went for lunch to let the engine settle down for a couple of hours.

When I came back I checked the oil level and it was up to the max on the dipstick. There was no oil under the car. I started it up and revved it and there was no oil in the exhaust. Everything seemed normal so I carried on driving. I got all the way back up to the coast, about another 300 miles with no more problems. As I pulled up at the ferry port it did it again!

I had no choice but to get onto the ferry. I drove home from Portsmouth to Essex with no further problems.

I drove it to work this morning and it is going crazy now! Every time I slow down the computer flashes the oil warning, then it stops when I speed up. The oil level seems to be perfectly normal.

Anyone got any idea what it could be. Could it be the oil release valve? Could it be the oil cooler? Could it be the sensor?

I am taking it back to Southend Audi later in the week so that they can fix the immobiliser problems for me (they did a temporary fix before I went on holiday). I thought I would get some opinions here to be armed with before I contact them about it.

Thanks
Steve

Posted: Wed Apr 23, 2003 3:36 pm

Found out what the problem was.

I noticed a small puddle of fresh oil under the car so investigated the seals.

The seal on the oil pressure switch was gone, and oil was leaking from there. I took it into my friendly local garage and got them to replace the switch and seal, and bingo problem cured! Phew! Not as worrying as I thought.

The guy in the garage said that because the seal on the switch unit was gone the it would be giving a false reading of the true oil pressure.

Posted: Thu Apr 24, 2003 3:29 pm

I bet that caused your heart rate to increase. Something so small. Anyway, another prob sorted.

Strange how we bought these Germam cars with reliability in mind and these threads are full of problems... ah well.