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OT: Audi A3 1.8T
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I'm helping my g/f to get a cheapish car and have been offered a 98/R
A3 1.8T with 98k miles under its belt for =A32,600.
This strikes me as a jolly good deal, but for this reason I'm a bit
wary. Is the mileage a bit high for a turbo car? How do I check whether
the turbo is OK? Anyone know of any faults I should look out for on an
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I'd get figures for insurance, MPG, tyre life and replacement costs, service
intervals and costs, price and availability of special components etc, if I
was looking at something like that. Depends what she's used to, I suppose.
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MPG will be around 32mpg in day to day use - dropping to high 20s if you
thrash it a bit. They don't have vicious power delivery, so tyre life
isn't going to be *that* bad (the Passat managed nearly 20k miles from a
pair of front Goodyears, compared to the usual 8k or so miles I get from
Pirellis on the Alfa), servicing every 10k miles and most bits are
available on the cheap from GSF etc. Apart from a couple of expensive
ECUs that is.
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Amusingly, her previous car was a Daihatsu Charade 1.3 auto (3-speed!).
Easily the worst car I have ever driven or been passenger in. I'm sure
this would be quite a step up, both in terms of fun and running costs.
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A3?
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I had a Passat, the same age, with the same engine.
Bought with nearly 130k miles on it, ran up to 160k miles over 8 months.
Nothing went wrong, the engine was very quiet and didn't smoke. The only
maintenance needed was an oil change and I had the cambelt done as a
precaution. Fairly complex lump, but nothing a half decent local
independent can't cope with - my cambelt and oil change service came in
at £160.
Don't worry if it doesn't really feel like it's a turbo lump - they're
in a low state of tune and peak torque comes in at under 2k rpm, so
instead of a kick in the back, all you get is very smooth power and a
flat torque curve all the way from 2k rpm to around 5k rpm.
That's very cheap for an A3 - but it's a hefty lump of cash more than my
Passat cost me.
Check the history for a belt change - VAG say to do them on 80k miles,
but they've been known to snap if you run them for much more than 60k
miles between changes - with 20 valves in the lump that could be very
expensive.
The only thing I can really think of is to check there's no smoke on
startup or when you lift off.
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BTW I'm aware it's based on the Golf floorpan ;)
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