MohabK

I have a 2006 Audi A8 with about 85,000 km (about 53,000) miles. Obviously, I do not drive it that much, which is because I also drive a 2007 Audi Q7, another tale for another day for another low mileage car.

The amount of troubles I have had with the A8 simply tells me that I will never buy another Audi again. The A8's front struts failed, the plastic molding, including on the gear shift, cracked off. The A/V screen pops up with lots of rattling. I handled these inconveniences. But the latest failure just drove me over the edge.

I have a leak in the gear box on a car with very little usage. There is no fix. Audi Bahrain tells me that I need to replace this part with a new gear box at a cost of US$10,500. The used value of the car is US$17,000, so I said no. I called Audi Dubai, and they wanted to charge me US$12,500. In the USA, I found dealers selling the same part at half the cost.

I am now looking for a used gear box or one from a Chinese OEM because Audi did not provide me a gear box that justifies to me the value of a car that costs nearly US$100,000.

Does anybody have any alternative ideas? If I do not find something that makes sense, I will have the car crushed and delivered to the Audi dealer while on my way to using that US$10,500 to buy a car by another manufacturer.

mishar

Welcome to the board and sorry for your troubles. Very unusual for A8, or any Audi, by the way.

Replacing transmission because of a leak doesn't sound reasonable. Unless there is a crack, which is highly unlikely. So you need good independent mechanic. Forget dealers.

You didn't say how big that leak is but you may consider driving it as is and topping ATF occasionally. That's better and cheaper than crashing it.

Regarding other troubles you had, it looks like you have some very bad roads there and you are flying them like your A8 is a magic carpet. That hurts Suspension, brakes screen gears and combined with extensive heat causes all kind of cracks. You have to take care of your lady if you want her to be nice to you.

snapdragon

These auto boxes are not Audi, they are ZF 6HP and used by many makes of car such as Jaguar, LandRover and BMW.
The problem you have is the Audi aftersales service and aftermarket parts availability there are dire and expensive.
Can you buy in a used box from another country? Or ship it away to be rebuilt?
If it failed here, we would buy a used one for £800 or a rebuild for about the same cost if you could wait a week + ~£300-400 labour.