Coolant leak day after Cambelt Change

arcon5

Strider590 wrote: »

Oh god, I hope you didn't pour cold water into a hot engine?

If so you could easily be looking at a cracked engine block and that basically means a new engine.........

Have you EVER seen this actually happen in real life???!!!!
NO

arcon5

londonTiger wrote: »

can I ask, how old is the car?

Factory garage aren't ususally good with old cars, they tend to have a young crew who are trained on the most recent cars and tend not to be experienced with older cars.

It's nigh on impossible for these pipes to break by themselves or disconnect on their own. The person who last worked on the car is usually the culprit. If the cambelt was a messy job and requires engine mount removal and the engine by support with a jack or overhead crane then it's entirely possible that the pipe was broke while handling the engine.

This is complete bogus and you should push for free repair as it was THEM that caused it and a £50 voucher for servicing.

So your saying coolant pipes never break? Ever?

Norman_Castle

Is it possible they disconnected this pipe to drain the coolant prior to changing the water pump?

AdrianC

Pocketslight wrote: »

After filling with water, I take it into audi straight away, they tell me pipe at back of engine has broken and I need to pay another £150+ for them to rectify.

Coincidence. That pipe wouldn't have been touched to do the belt and waterpump.

This is all on top of me paying a £90 'technician charge' because when they snapped two bolt and could not remove without calling in outside help! They refused to cover this cost too

Not their fault. If the bolts snapped on removal, then they were seized solid when the car went in.

Sometimes, you have to accept that doing one job on an older (15yo, in this case) car happens to escalate.

Pocketslight

Useful to get a few different opinions.
It's difficult going to a garage you haven't used before and unfortunate when there is that ripple effect of things going wrong. It's really hard to know whether you are being taken for a ride. Usually I would trust my local mechanic with this kind of thing no questions asked and I've been really lucky to have an honest and hard working guy who shows me or explains what he's going to fix
Yes car is old, but at the same time if you get quoted a price for a job especially at a dealership, the garage should have these kind of tools available (for extracting broken bolts) or explain before work is done some of the extras you might end up having to pay for.

jbainbridge

Is there a reason you took the (15 year old) car to Audi rather than your trusted local mechanic?

Silver-Surfer_2

jbainbridge wrote: »

Is there a reason you took the (15 year old) car to Audi rather than your trusted local mechanic?

I think they've covered that.

Pocketslight wrote: »

Hi,
londonTiger Really helpful to get your opinion and the info on the support jack etc. Thank you!
I did ask for a photo of pipe in question but they said the Audi cam could not get footage of pipe in question.

It's a 2001 S6, so it is pretty old but was really well maintained
Husband needs a car with electric seats etc as got a disability so we are stuck with buying old but high spec cars.This is first time using Audi dealership because our small garage who we really trust didn't have the tools get cambelt off unfortunately.

They said the bolts at top of water pump had snapped and there was a risk of them falling into engine so had to get a specialist technician. They said we could either drive it away without replacing water pump (with cracked bolts) or get this guy in.

Will try pushing harder for free repair

SunReader

Asking for the 'old' pipe will point to the failure mode, be it corrosion or trolley jack dents etc...any reluctance on their part to provide this may be revealing too.

PasturesNew

This is like wetting your knickers just after you've bought and worn a new belt for your jeans.

While the two areas involved are close to each other, they're not related.

loskie

find a decent VAG specialist rather than a main dealer.