I am the original owner of a 2001 Audi A4 1.8Turbo Quatro with 64,000 miles on it. It has always been garage kept. Audi had a warranty of 4 years/40,000 miles. At 4 years I had only 18,000 miles on it. For a couple of years, I have been smelling burnt oil that I think is emitting through the air vents. Brought it in to a few garages and they say they don’t see anything. Also, I am not low on oil at oil changes. This car is not used for anything other than local use. Can any one help
You might have a very small oil leak dripping onto your exhaust system somewhere. Given this is a turbo, there are lots of places this could happen, and small leaks are hard to find.
Texases is right.
You have a small oil leak somewhere, which finds its way on any of the hot exhaust or turbo plumbing. This leak is not limited to engine oil. It could very well be engine oil, transmission oil, power steering oil, etc.
Did you check the level for the others?
You could easily find this leak for yourself. All you need is a very good (strong) flashlight, a large piece of cardboard to lay on while looking under the car, and some patience.
This is what I would do:
-Do not drive the car for 3-4 days-probably not that big a deal for you since you have so few miles on this car.
-While in the same place it sat for the past 3-4 days, raise the hood and start the engine. Have a flood lamp or powerful work lamp illuminate the whole area under the hood. Let the engine run/idle as long as necessary (30-40 minutes) while you constantly look to see if any smoke appears. At some point you should be able to see some of the smoke from the engine rising up from the general area where the leak is. Grab the flashlight and try to track it down now.
On a totally different note…Your car has an engine which is notorious for sludging up (aka early sudden death). Given that you drive so few miles a year, and most likely in very short trips, you are a prime candidate for a sludged engine. You can easily avoid this very expensive issue ($5-$6000), by religiously changing your engine oil every 4 months or 3000k miles, WHICHEVER occurs first. Also, make sure you ONLY use a fully synthetic motor oil (Mobil 1, etc, etc)
What time interval/mileage have you changed your engine oil until now?
How about the transmission oil? Is it manual or automatic tranny?
Two possible sources - valve cover gasket and cam chain tensioner gasket . Replace the PCV valve first as it’s most likely plugged . It’s a PITA to replace .