Audi burning up coolant and oil

Maintenance/Repairs
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1

Audi is burning up coolant and oil and I’m seeing a leak near the line of white smoke

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Any ideas on where to buy the part I need to replace

2

If it’s consuming coolant and oil, it sounds to me like an engine that has a breached head gasket, and possibly additional issues. I strongly suggest that you have a qualified mechanic diagnose these problems before you start throwing parts at the problems.

How much coolant, and how much oil, are you adding in… let’s say… 200 miles?
How many miles on the odometer?
What is the car’s model year?

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3

Oh it’s not eating oil , it’s just the oil is starting to heat up and produce smoke . The coolant is being eaten up and that line looks like it’s leaking . . I’d say the coolant is being eaten up the entire thing in say … 40 miles . Also the engine overheating light has come on for more info, but it’s not consistently on while driving the vehicle if I put additional coolant in .

4

:open_mouth:

You really need to get this car to a mechanic who is familiar with Audis–a.s.a.p.–before you wind-up destroying the engine. How many times has the engine overheated?

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5

This thing has some serious problems and since you are asking where to buy parts it is obvious that you can’t fix it yourself. You don’t say what year this Audi A6 is or where you are located you just might want to use a dealer . And get ready to spend some very large dollars .

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Once . It’s leaking from that line shown above in the picture it seems . Car runs fine , no off tune sounds for more context but overheating is the issue , even if it’s not getting hot enough to to trigger the sensor it’s getting hot enough to smoke the oil and burning through coolant . Will still have it checked by a mechanic , but what is the likely issue so I don’t get entirely screwed when they give me the price

7

I would say at best you have a coolant leak. At worst a failing head gasket.

There’s no way to say for sure over the internet, though one thing I do know for sure is it will be expensive since it’s an Audi.

Have the car towed to the mechanic. I would not risk destroying the engine by driving it. Good luck.

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8

Tester

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Your temperature sensor may be defective. The Euro-spec synthetic oil in your engine should be able to resist “normal” high engine temperatures w/o emitting smoke. By this time, you could have scored cylinder liners and excessive bearing wear, in addition to a probable breached head gasket and possibly warped cylinder heads.

I hope that I am wrong, but I think that this is going to turn out to be a very expensive proposition, and the longer you wait before the problems are repaired, the bigger the repair bill is going to be.

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10

You don’t seem to understand how serious repeated overheating is and how much damage it can cause. This isn’t something that you mess around with unless you have enough spare money sitting around for a new engine.

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11

what year is car? dont know.
how many miles? dont know.
how long have you owned it? dont know.
do you have it serviced? new coolant? oil changes?
do you owe money on it? gulp

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12

You posted a picture of the air cleaner and turbocharger, but no indication of what line you are looking at. If you are talking about the vacuum line, that is not the problem.

The price to replace an overheating Audi engine that won’t hold coolant; $8,000 to $12,000.

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13

Based on your comments, you will get screwed… at least by your definition…

You might be looking at $1000 to $10,000… Expect the larger screw…

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14

Ask a shop w/Audi A6 expertise if the oil cooler might be involved.

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Yes, there is an oil cooler involved, that will be $200 per question.
Now what about the coolant leak and overheating?

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The local Craigslist is full of Audi cars being sold cheap as “mechanic specials” due to overheating and coolant consumption. I suspect that once you get a professional evaluation, you will discover that the cost of a proper repair far exceeds what you can afford to pay/what the car is realistically worth, and you will need to just move this thing along for whatever you can get.

Then, of course, I’d suggest to buy a Toyota Corolla, Toyota Camry, or similar for your next vehicle.

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I hope that the OP returns to tell us about the diagnosis–and repair estimate–that he got from his mechanic.

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Now that’s the critical question … :wink: I expect OP already knows that the best way to address this problem is to take car to audi-experienced inde shop or dealership and let the the pro’s there do the diagnosis and repair. But if OP was keen on taking that approach, they wouldn’t have posted here.

I’m definitely no pro. My diy’er advice to OP is to focus on getting a proper diagnosis rather than trying to repair the problem by guessing which part to replace next.

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