My timing belt broke two weeks after my Audi authorized dealer service 80 K service.
Valve damage and new engine needed.
At the time of service I asked my Audi guy to do proactive maintenance so nothing would go wrong with car. I was never advised that caution would suggest the timing belt be changed and leave it up to me if I wanted this major maintenance done earlier than 90K.. The result? Disaster. New engine. Stranded on highway in the rain. Lots of towing charges.
The arrogance of Audi to wait til 90K for maintenance that can ruin an engine. Sounds like unintended acceleration all over again.
The arrogance of Audi to wait until 90K for timing belt maintenance when failure can ruin an engine.
"Unintended acceleration" was reportedly a cop-out by drivers to cover-up their own error.
The sudden acceleration was found by the NHTSA to be due to driver error. They subsequently changed their finding to "pedal misapplication" saying that with some very powerful cars with closely spaced pedals, it was possible for even the best drivers to mistakenly press the accelerator instead of the brake, and be travelling at dangerous speeds before they could notice and correct. This was one of the earliest cases of political correctness run amok. The NHTSA found that the drivers had their foot on the wrong pedal, but didn't want to hurt the drivers' feelings.
Audi's solution was the shift interlock, which required the brake pedal to be fully depressed in order to shift out of park. With this retrofit, the problem disappeared completely, thus validating NHTSA's findings. As a number of other makes and models has similar incidence of sudden acceleration, the interlock quickly became standard equipment industry-wide.
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