What % Of Rocker Arms Are Failing?

[RethDog]

034 says not many are failing, and he seems a straight shooter, in fact since he has a service center it would be better for him to say proactively replace them.

VAG technic (in UK) says to do them as preventative measure. He has one a week, but remember the UK is pretty small geographically (but not so much the population), and I'd trailer a car 200 miles for him to work on, like many of his videos show occurs. So he's probably doing a pretty good percentage of failures for the country.

Just learnt how to work NHTSA site, it lists no complaints for this. Just as a sanity check, things are posted about my wife's Golf MK7, with the exact problems we have experienced.

There are no posts on NHTSA; https://www.nhtsa.gov/vehicle/2018/A...AWD#complaints
There are no AUDI TSB on NTSHA; https://www.nhtsa.gov/vehicle/2018/A...Communications

Clearly their are rocker issues, and some piston issues causing expensive engine failure, but every car has some sort of an Achilles heel, these cars its just an expensive one. Probably doesn't help we all like to make these cars accelerate hard a bit more than normal cars.

Is the rocker arm thing all over blown by the internet? I'm thinking its people probably getting it on with the engine still cold, as my engine can take while to warm up. 10K oil changes are really bad idea (for all cars), 5K drop the oil.

I'm a 2018 at 31,500 miles no issues at all.

Your thoughts?

gareth

[davesxx01]

If you look at the rocker arm thread, I believe they were updated as of engine build date of 5/19. I’ve only read (so far) that early build dates had/were prone to issues.

[njspeedfreak]

There is no way to know. We don't know either the numerator OR the denominator.

How many engines were built with the original (defective design) bearings? Audi won't even release sales figures on S4, S5 or SQ5. They lump them all into the A4, A4 and Q5 numbers.

How many engines have failed? It's not tracked. Audi probably has some vague idea based on what gets back to them from their franchised service centers, but they don't have any incentive to let that number out.

The engine on my 2018 S5 went dead last summer. Diagnosis was bad rocker arm bearings that led to excessive camshaft wear and metal in the engine. After a lot of back and forth about who was going to pay what to fix it, I ended up trading the car in for scrap value and drove away in a used SQ5. So since the work was never done to repair this and the car most likely ended up at some Copar auction for parts, it's never going to be officially counted.

Two important things to keep in mind when trying to figure this out

- it's not the percentage of all cars that were sold with the turbo V6 engine, it's only the cars that had this specific variant of that engine for the 1 or 2 years those bad parts were used. Basically we are talking about just the 2017 and 2018 model years for the S4, S5 and SQ5. I've seen some people try to whitewash this issue by talking about how many A6's and other cars have this engine without failures. That's great for them, but does nothing to help us understand the risk of owning a 2018 S4/S5/SQ5.

- there are 24 of these bearings in the engine, it only takes one bad one to destroy it. So the percentage of bad bearings can and most likely is much lower than the percentage of bad engines. Both are important but the latter is more important to this particular discussion.

Last point I will make, this problem will go away soon, only because the 2018 cars will go away as they naturally reach end of life. I don't expect to hear anyone talking about it in another 5 years because there will be hardly any 2018's left on the road.

[A4 Centaur]

^ Yea, watched the Vag Teknic vid the other night and the presenter mentioned a VAG TSB or awareness program in the UK about this variant and year. Of course we won't hear a peep out of VAG unless they have another class action lawsuit handed to them.

The other concerning item that the presenter brought up was the cam sprockets being worn out, didn't give us the mileage but that was mind blowing considering the level of effort and cost it takes to drop the engine and get to the place where one can reasonably install timing chains and cam sprockets.

Jesus, the E839 engine is a royal pain in the ass, almost as bad as the outgoing V8 CFSA and I am not sure the EA825 twin turbo will be any more fun to drop and service. Close friend of mine sold his 2014 S7 due to the cost of a timing job.

Guess if I'm gonna stay with the B9 S4 I better invest in an engine stand and a cherry picker. Working on the CPMB is a pleasure compared to watching Vag Teknic pull the E839 engine. Here is a picture of my CPMB getting set for new chains this week:

[macspring]

10/2017 S4 one rocker went bad at about 55k miles, all of them changed, as were the pcv, water pump and thermostat and a pipe at the front of the engine a bit before the rocker, everything is standard, runs and drives beautifully - hopefully it will continue to do so for many more years. Since I got it, two + years ago it get Mobil 1 5w40. Driven easy when the oil is ‘cold’.
HTH.

[TheContrarian]

For anyone with the old rocker arm variant. just don't keep the car until high mileage.

I tend to think both the rocker arm and cam sprocket wear issues are negatively influenced by the 0w-20 oil. The oil pressure is too low in cruise scenarios.

[njspeedfreak]

For anyone with the old rocker arm variant. just don't keep the car until high mileage

That generally means trading in the old car for a new one, or selling it privately. In either case it's just passing the problem onto someone else to deal with, usually someone with a lot less resources to deal with it if it does eventually fail.

In my case it wasn't an option since the engine already failed, but my conscience would have really bothered me selling someone else that car for $25K+ knowing they probably weren't going to get more than a year out of it before it was a lawn ornament.

[FromS60toB61.8t]

For every 1 rocker arm failure, I'm sure there are 100's if not 1000's that don't.
I would presume that <1% of rocker arms actually fail.

[njspeedfreak]

For every 1 rocker arm failure, I'm sure there are 100's if not 1000's that don't.
I would presume that <1% of rocker arms actually fail.

Do you have actual evidence to back that claim up or is that just a guess on your part?

As I said, there is no way to know the actual numbers since none of that info is collected or published. But we do know it happens, there is plenty of evidence that it does. And it's not just Audi, the Chrysler Pentastar engines are notorious for the same issue.

And don't forget, it only takes one bad bearing out of the 24 that are in the engine to ruin it. So even if the actual failure rate was as low as 1 in 1000, that still means about 1 out of every 40 cars is destined to have a catastrophic engine failure that will cost $30,000 to fix properly. Adding up all the costs from all the failures and dividing it up across all cars that that did and did not fail, you come up with an expected loss of about $700 per car. That's just not acceptable, and reason enough for anyone that already owns a 2018 to think about selling it, and anyone thinking about buying a 2018 to consider a 2019 instead.

[FN-2187 S5]

For every 1 rocker arm failure, I'm sure there are 100's if not 1000's that don't.
I would presume that <1% of rocker arms actually fail.

I would be curious to know the number for those that are specifically referenced though - the 17/18 builds that have the old rocker arms that have the issue, not as a % of all B9s, etc.

[S4James]

I would be curious to know the number for those that are specifically referenced though - the 17/18 builds that have the old rocker arms that have the issue, not as a % of all B9s, etc.

pretty much all of them.

[bigdaddyrobb]

Can someone tell me if these are updates or not 6/18 engine build




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[croltean]

Mine went at 56k 2018 Sq5. Oil changed at 5k and over maintained. Started with a slight tick which got louder over time. Oil filer was littered with metal shavings. Even reached out to AOA and they pretty much told me I was SOL as it's considered and maintenance wear and tear item. They'll get slapped with another lawsuit before long as this is completely unacceptable.

[A4Qwattro]

Audi engines are full of **** which is why my next car will be electric.