helping out my Audi dealer with V8's

["Thomas, Nathan" <nthomas@imps0014.us.dg.com>]

I've mentioned my saga about getting the airbag recall done
on the V8 once before.  The last time I took the car back in 
(to have the radio antenna reconnected) they somehow 
managed to induce the all-to-common button failure in the OEM
radio (you know, where some of the buttons suddenly loose 
there 'springiness').  So, a couple of days ago, I took it in to
see if they could fix that.  Of course, they said they couldn't,
and that it could have only been a 'coincidence' that those buttons
were damaged at the same time.  They were generous enough to offer
to sell me a new radio and not charge me installation fees (they
charge an hour's labor on that 1 minute job!).  I declined their
offer, not wanting to shell out over $100 to get a 'springier' button
(when they had the radio apart, I noticed that the one that was
in there was actually a refurbished unit from a Pearl V8- mine is
indigo).  All of this was from the service writer.  The tech, on the
other hand, was quite willing to try and take the radio apart and 
fix the buttons.  However, once we had it out, it looked like the
buttons were each their own self-contained units, and he didn't
have the capacity either to fix them or order replacements.  

After this was done, they said they would have to 'charge' me
something for their work- I groaned, but then they said they 
just wanted to borrow my car for a spin around the block.  They
said they had a Pearl V8 out back who's owner was complaining
about a surging feeling on acceleration.  I assured them that this
was all to common, and that some people found that cleaning the 
ISV or replacing the O2 sensor fixed the problem, but that a lot
of people on the quattro list could never get the problem to go away
(including myself).  They said they had tried those, but not gotten
anywhere (they, btw, could not detect the fault- they had to have
the owner come and do a test drive each time they tried to fix it,
so he could give them a seat-of-the-pants opinion).  So, they asked
me to bring in a sample of the letters from the quattro list so they
could show the guy how common this problem is in V8's, and that
no one knew how to fix it (if it is in fact fixable without redesigning 
the engine).  So, I did...I don't know what they wound up telling the
other customer.

Oh, and of course, when I got home and put in the lock code on the
radio, I discovered that they had left the antenna disconnected again.

nate