Life throws circumstances at you, and suddenly everything changes. You commit to a long-distance relationship. It’ll just be a few months, and things will be fine when you get back. Only, the space between you grows faster than you expected, and you find yourself aching to get home so everything can go back to normal. But normal is gone, and you have to reckon with a new reality.
Oh, we’re talking about my dream car. The Audi TT. The turbo all-wheel-drive roadster that I always deserved. It had my love from the start. Then the realities of my new life started coming between us. I’d moved to the inner city, and wasn’t driving much. There wasn’t a lot of call for top-down joyrides, and the Audi’s plates lapsed. I had to port it over to register in a new state, and it all got lost in the holiday shuffle. Then fifteen other non-automotive things happened.
Ultimately, the Audi would sit for three months. I couldn’t take it any longer, and in February, I finally blessed it with new plates and a fresh tank of fuel. I looked forward to that first drive, but it was well short of what I’d hoped for.
Bad Vibrations
I might have been busy, but I wasn’t totally careless during my Audi’s sabbatical. I ran the engine once a month just to keep the battery charged and the juices flowing. Each time it started up with ease. Despite being a German car from the early 2000s, there were no parasitic draws to ruin my day. Given its fine attitude, I foresaw no issues when I deigned to put it back on the road. In the meantime, my partner’s Toyota was getting me around, and I felt no need to rush.
Eventually, though, my enthusiast itch needed to be scratched. I booked the relevant appointments, did the paperwork, and my Audi bid farewell to its former hometown. The extortionate fees of Australian bureaucracy aside, I was feeling buoyant. I couldn’t wait to hear turbo noises once again!
Once duly plated, I gingerly pulled the Audi out on to the road. The engine was smooth, the idle stable, the exhaust note thrumming a pleasant tune. All was well as I crept out, up to the first stop. A rumble, strange, through the brake pedal. Odd, I thought, but perhaps just some residual corrosion on the rotors. It would surely work itself out.
Of course it couldn’t be that simple. At first, it wasn’t there all the time. Sometimes I’d hit the brakes and it would feel completely normal. But every fifth stop or so… I’d feel that rumble. I knew what it really was. It was ABS kicking in.
Of course, the ABS shouldn’t have been kicking in at all. I was stopping calmly at traffic lights on perfectly dry sealed roads. But every so often, as I slowed that last 5 mph or so, the pedal would rumble as the ABS pump tried to modulate the brakes. For some reason, the ABS controller thought one or more wheels were locking up when they weren’t.
I had my suspicions, and my research bore them out. These cars often have their wheel speed sensors fail over the years. These sensors are relatively simple. They work by detecting a changing magnetic field created as a toothed metal ring—called the “tone ring”—on the wheel hub moves by. Over time, corrosion, vibration, or physical damage can lead to their failure. A build-up of ferrous material on the sensor or tone ring can also interfere with their operation. If they pass dodgy speed signals back to the ABS or stability control module, the car can think wheels are locked or losing traction when they’re actually not.
A simple explainer on how wheel speed sensors work.
I drove the car for 100 miles or so, naively wishing the problem would just go away. I even naively gave the car a power washing in the hopes that maybe I’d spray off some metal filings or other debris that might be interfering with the sensor’s operation. Still, as I drove, little changed.
There was no real safety issue at first—just the occasional ABS trigger at less than 5 mph. Eventually, the problem worsened. Traction control started cutting in under acceleration. It was incredibly frustrating. I could disable it and avoid the problem, but I had to face facts. It was stupid to keep driving it at this point.
Don’t ask me how this happens, either. The car didn’t move for three months, and a sealed little plastic sensor broke! Maddening. Maybe I’ll find out a little mouse chewed through the wires. Maybe it was corrosion. Either way, it needs to be fixed.
Normally I’d consider something like this a victory. A wheel sensor, an affordable and easy fix! As it stands, though, it’s kind of a huge pain in the ass. First of all, I have to buy a VCDS diagnostic cable so I can figure out which wheel sensor is failing. There are four of them, after all.
Worse than that, though, is that I don’t have anywhere I can jack up my car to work on it. My car is stupidly low and I need to get under the car to change whichever sensor is defective. I had a friend with a great driveway, but they just got it beautifully relaid at great expense. We wouldn’t be friends anymore if I streaked it with WD40 and brake dust. I might have to try just jacking the car up in street parking, but I’m not looking forward to it. Oh, and I dumped 90% of my tools when I moved into my apartment. So that’s a nice bonus. My fault.
Could I just pay a mechanic? I avoid doing so at all costs. Maybe I have trust issues. There are good shops out there, and then there are shops that try to screw you out of thousands of dollars when you go in for an oil change. I really hate dealing with the latter, and I’m not going to do so for something as simple as a wheel sensor. I need to solve this myself.
I’ve also discovered another wonderful little treat, too. When looking over the car with the engine running, I found a strange hot spot on top of the battery cover. It turns out Audi put a fuse box here, and they didn’t make it very well at all. One wire leading into the fuse box is slightly corroded, with the high-resistance connection generating noticeable heat. Meanwhile, a fuse holder for the coolant fans had melted somewhat. Everything still worked, but it’s clear this 24-year-old fusebox needs replacement. A weird failure, but the Germans always surprise you.
There are, of course, other problems too. The wind deflector doesn’t work, because the threaded rods that drive it have fallen to pieces. The heater only sort of works because the foam on the blend door fell apart long ago. Nor do the key fobs work to lock and unlock the car. Oh, and there are very slow leaks of power steering fluid and coolant that don’t really affect the car but irk me to no end. Fluids should stay inside any vehicle made after 1997. That’s just the way I see it.
I want to fix all of these, but reality demands I prioritize. The heating, wind deflector, and key fobs are all pretty inconsequential. The leaks I intend to get sorted when I take the car in for its timing belt service. I don’t fancy spilling coolant all over a public street. That’s just rude.
My $1200 smartphone is all the inspection camera I need.
Still, not entirely sure I’ve identified the leak.
— Lewin S. Day (@rainbowdefault.bsky.social) March 6, 2025 at 3:02 PM
Oh, wait, it’s probably that flange on the engine. Ugh.Â
Ultimately, my new lifestyle continues to test my relationship with my dream car. It seems increasingly pointless to hang on to a pricy asset that I get to enjoy less than once a week. I could easily get by without a car these days, and the roads around here are no fun at all anyway. What’s the point of spending all this time and money when I can only get out to the countryside for a blast once a month or less?
Still, it’s hard to let go of something that is such a core part of my identity. How can I be a car lover if I never drive at all? Until I can answer that question, I have a roadster to fix.
Image credits: All images Lewinus Berginator IV
I’m sorry to hear about the troubles, but you can’t expect to own a 20+ year old German car and not expect to have a predictable trickle of problems that require either a proper mechanic or a lot of wrenching on your part.
My PSA regarding starting up a stored/parked modern car periodically just to get the juices flowing: if at all possible, do not start the car unless you plan to drive it around and get it up to temp. Even sitting and idling it for a long time (which is bad for other reasons) doesn’t really get things hot enough to cook off condensation and such, and the net effect once you turn it back off is a less happy engine. Battery tenders are cheap, and if plugging the car in isn’t an option, yank the battery. Good theft insurance that way.
Sorry to hear about this Lewin!
Best of luck…still a cool car
Sucks man… I do love that car. I refer to them as titty arse.
Amazing…. but also crap.
Semi-serious suggestion: replace it with a similar-era Daihatsu Copen. Looks a bit like a squashed TT, but with Toyota reliability! Also it’s got the whole slow-car-fast thing going for it.
I cant wait for the Copen to be eligible to import into the USA.
Copen for the win. It even looks like a baguette. (h/t Marty and Moog at MCM)
If you’re taking it in for a timing belt service, you’re taking it to a mechanic, no? Just have them address this as well.
I would go to great lengths to avoid working on the street – I just won’t do it, which is why I have garages in the city – but people do it. I see it in my neighborhood, which is still fairly working-class. People doing brake and drivetrain jobs on the curb. There was a LeMons team that, as I recall, did an entire build while the car was street-parked outside one of the team member’s apartment building in Brooklyn, including welding.
I have two cars (my Fiat and my 911) that I would go to very great lengths to avoid getting rid of, but at the same time I center my daily transportation on bicycles and I just got back from a few days in Amsterdam and it was absolutely glorious. It’s so absurd to use a car to get around there that if I had my classic cars I’d just keep them in a suburb somewhere and get out there when I wanted to drive them.
This is why my dd cars are older than me. toolkit that I K Brunel would understand and electric bits that have more in common with ohm and joule than tesla,
a small screwdriver and a mallet along with two double ended spanners, I am rolling, albeit slowly.
I’ve been so tempted to get one of those on many occasions but they scare me a bit. Especially the packaging. At least most of those boche parts cross reference to something and can normally be found for not much but those TT always seem like you need to squeeze places you can’t or take a lot of things apart. Good luck.
Huh, last time i had a wheel speed sensor fail the world’s worst abs thus failed and the brakes suddenly worked. Had to be careful as the front left could lock up when you had brakes, and an intermittent issue was… intermittent,
Pick your battles. As long as you go to a mechanic with a good reputation, choose the repairs that are more logistically difficult for you for the mechanic. Focus on the ones you can do based on your availability, tools at hand, and location access for the repair.
There is no shame in outsourcing the work especially if this is your dream car.
Me, I estimate how much time it will take versus what a garage will charge and factor in vehicle down time and overall complexity to determine what repairs go to a mechanic. Ex: an oil change is a no brainer, but when I factor in purchase of oil/filter AND disposal of the oil to the actual oil change work, that would take me 2 hours of my time (secular hourly wage). Right there I know it is better to just drop it off and pick it up from the garage.
I still remember the day we got rid of our C5 A6. it was one of the happiest day of our family’s life. moment to remember and cherish