Car Trouble

In 2017 I told someone I had a Mazda3 and he said: “that’s a great car! Just keep up with the oil changes and it’ll last you two hundred thousand miles.” He probably meant this as a complement, but to me it sounded like a prison. Thinking about keeping that FWD, low-power sedan with uncomfortable seats for 10+ years made me positively sick. It may have been a “good choice”, but it wasn’t what I wanted.

In November 2018 that finally got to me enough that I traded it in for a car I’d been lusting after for years: the “baby Audi”, a little A3 with a turbo, an “S”-model body kit, Haldex-based AWD, sticky tires and a 70 HP boost over that old Mazda3. It has been a trooper for getting over 10k+ foot mountain passes and living at 4500 feet in Utah.

Then, in late 2021, it had issues. I’d always heard that cars start having troubles after their warranties run out – and this story starts just 6 weeks after mine did. But not all of this can be explained by the warranty, so I chalk it up to a serious run of bad luck … and planned obsolescence.

This story starts with a wheel. Not technically this one, but it was the left front!

Sunrise at Grant Lake near Lee Vining, CA

Well, if I go back, it actually starts with a grinding noise, periodic with the speed of the wheel, audible from the rear at 7 - 12 mph in all conditions whether accelerating, coasting or braking. I blame this on the Discount Tire that did a winter tire change for me two days before I heard the noise.

But it started most seriously with the pothole outside my Utah apartment heading West on University at exit 269 on I-15 S. That pothole blew a chunk the size of my thumb out of the sidewall of the left front, put a dime-sized dent in the outer rim of the alloy wheel, and put a quarter-in-diameter raised lump on the sidewall of the left rear. The two best wheel fixers in Salt Lake City said this was not fixable.

So far we’ve replaced one alloy wheel …

The Energy Loop through the Wasatch Mountains, UT

I towed the car to Discount Tire to have a new wheel put on, because it was the nearest tow. This is also where the fun truly began.

First, they tried to order an alloy rim for me. At, wow, less than half the cost I expected for a new rim! Wait, are you sure that’s a new rim? You don’t know? Can you ask your manager? Oh, it’s NOT a new rim? Can you order a new one? No, used only? Well, okay, then just let me order it from the dealer brand-new and have it delivered to you. Whew. One new rim.

My tires are at 6/32nds, so let’s order a new couple tires for the left side. Annoying, but that’s life. Oh, you can only order them full diameter? That’ll ruin my AWD system. You seriously put wrong-diameter tires on people’s cars? OK, sure. Let me order them from somewhere that will shave it to size. How about the Audi dealership? Ok, no, how about the Subaru dealership that did the same for my Subaru a few months ago? OK, that’ll work.

I call in to confirm the tire is ordered and hear a new voice. He says my tires are a 4/32nds, not 6. What? That’s a huge difference. I head over for a third opinion and swing by an auto parts store to buy – and learn to use, sigh – my own tread depth meter as a fourth. And, what do you know, the tires are all at 2.5/32nds! Looks like a need four new tires, not two, and I need to cancel the tire order for Subaru. Discount Tire blames it on a new electronic gauge they’ve been issued recently. I ask myself how a professional could see 2 with his eyes, read 6 with a gauge, and not notice the discrepancy.

Thankfully, because my tires wore perfectly (nice!) evenly, I got a huge sum back because they had worn down in 22k miles when the seller rated them for 50k.

CA-33 north of Ojai approaching its terminal with CA-166

Now, because I value my steering and my safety, I figured any impact capable of killing two tires and an alloy rim was probably capable of screwing up my steering and alignment, so I took it back to the shop (let’s call them the Stealership) for a quick safety check. I also ask them to check on a noise from the back that sounds like a rock stuck in the brake rotor.

Good news, my steering and suspension are fine! Bad news, the noise is from four bad wheel bearings? At 56k miles and 5 years old? That doesn’t describe the noise I hear at all. Let’s get a second opinion.

Second opinion (let’s call them Nice Shop #1) listen to the car say I have a loud right two bearings but the left two they just hear echoes of the rights. The third opinion (how about Nice Shop #2?) agrees and replaces the right two bearings and it’s good as new. They also find the front brake pads are at 1/16th inch – which I expected – so they replace those, too.

Santiam Pass in the Oregon Cascades

I excitedly drive it off the lot only to find … in the first couple days … The faint grinding noise from the back is still there, unabated. Except this time it’s Thursday and I leave for Denver. I know I can’t drive 500 miles at 85 mph with a bad wheel bearing, and they’re saying that noise is a bearing. Was the Stealership right about having four bad bearings all along? Were Nice People #2 wrong when they agreed only the right two bearings were bad?

At this point I drop it off with the Stealership because I need to move to Denver and in a pinch I can always sell the car to them if I need to. Or at least get a quote. But I soon realize why it’s called a Stealership … Because here’s what they tell me.

1. They tell me I have four bad wheel bearings. I remind them for the third time now that I already had two done, so it’s definitely not all four.
2. They reply it’s just the right two that are bad. I remind them for the fourth time now that I had the two right ones done, so if it’s anything, it’s the left.
3. They tell me then it’s probably the left.
4. I get super skeptical that they even looked at the car and ask if they’ve heard the noise or checked the car. Lo and behold, no, they’re hearing a noise at 30 mph – not the one I told them to listen for at 10 mph. I have to ask twice to extract this information from them. They refuse to let me talk to the tech that drove the car and insist I work through a “service advisor”.
5. They now claim they don’t know whether it’s wheel bearings, but they definitely hear a noise.

I do get a quote on the car from here for what, in my mind, is still a pretty princely sum considering they think it has two bad wheel bearings and what I paid for it. But I think they’re liars and I’m done giving them money.

At this point, I haven’t done any work on the vehicle, but I’m annoyed at the Stealership. The running total of work remains the same.

CA-178 west of Isabella Lake

Since I’m in Denver, I decide to get the car towed back to Nice Shop #1, which at least had the decency to listen for the sound I asked them about. Clever one that I am, I upgrade to a AAA membership with 100-mile towing four days before I need to do this. Except, on tow day, I learn – serves me right – you have to be physically present with the vehicle and show your ID and AAA card in order to get towed. So this $160 tow is on me.

Nice Shop #1 says the bearings are fine and laugh at what the Stealership said. They do hear the noise I’m describing clearly and say it’s a backing plate bent into the brake rotor, so they bend it back and all’s well. But, never to be bested, they also say the rear differential is making a ton of noise and this is probably the 30 mph noise the Stealership heard but couldn’t pinpoint.

I call back the Stealership to ask what they think of the rear differential. You didn’t notice anything? Did you listen to the rear differential at all? No? No. That’s a confirmed no, they didn’t check the rear differential. My annoyance grows.

West of Lone Pine, facing east across the valley at sunrise

It’s time to have the car towed again to Nice Shop #2 to get a second opinion on the rear differential. They confirm a few things – yes, the bearings are fine. Yes, the noise fromt the backing plate is gone. Yes, the differential does make noise.

I figure, since I’m about to drive this car, I may as well get the creaking from the front end when going over bumps at low speeds checked as well. Neither Nice Shop #1 or Nice Shop #2 can reproduce this, but I find a Technical Service Bulletin (TSB) that describes my symptoms so I ask them to just spray some lubrication on the lower control arms and see if we get lucky. If it doesn’t reproduce and only happens at low speeds, it’s unlikely to be dangerous anyway, so I can deal with it in Denver.

Nice Shop #1 says I shouldn’t drive differential like that to Denver, but Nice Shop #2 says people have driven further with louder differentials. I suspect Nice Shop #1 is in CYA mode so I decide to drive it. Here we go!

California’s Highway 1 in Marin looking back toward San Francisco

Now, all throughout this time I promised I’d look at two parallel options: fix it or sell it. I ran “instant quotes” through the Stealership, Carvana, AutoTrader, and Kelley Blue Book (mapped to a local Honda dealer). They came back for a nice sum and roughly in line with each other, so I felt good.

I also listed the car on AutoTrader as a private seller, a good $3k below what similar cars went for from dealerships in the area but above what the instant offers were for. I wanted to see if I could sell the car at some price. I excitedly checked ~15 messages in the first week, only to find literally every one was some variation of the “I hand you a check and you give me the car” scam. Disappointment, but now I know the trade-in offer is about the best I’ll get.

I consider my alternatives to the Audi as well. No car – ouch, that hurts. Buy used – But replacing my car with an identical one costs $30k, and if I buy a newer 1-year-old one it’ll be $44k. Want a new one? Sorry, no one is expecting any A3s on the lot for 3-6 more months, and they’ve got the new 201HP mild hybrid system instead of my much lovelier 220HP one. So no matter what, fixing this car is the right call, even if it costs an arm and a leg – because a replacement would cost the other arm and leg, too!

So, “sell it or fix it” because “just fix it” because selling and buying cars right now is a terrible idea unless you can manage to live down a car for a 1-2 years while the chip shortage works itself out and the pent-up demand tapers off.

But now I can drive it happily back to Denver myself. I do hear the differential whine, but I figure I’ll get that dealt with later if it becomes a real thing. Or maybe I’ll have it fixed now so I can enjoy another 2 years and 30k miles on the car hopefully without a serious breakdown. But it’s my choice again.

Back at Santiam Pass in the Oregon Cascades, this time with a friendly Z4

OK, let’s cover all the various problems and their “solutions”:

• Creaking from the front resulted in lubricated lower control arms.
• Grinding from the back resulted in a bending a backing plate into its correct position.
• Humming from the wheel bearings resulted in two new wheel bearings and resulting steering alignment.
• Worn front brakes resulted in two new brake pads.
• Bent alloy rim resulted in a new rim.
• Worn tires, uncovered by pothole damage, resulted in four new tires.
• Humming from the rear differential resulted in no repairs but a “squawk”, so to speak.

I learned the following things:

• Fixing is nearly always going to be cheaper than buying, but buying gets you piece of mind that repairing doesn’t.
• There’s no good reason to ever take your car to the Stealership.
• Technical Service Bulletins are a thing.
• I can use a tire tread depth meter now.
• Get a double-check on everything.
• If you feel like someone is screwing with you, it’s probably because they are.
• I need to either buy a 100-mile AAA membership or none.

At least it’s a nice car!