Audi R8 Long Term Maintenance & Ownership Costs

What is up guys ?

So Canadian rider here , I got the Audi Ari in the garage .

I got the low oil indicator warning .

So I'm gonna do a little top up and I thought I'd take this time to walk you through the long term maintenance costs of this car .

A lot of you guys have been asking me since I got the car .

It's a 10 year old super car .

That's an import .

It must be insanely expensive to maintain .

And that is not true with this car .

And that is actually kind of the same reasons .

Some of the same reasons why that this car is the best daily driver .

Supercar is some the reasons that make this car not that expensive to maintain compared to its other counterparts and other supercar counterparts .

It's actually more in line with its typical import saloon or German counterparts that are not in that supercar realm .

It does have its quirks here and there .

I'll talk to those a little bit more in detail .

But typically , if you think it's super car maintenance for a 10 year old car , this is actually very , very cheap compared to what you would normally think for a Lamborghini Ferrari or mclaren .

So I got some oil .

We're gonna go ahead and top this 4.2 liter V eight with a little bit of oil .

It does burn a little bit , which is normal for these engines .

And as we do that , I'll walk you through the typical maintenance that you're going to have to do on this car .

Some of the atypical stuff , some of the more expensive pieces .

But it's actually you're going to find really in line with a typical German import .

So this is the V eight of the R A , the 2008 , again , 10 years old and I'll talk about the engine first since I'm kind of looking at that right now .

Um It is not a unique engine .

It is the 4.2 liter V eight from the Audi R S four .

This nothing crazy about it .

420 horsepower , about £320 feet of torque .

The only thing about this engine , this engine is actually typically reliable .

The only thing about this engine is that it does consume a little bit of oil just like that's why I'm doing this right now is I'm adding maybe about a liter of oil every 5000 kilometers or less .

In this case , it burned it about 3000 kilometers , about a liter or not even a liter of oil .

So you're going to have to keep topping it up and that's normal for these engines .

So that's not a big concern , engine wise on the car .

This car is solid .

The one thing you need to be aware of and it's a common failure on all Audi R eight S and this is across 2008 .

The entire gen one generation is the air conditioning compressor fails all the time on these cars .

Luckily , my car only got 40,000 kilometers or so , 42,000 kilometers on the car .

The AC has already been replaced once in the maintenance and actually it could go again .

I've seen it on the forum .

So many people posting that the AC just fails out of nowhere .

People with 20,000 kilometers on it , people with 15,000 kilometers on it after two years of use AC failures and the consensus is the AC is failing due to the location and the heat cycles that are going through it .

So that's one thing to look out .

And the problem is with the ac failure .

It needs technically by the Audi standards , it needs a full engine removal .

So you're going to take apart this entire piece in the back here and completely remove the engine to go ahead and replace your AC compressor .

Now , thankfully , there's actually a roundabout to doing this .

If you go to an Indie shop or some other mechanic , there's actually a way you can get underneath the car , remove a few things not too difficult and take out the compressor , so you don't have to take out the engine from the back of your car .

Obviously , the engine I repair for the AC compressor is going to be really expensive .

I was quoted $10,260 by Audi to do it there .

But I also called around and I found out if I do it the other way , which I just described and talked about , it'll be about $2000 to fix the AC com .

But if we're talking about anything engine , if you do need work to the engine guys and you're taking out the engine , let's say the clutch goes , it's going to be an expensive job and that's going to be the most expensive piece of maintenance that you'll ever do on this car .

Um , it's going to be those engine out repairs , whether it's the clutch , whether it's the ac compressor .

And if you can find ways around it like we have with the AC compressor , you can save a lot of money wise , it's solid .

And again , you know , it's been mass produced , it's been in the Audi R S four , a little bit of changes from that .

It's not the exact engine , but it's much 90% identical .

You're definitely going to have to make sure you understand that this engine is one of those engines that was direct fuel injected back in 2008 and all those kind of models or all those type of engines back in that time , about 10 years ago , they all had only the direct injection and not the fuel port injection where it cleaned out the head .

So the valves of these cars on the intake get dumped up with carbon .

So you're going to have to do is actually get carbon cleaning on these cars .

And it's a typical problem on all these direct engine , direct injected engines is they have to do a valve cleaning once in a while .

So what you'll see is you may feel a lack of performance , you may feel flat spot , flat spots within the R PM band .

Then you know , you need to go get a carbon cleaning .

So I already did .

I went to garage auto sports , they did some preventative maintenance to go ahead because carbon build up shouldn't happen at 37,000 kilometers , but it's possible , but definitely by my next maintenance , I'm going to get the carbon intakes or I'm going to get the intake valves cleaned of all the carbon deposits .

In terms of cost .

If your valves are already dunked up full of carbon , you're going to need a Walnut blas thing that's going to cost you about $1000 Canadian with the service .

In my case here , I did the preventative maintenance with the chemicals that costs about $170 .

So those are just some of the rough costs that you can expect if you do find that you're getting engine codes or flat spots in the R PM band transmission wise .

Again , there have been no problems with this six speed manual transmission .

You'll actually probably find some more problems with the automatic , the electronic or the tronics , but otherwise you don't have to worry about anything particular there .

So that's the key important pieces for this car is that maintenance wise , other than keeping up with the engine oil changes using five W 40 .

In this case , I'm going to be topping it up , making sure you're keeping track of engine oil level , which actually the computer does that for you .

You're not going to have a problem .

Now , the next Achilles heel is optional .

If you have the Magneri suspension , these things all fail .

It is a design failure .

Every single one of these units fail at about 40,000 kilometers .

A lot of them fail at 20,000 kilometers .

There's this huge range of history and you can go Audi forms and see failure after failure .

After failure of the two of the most specific units is the ac compressor and the mag ride suspension .

So you guys know how to pick this car up .

Two of the mari are actually leaking this side here , the left rear driver side and then the passenger front , they're both leaking .

I I'm gonna have to get those replaced .

Now O E M you're looking at $1800 to replace each , each one .

So $1800 each .

So you're looking at $3600 in this case for my case to , to go ahead and replace the two .

Thankfully , there's O E M options where you can bypass this .

So for example , BC racing coil overs have a great kit that offer just as good performance for $1800 for all four corners , that's for four .

So you can go definitely with aftermarket and get similar performance and not have to pay the extreme O E M price of an O E M Mari suspension when you know it's going to fail .

Again , there's other things you can do like refurb the suspension , but it's just delaying the inevitable , all these units will fail .

So if you're getting this car , definitely you need to check the Magna ride suspension , see if it's working .

So check the ac check the Magna ride , see if there's any leaks in my case .

Again , I I knew about the two leaks here and I already negotiated down the price of the car because of that .

And I knew in my head , I'm not going to replace it with O E M mag ride .

I'm gonna be replacing it with an aftermarket unit 1800 bucks .

So it's not that big of an expense other than that guys , those are kind of the two major things because this is the V eight .

It's pretty much mechanically A R S four .

So what you can expect from an R S four for the most part you can expect the maintenance here .

Right .

Do your engine , uh , filter changes to the , uh , air filters here are actually pretty expensive .

They're about $300 but you could just pop them in yourself .

It's not that big of a deal .

And we go down to the brakes , the brakes of the steel brakes , uh , typical .

I just actually bought some , uh , hawk ceramics to go ahead and replace .

But the brake dust about $600 for the front and the rear .

So it's not too bad .

The rotors , I'm reusing because they still have enough thickness on the rotors .

Otherwise for maintenance costs again , just make sure you're changing the oil , right ?

You're changing the air filters , you're following the recommended maintenance , which doesn't have anything crazy , typical recommended maintenance and just keep an eye on anything .

The only things that will be expensive is yes , if you need to replace the clutch or yes , if something does happen to the engine or yes , if the ac compressor goes , you're gonna have to go ahead and take this engine out , which is the big difficult problem .

So you really want to make sure when you're evaluating these cars when you're looking at these cars .

Is the engine healthy ?

Is the engine solid ?

Do a pre purchase inspection ?

I did a 300 point prep purchase inspection on this car at the Audi dealership before I bought it and made sure everything that I seen by myself in inspecting the car was caught by the Audi pre purchase inspection .

But they're also going to look into the code , see if the engine's healthy right here .

This engine was running fine .

I took it on a test drive .

It was the only thing I knew it may need is the valve cleaning or the maintenance which I did .

Otherwise the engine is solid and you can be confident that it's a mass produced engine .

It's not going to give out any time soon .

And the history of this engine is solid .

There's no history of it , throwing valves or losing the rod bearing or anything like that .

So I'm very happy so far .

I put about 5000 kilometers on this car since I bought it crazy .

I didn't think I'd put that much .

Now .

It's sitting at 42,000 kilometers and it's been solid .

So I'm gonna actually start pouring some oil since I've started talking to you guys .

I haven't actually done what I said I was going to do .

It needs just a little bit again .

I told you that this engine does burn a little bit of oil and that is normal for these cars .

Um , you'll notice that , especially as they get older , they'll start burning a bit of oil .

Um , nothing that I haven't encountered before .

So maybe just put a little bit of that and then it does have a dipstick thankfully , uh , BMW .

Stop using electronic oil indicators and not have a backup secondary dipstick .

Thank you .

Um , yeah , there's , there's nothing else if I'm looking at the car right now .

Um , everything's solid .

Yeah , tires are gonna be expensive , but that's typical of , you know , you're gonna get big tires 2 95 on the rear , 2 35 in the front .

You know , I got these , I put up the car above the Michelin pilot four S tires .

This is the best high performance summer tires that you can get that are not track specific .

Um , and I got these on the car , which is great .

Otherwise , guys , I don't feel like if I ever have a problem with this car , it's going to be out of my ass with a ton of money .

Um The only thing is again the ac failure , then I can go ahead and get it fixed , maybe buy the car for two K and have the other method done to go underneath the car to replace it .

The magna ride .

I already have two leaking ones .

I'm gonna go ahead and replace it with a $1600 BC racing coil over aftermarket kit .

Not that bad at all .

The coil overs guys or a super car .

Ok .

And then the oil , you know , this thing I think takes about 10 liters of oil .

If you go to a shop and get uh , oil change , what is it going to be ?

Maybe 300 bucks ?

Um , if you do it yourself , you're looking at , uh , the oil , I think it is about 100 bucks and the oil filter is about 10 bucks or 15 bucks .

So it's not too bad .

Um , other than that guys , if you , if you're really concerned about the maintenance history on the car , if you're really concerned about the maintenance , ongoing cost of the car , um , I wouldn't let that kind of deter you .

So for insurance for this car that Lexus is actually more expensive than this R eight .

Um I am 28 years old .

I have no tickets now .

They've all dropped , they've all dropped .

Um And this is cheaper .

I'm paying about 100 and $30 a month for this car for this Audi R A for insurance and that's full coverage with liability and all that jazz .

And as you know , I'm in Canada and Ontario , we pay the highest insurance premiums from probably anywhere in the world , which is really sucky , but it's still not bad for this car .

100 and $31 .

The other thing , if you're talking about ongoing running costs on the car , um , gas , this thing eats gas and you , it was a V eight .

I had a five liter Mustang G T the 2011 with a six speed manual .

And I thought , you know , that was decent gas mileage actually for that car was good .

This thing eats more gas than that , like tremendously more gas than that .

And maybe that's because I'm not taking it in the highway as much because I drove my mustang everywhere to work along the highway drives .

But I'm , I'm basically filling up the gas prices right now is a dollar 32 a liter .

I am filling this thing up .

I'm spending 100 $20 premium fuel at the pumps to fill this bad boy up and I'm getting about 500 kilometers if I'm lucky .

So it's definitely not a Prius that you're driving .

And again , I , I don't really care too much about that because I'm not driving this out all the time .

Um , so gas mileage isn't that much of a concern .

It's more of a , uh you know , garage clean per se , even though I put 5000 kilometers on it so far in the six months that I've had it .

Um , running costs are no different than if I had an Audi R S four here .

They are literally no different .

Insurance would probably be the same and the gas fuel economy may be a little bit better actually .

No , it's not .

It's the same engine .

So it's the exact same thing .

Um , running costs are fine .

So that's the unique part about this car and its engine is that again , it was a lot of the parts that make up this car were mass produced for a import saloon .

They were not necessarily specific to a super car and a lot of these parts you'll find in this car are actually recycled bin from different parts of other cars put into this .

Not saying this car isn't special at all .

It's completely uniquely special because of the way they packaged everything together .

But the great part is , is that all those pieces were all mass produced pieces that were tried and true .

So , you know , you're gonna have good reliability on this car .

Ok .

We're good in between the fill and do not fill lines .

So we are fine .

Again .

See , I didn't even add that much oil .

I think I added not even half a liter , not even half a liter in there , ok ?

So let's put this cat back on and that's the great thing .

Again , the car will tell you when the oil is running low .

So that's it guys .

I hope this video helped you , especially if you're deciding on getting this car .

If you're just curious about the maintenance and running cost of this car , it's , it's quite honestly no different really than an Audi R S four .

And um I've been completely happy with it .

I've had no problem since I got the car .

And um and if you have any other questions , leave them in the comment box down below , you're gonna see a lot more content with this car coming out .

So make sure you guys subscribe like this video if you liked it and I'll see you guys in the next video and uh by the way , this stuff , this platinum Euro stuff is what this car needs .

It is so hard to get uh in Canada .

I don't know why .

Um it's the Euro blend .

So just make sure you get the right um oil .

So it's these kind of little quirky things that you need to make sure you know about the car .

But other than that , it's the same as any German import , Pretty much like an R R S four .