|
From YourSITE.com Reviews & Road Tests Winter having set in, priorities for our 4 Season S4 Cabriolet begin to change. The top comes down less, only on those random winter days that seem to appear whenever someone else in the office takes the car home, and the threat of snow looms.
-George Achorn 14,249 miles: Tire Impressions A light snow in the DC area has allowed us little more winter experience with the new Continentals than hooliganism in an unplowed parking lot. It's a lot harder to hooliganize with the S4 than other Audis we've had without winter tires in these sorts of situations. The cabriolet, not surprisingly, sticks much better. On dry pavement, the tires are not too aggressive, meaning they don't make the change in the ashtray rattle as we motor down the highway at speeds that should probably get tickets. The ride is smooth and not far off of summer tires in ride quality, though the breaking point in dry-weather handling is obviously at a lower threshold than our summer rubber. -George Achorn 14,736 miles: Fog Light Installation Before I sold my 2003 Audi A4 3.0 Quattro, I removed a few of the items that I purchased for the car. Namely, Hoen H7 xenonmatch bulbs, an Audi Sport license plate frame, and Audi Sport valve stem caps. Considering that it was Christmas, and I was in a giving mood, I decided to install the fog light bulbs in our S4. However, I was a scrooge and kept the license plate and valve stem caps for myself. Hey, I plan on owning another Audi eventually. The install was very straight forward. All you need is a Torx 20 driver and about 5 minutes of your time. Remove the grilles surrounding the fog lights by sticking your fingers through the middle slots, reach up and unhook the taps, and the grille will pull out. Once the grille is removed, you will see the three torx screws needed to remove the fog light housing. Remove the screws and gently start to remove the housing. Be sure to unhook the wiring harness from the fog light bulb before pulling the housing out all the way. In the above picture you can see the difference between the factory bulbs and the Hoen bulbs. The Hoen xenonmatch bulbs use the factory wattage and produce a 4,000 Kelvin color beam to match the output of the HIDs. The result is excellent, as the fog lights no longer have the ugly yellow tint. However, as with all colored bulbs, visibility from the fog lights is slightly decreased at the expense of looks. http://www.hoen-usa.com.
-Anthony Garbis 14,883 miles: 15k Mile Service Having had a good experience at HBL, the S4 needing a service and my being located in Northern, VA, an appointment was scheduled for the 15,000-mile service. Our S4 had an issue that occurred roughly 3 months earlier, where the passenger side rear window would only lower 2/3rds of the way down. In an older car this would be attributed to a dead spot on the motor or some other mechanical failure, but not on this Audi. After speaking with the technician, the issue was that the module for the window regulator “froze up”, and he then referred it to as Windows freezing (insert your typical mac’s are superior and never freeze or need to be rebooted! comment here) and needing a reboot. The module was unplugged for 5 minutes, plugged back in, and the window worked perfectly. The 15k mile service consists of a oil/filter change, a pollen filter change, scanning the car for any fault codes, and resetting the service indicator. The service and window fix took only two hours, and the car was returned washed and vacuumed. -Anthony Garbis 15,119 miles: Burn in Convertible Top While parked on the street in downtown Frederick, Maryland, I returned to the car to find a cigarette butt lying on the convertible top. In a one in a million occurrence (you would have better odds of winning the Mega Millions Jackpot than this happening again), someone driving by must have flicked their cigarette out the window and it landed on the top. While at first I thought it was just a slight burn in the canvas, the burn actually caused a small crack in the canvas. This caused a slight issue, as I was leaving in three days for a trip to Montreal and Quebec City. Since the crack was extremely small, I halfway retracted the top to get a look underneath and see the construction of the top and see about possibly patching the crack. As you can see, there is an outer layer, a thick foam/insulation layer, and then the interior layer. I managed to reach underneath the outer layer and patch it with some hockey tape. I did not want to use anything that was too sticky and could cause the crack to enlarge when removed, because the car is set to go into the dealership once back from Canada and be properly fixed. -Anthony Garbis 15,451 miles: Service Indicator Reset When starting the car I noticed that the MFA indicated that the car needed service. I performed a manual reset and figured that it must not have been reset when the car was in for the 15k mile service. After doing the reset, I monitored the service indicator status and found out that the service interval was set to only 100 miles instead of 10,000 miles. The service interval will need to be reprogrammed by the dealership next time it goes in for service. -Anthony Garbis
To make better use of the snow tires, a trip to the Canadian Province of Quebec has been scheduled. Snow may be an elusive element in the greater DC area this winter, but Anthony Garbis has volunteered to head North and get a better sense of the Conti Winter Contacts. Look for more details of the trip in our next report.
© Copyright 2004 by YourSITE.com |
