Project Chronicle

I spotted this S6 Avant on Facebook Marketplace not far from me.  I went there mostly to put eyeballs on it and see what sort of condition it was in just in case someone else in my online circles might be interested.  

Upon arrival, the car was filthy so it was hard to know what sort of condition the paint was in under the layer of dust.  I brought my VCDS along so I hooked the car up and discovered the car was relatively error free aside from one for secondary air injection pump (which has yet to return) and the big one for an internal transmission speed sensor issue.  That 2nd code is not what you want to see on a 5HP24A transmission.  

The very brief test drive in the impound lot (yes, this car got surrendered to the impound lot rather than paying the fees... clue #1) revealed that the car moved fine in reverse but was struggling to move forward in drive.  Uh oh.  That's typical A drum failure mode... but what if?  

I told the lot owner I was definitely not interested in buying a car that needs a transmission as that is a huge expense on these cars and often "ends them" for average owners. He said to make him an offer anyway so I offered $1000.  He passed and I headed home.  As I was pulling into the driveway, my phone rang and it was his assistant.  He just wanted to say sorry for wasting my time as he didn't know that the car had a bad transmission.  He wanted to let me know that they fully updated the listing to denote that fact and had dropped the price significantly.  He asked if I wanted it for the reduced price.  Nope, still too much, thanks.  Cheers.

A short time later I get a text asking if I'd be at all interested in increasing my offer since I seemed like the guy that knew these cars and could likely save it.  Knowing they also had a tow company with flatbeds, I made one more offer for the car IF they also dropped it off at my house.  Done deal!

Step one was merely cleaning the car up as quickly as I could since it was late Fall and winter gets pretty serious here in Minnesota.  The paint was... wow... absolutely filthy.  It took a 3 step wash to get it to the point I would even consider letting a polishing pad touch the surface.  Luckily, my patience paid off and the car would polish back much better than I had expected. 

The car was now looking much better and we decided to try a "Hail Mary" transmission service to see if we could install a TransGo valve into the valve body and miraculously save the transmission.  It was a long shot, and as it turned out, someone had been here before us with the same Hail Mary service idea.  Darn!  

That means...  it's going to become a manual swapped S6 Avant in the spring of 2026!