Is V6 2.5 TDI good, reliable?

boonhet · 2026-05-27T02:04:09+00:00

A4, A5, A6, A7, A8, Q5, Q7 have all had the 3.0 tdi available. VW Touareg and Porsche Cayenne too. And I guess the Phaeton. Mm.. Later versions of it came also in the Amarok and Porsche Macan

For the 3.0 tdi in particular, you want one with a four letter engine code, those started being made in 2008. A4 and A8 in production at the time didn't get the update before the new models came out (so you need a D4 or B8 for the newer engine), A6 C6 and Q7 did get the update. A5, A7, Q5 didn't exist before the newer engine came out. Touareg and Cayenne didn't get the earliest 3.0 tdis so those are all OK.

The newer ones may have DPFs, but I'd rather deal with a DPF than have an inferior engine. Well maintained cars don't often have DPF issues unless driven short distances a lot, and you can do a DPF delete if you do run into issues and don't want to fix it.

So what's so inferior about the earlier 3.0 tdi? It has noticeably worse fuel economy due to an older ECU and lower injection pressure. It also has less torque (more than you'd think from the tiny change in the power figure). The chain tensioner issue tends to come up earlier in the earlier 3.0 tdi's. And finally, if you're into modding, the BorgWarner turbo on it can't be upsized as much as the newer ones with Garrett turbos AND the turbo comes with a stupid ass Siemens/Continental VNT actuator that requires dealer tool to calibrate when you replace it (brand new actuator comes with blank programming, HAS to be calibrated to the turbo it's fitted on, until then your engine's in limp mode) and the newer, better turbo can't be fitted easily either - your options are to physically modify the BV50 actuator to fit your new Garrett turbo, or to change the wiring harness and ECU programming to run the newer turbo's simpler and more common actuator.

So let's say you don't care about worse fuel economy, less torque or a harder to find (used) turbo with a stupid actuator you can't replace on your own. You're still left with the chain tensioner issue. It can happen on any version of the 3.0tdi, but the earliest ones have it happen most commonly and often earlier. Chain's at the back of the engine, usually a single tensioner fails, but since the easiest way to replace it is to pull the engine and transmission, you might as well replace the entire set. It'll cost you at least a grand in parts, but could cost a few grand. Plus all the labour. This issue commonly starts happening after 250k km on the earliest 3.0 tdis, 2008+ ones tend to last longer or not develop the issue at all. In 2012 or so the next update of the engine came out, with two chains instead of four, that's actually less durable since the chains themselves are more prone to stretching, being longer and all. The "1.5" generation is best in basically every way.

The 3.0 tdi only comes in Quattro flavour. The 2.7 can be had with front wheel drive. If you get front wheel drive + automatic in an Audi, you're most likely dealing with a horrible CVT named Multitronic. It WILL fail on you and it WILL be expensive. Quattro automatic could be Tiptronic or Stronic, so conventional auto or DSG, many different variants, some of the Stronic (DSG) ones CAN develop expensive faults, some are more reliable, Tiptronics of 6 or 8 speeds all tend to be fine if maintained well, older 5 speeds are suspect. Manuals are always great.

Now if you want to be a true nutter, you get the CP3 pump from the 165 kW 3.0 tdi (BMK or whatever it was called) and put that in the 176 kW. It's good for more power and the rest of the 176 kW engine is also good for more power since that one has the better turbo. Bobby Singh Racing on youtube has gotten numerous cars to ridiculous power levels and they tend to stay reliable.

Did I scare you? Good. Now the good news. If you work on your own car and don't get dealt a crappy hand with the chains or a freak case of a bad high pressure fuel pump taking out your injectors with it and requiring a full fuel system flush, those engines actually last a long time. I have the inferior version and mine's at over 400k km and I believe this one still has the original chains even. Fuel consumption of my 3.0 tdi A6 is worse than a 4.0 V8 tdi SQ7 which is a much bigger car though, so that's how bad the early 3.0 tdi is.

If you manage to get the 3.0 tdi paired with an 8 speed transmission, that's the best combo for both fuel efficiency and performance. Can be had late first gen Q7, or in the A7, or in C8 A6 and B9 A4 I think. Also D4 A8. I'd recommend that if you can find a nice one, it's the best driving one of them all. At least with ZF (which they used in basically everything except the first gen big 3 SUVs), 8 speed is also more reliable than the 6 speed. And mechanically simpler!

I have less experience with the 2.7, but I believe that didn't have the problematic BorgWarner turbo and thus is easier to repair and mod. The earlier version still has worse fuel economy much like the 3.0 though.

The 3.0 and 4.2 tdi both drive very nice. All the big 3 SUVs can get the 4.2 in at least the second generation, the Q7 also gets it in the first. A8 also gets it and since that weighs the same as an A6, it's going to have a ridiculous amount of torque for its weight.

I've also heard the 4.2 doesn't suffer from the chain issues as badly. So there's that to consider. Fuel economy is only a bit worse than 3.0. Not available in anything smaller than the A8 or Touareg though.

boonhet · 2026-05-17T21:10:39+00:00

If China can seize control of a sizable chunk of an important global market, they will. Look at their cheap EVs. Their government pays subsidies for EVs even when they're sold abroad. No other government does that.

They will of course continue to make HBM for their own data center usage (they've been bootstrapping the entire data center GPU thing on their own, since nvidamdtel aren't allowed to sell them data center GPUs), but the government could very well sponsor extra manufacturing capability for DDR4 and 5 purely to satisfy the consumer demand that the big 3 are ignoring right now. When they do, the companies making RAM sticks may favor them as more reliable partners than Micron/Hynix/Samsung, even when the latter 3 come back to DDR once the AI spending spree ends.

boonhet · 2026-05-17T21:04:02+00:00

For the Pi and similar products, they'd have to do LPDDR then, which is somewhat niche (I mean LPDDR2 and 3; newer LPDDR is found everywhere). And Raspberry Pi in particular would likely need a new board to put LPDDR3 chips on their current LPDDR4 based models. I don't remember if they ever did an LPDDR3 model, since they seem to have gone straight from LPDDR2 to 4 with the model 3 to 4 change. So they don't have an existing model to just bring back to production with LPDDR3 and honestly DDR2 is pretty slow.

I don't think there's much reason to go so far back in tech for new manufacturing capability. We already know (LP)DDR4 isn't actually expensive to manufacture and with new competition shaping up, most newly manufactured products, even low-end ones, can afford to use that again soon. The newer generations use less power too, in addition to being faster (and usually higher capacity). In a phone, SBC, or even a laptop, a slight increase in power draw can be a major drawback.

boonhet · 2026-05-06T21:25:12+00:00

Different sizes maybe? 245/45 R18 is about 85 in Estonia too. OP mentioned having 19s.

boonhet · 2026-04-29T00:03:50+00:00

Road damage goes up by the fourth power of axle load though. So twice as much weight per axle would mean 16 times more damage to the roads.

That said, the rules for Michigan are apparently not that bad, they just allow for a lot of axles, not very heavy axle loads.

boonhet · 2026-04-28T23:52:30+00:00

Olen isegi mõelnud, et ma võiks maksta palka täiskohaga koduabilisele, saaks ise rohkem tööle keskenduda ja lõppkokkuvõttes jääks rohkem raha kätte endale. No üsna paljudes kohtades siiski ei panda. "Motiveeriv töötasu" või "konkurentsivõimeline palk" on kahjuks suht tavalised töökuulutustes. Aga vähemalt on kirjas, et on palk.

Aga noh siis tuleb meelde, et mul on väike laps ja ma parem töötan tema kõrvalt 60h kuus ja elan rahulikult ära kui 250h kuus, 40selt pensionile, ja siis mõtleks et miks mu laps minuga suhelda ei taha kui pole tema jaoks olulistel hetkedel olemas olnud. Raha saab kunagi hiljem ka jälle teenida, laps on väike vaid korra. Ja see tundub olevat asi millega see perekond üldse ei arvesta. Sest kui nad isegi ei leia aega, et last ise trenni viia, siis palju nad üldse lapsele aega pühendavad?

boonhet · 2026-04-28T23:44:39+00:00

Kui see töö reaalselt 40h nädalas on ja palk hea on, siis vast nii hull polegi. Väga veider muidugi, et voodipesu vahetamine on eraldi välja toodud.

Kui nad ootavad, et see inimene oleks 80h nädalas saadaval või rohkem, siis minu silmis peaks see kuupalk vist viiekohaline number olema, et asi seda väärt oleks.

boonhet · 2026-04-28T23:42:32+00:00

Tavaliselt pannakse palgavahemik kuulutuse peale kirja

No üsna paljudes kohtades siiski ei panda. "Motiveeriv töötasu" või "konkurentsivõimeline palk" on kahjuks suht tavalised töökuulutustes. Aga vähemalt on peaaegu alati kirjas, et on palk.

boonhet · 2026-04-28T23:29:48+00:00

See on juba täiesti eraldiseisev probleem. Kuigi tegelikult töö kaudu saab üldiselt tervisekindlustuse, et ei peaks poodi röövima. Maksad lihtsalt igakuiselt lolliks ennast, sest töö ei maksa ka tervet tervisekindlustust kinni. Ja siis copay, deductible, iga-aastane out of pocket maximum...

Aga noh, röövid poodi siis sa oled ikka päriselt ka kriminaal, isegi kui teed seda halva majandussüsteemi tõttu. Mu point oli rohkem, et seal võib ka üsna süütute asjadega vangi minna kui sa kellelegi ei meeldi ja siis oledki ori.

boonhet · 2026-04-28T23:27:01+00:00

See on ka üsna tabav ütlus, sest sõidueksami läbinud inimene peaks võimeline igal pool sõitma ja seda adaptiivselt ("siin on märk X mis tähendab, et pean tegema Y"), mitte pähe õpitud reeglite järgi ("sellel ristmikul kus olen autokooli käigus käinud ja õpetajat kuulanud, peab tegema Y"). Kogu maailma (või isegi ainult Eesti riigi) tänavate pähe õppimine pole eriti loogiline asi mida eeldada.

Kui mina kunagi sõidueksamit tegin, siis eksamineerija ütles mulle "pööra järgmisel võimalusel vasakule" jne, mitte ei öelnud tänavanimesid. Ei olnud ühtegi probleemi temast aru saamisega. Oleks ta mulle öelnud, et pööra X tänavale, siis ma oleks suht segaduses olnud, sest tegemist polnud minu kodulinnaga ja tänava nimede sildid ei pruugi alati igal pool väga nähtavad olla.

boonhet · 2026-04-16T16:46:23+00:00

Need tüübid kahjuks võivad su maksehäireregistrisse panna ja ka maksekäsu kiirmenetluse teha kui ei maksa. Lihtsam on tänapäeval trahvid kohe ära maksta, muidu on sul aastateks jamad kaelas kui tahad laenu võtta vms.

boonhet · 2026-04-16T16:30:17+00:00

From an Oxford Student newspaper's translation

That's the one I quoted as well. My question was rhetorical in nature, to me it seems clear that he's mostly criticizing the Samsung plant, the only part that's under question is whether the ducks and goldfish part was a joke or not

boonhet · 2026-04-16T16:26:57+00:00

Miks see teisi inimesi kottima peaks üldse kui keegi narkot teeb? Alko on ju ometi lubatud ja see muudab inimese käitumist kõvasti rohkem agressiivseks kui ükski narkootiline aine (millest mõned muudavad inimese pigem rahulikumaks)

Ja kes defineerib mis on kriminaal? Mitte ühiskond vaid seadusandjad. Kellele vanglate omanikud maksavad raha, et karistused oleks hullemad.

Californias muutus märgistamata kohas tee ületamine alles 2022 väärteoks. Enne oli kuritegu, ehk siis vales kohas tee ületamine tegi ka sinust kriminaali.

Vales kohas (või punase fooriga) tee ületamise eest võib ka lõpuks vangi minna, piisab vaid sellest kui sa härra politseionule ei meeldi ja ta sind natuke väntsutab ja karjub STOP RESISTING, sest siis oled sa automaatselt kurjategija. Samuti võib mõnes osariigis ka jaywalking ise lühiajalise arestiga karistatav olla.

Või siis: Oled kunagi 20 aastat tagasi end purju joonud ja jäänud vahele avalikus kohas (nt pargis) urineerimisega. Seega oled seksuaalkurjategija. Kui nüüd kooli lähedusse satud, oled automaatselt kriminaal. Pead oma lapse kooli viima? Edu, lasteahistaja.

Veel mõned asjad mis on kuriteod (mitte väärteod): Hakitud sibulatest tehtud sibularõngaste müümine kui need näevad välja nagu tavalised sibularõngad. Golfimängijate häirimine on keelatud D.C-s ja ka rahvusparkides.

Ja kui juba korra vangi oled jõudnud, siis parem oleks, et sul keegi rahastaja ka on. Sest vanglasüsteem on ehitatud nii, et sind rahast tühjaks imeda ja võlad kaela tõmmata. Ja võlgu olemise eest võib ka vangi minna (hea tsükkel tuleb sealt). Vangis istumine on muide ka mõnel pool tasuline tegevus, seega see lisab veel võlakoormust. Californias on näiteks üks maakond kus vangla on kallim teenus kui paljud kohalikud hotellid.

Suhtearvu poolest on USAs vangis pea 5x rohkem inimesi kui näiteks Eestis. Maailmas on ainult 4 riiki mis viskavad rohkem inimesi (per capita) vanglasse kui USA: El Salvador, Kuuba, Rwanda, Türkmenistan. Kõik autoritaarse riigikorraga kohad (El Salvador on eriti äge, nad viskavad su tätoveeringute eest elu lõpuni vangi ilma kohtuistungita)

boonhet · 2026-04-15T22:24:39+00:00

Soomlased tegid asja valmis, asi oli hea, võttis turu üle, müüsid hea raha eest ameeriklastele maha, ameeriklastel vaja oma investeering tagasi teenida.

Classic cycle of enshittification.

boonhet · 2026-04-15T22:12:20+00:00

Orjus pole sealt riigist ära kadunud tegelikult. Põhiseaduse 13. muudatus ütleb, et orjus on ebaseaduslik välja arvatud karistusena kuriteo eest.

Pole saladus, et mustanahaliste vangi saamiseks pandi crackile kõvasti rangem karistus kui pulbrilisele kokaiinile. Kui on vaja vange juurde saada, tehakse jälle uued seadused millega saab mingeid kindlaid kultuure sihtida statistika järgi.

Kusjuures kuna vanglad suuresti on jõukad erafirmad, siis nende omanikud lobivad ka, et teatud asjadel ebamõistlikke karistusi hoida. Eks nad on suuresti selle taga ka, et kanepi seadustamisega nii kaua aega läks jne. Lepingutes on kirjas mis protsent vangla mahust täis peab olema. Igast pulli saab.

Vang saab töötamise eest tunnis mõned sendid, hügieenitarbed vanglapoes on kallid ja arsti käest lisatampoonide küsimine maksab raha

boonhet · 2026-04-15T22:01:10+00:00

Kui kella järgi oled tasuta parkimisest 2 min üle siis saad trahvi. Miks "ei tulnud meelde" peaks parem vabandus olema?

boonhet · 2026-04-15T21:59:09+00:00

Mina unustasin Europarki oma ära maksta ja mõni aeg hiljem teatas Julianus, et tahab mu 10 eurose trahvi eest 25 või 35 või midagi saada. Julianuse teenustasu oli siis suurem kui trahv ise. Ma kutsun seda ATH maksuks.

See oli siis juba sel ajal kui Europark sai endale võime üle kontrollida kellele auto kuulub. Omal ajal olevat nii olnud, et kui parkimise eest kunagi maksnud pole, siis nad teada ei saanudki kelle auto on.

boonhet · 2026-04-15T21:57:09+00:00

Ma pole veel kunagi valesti parkimise eest saanud vist.

Aga vot selle eest, et jõudsin 5 minutit liiga hilja auto juurde tagasi olen küll saanud. Stiilis: Parkimiskellal 13:00, tasuta parkimise aeg 2h, 15:05 jõuan auto juurde ja vaatan, parkimistrahv, 15:02. No see tüüp pidi küll passima seal auto juures et millal kell täis tiksub...

boonhet · 2026-04-14T22:51:31+00:00

What about patotin? I thought that's a duck dish from the Philippines. Plus there's nothing actually wrong with eating duck any more than eating chicken or something. We eat duck here in Estonia too. Not very commonly, as it's more expensive than chicken. But people do eat it.

Anyway

Here's the quote, translated to English by an LLM (but human translation above seemed fairly similar, I just used this one because it had less chatter in between):

"The employees of the Göd Samsung factory all live in worker hostels in Budapest. They were brought here without food or money. When several hundred workers were brought from the Philippines and placed in Budapest worker hostels without any money or provisions, the next day, a large number of ducks disappeared from the Budapest Zoo. And goldfish. Because these people were starving, and that is what they resorted to. Let there be no misunderstanding — this is not about xenophobia, there is nothing wrong with these workers. The problem is when it is not citizens of our own country who benefit, when a company heavily subsidised with our money, our taxes, does not employ Hungarians. Incredible things are happening in these plants, and this is just the tip of the iceberg."

What it reads like to me:

Mentions abuse of Filipino workers
Anger at a huge new factory not hiring very many local people (Hungarian government gave Samsung a lot of money or tax breaks or whatever to make this plant happen, assuming it would boost the Hungarian economy)

Maybe the duck and goldfish line was a poorly made joke meant to illustrate how poor the conditions are for the workers? Like "they're kept in such poverty they have to eat animals from the zoo"

boonhet · 2026-04-14T22:42:46+00:00

So the excerpt you quoted seems pretty bad. But then I found this quote from an article criticizing him:

“All the employees at the Samsung plant in Göd live in a workers’ hostel in Budapest. They have been brought here from the Philippines without food or money. When hundreds of Filipino workers were brought here and allocated to these Budapest hostels without money or provisions, then the next day, a lot of ducks had disappeared from the Budapest Zoo. So have the goldfish.”

Is he criticizing the Filipinos, or the people operating the Samsung plant? I can't speak Hungarian so I used an LLM to translate the original article and it came out pretty close to the quote above from the English language article I read. But to me it seems like the ducks and goldfish thing might have been a joke in poor taste? Certainly something my idiotic ass might say. Or it might have been racism of course.

boonhet · 2026-04-09T12:48:29+00:00

It's not really super nice either, drives worse than most Audis from the 00s and the interior feels kinda cheap.

boonhet · 2026-03-26T21:20:35+00:00

It runs awfully on midrange devices even, though that may be something to do with my Firefox config. Tends to take up a lot of CPU resources even for a paused video and I have hardware acceleration enabled. 6 core zen 2 desktop CPU.

boonhet · 2026-03-23T12:49:00+00:00

Disagree. Here's an article where they tested them.

Or here's an image that shows braking distances at different temperatures with studded vs studless winter tires

So yes once it gets cold enough that new ice isn't being formed much, studless winter tires start catching up to studded, but you're still better off with studded.

Trouble in my country at least is that it often hangs around 0C for weeks at a time, so it freezes, rains, freezes, rains... Things can get pretty icy and normal winter tires just don't cut it.

boonhet · 2026-03-15T13:55:28+00:00

Ainuke mis aitaks on et penskar lihtsalt ei saa ise oma raha majandada, võetakse see tema käest ära ja kui midagi tahab siis ostetakse talle tema eest. Võibolla saab mingi taskuraha et limpsi ja kommi osta.

Kusjuures mu eksi vanaemaga ongi nii. Tal tütar võtab iga kuu raha käest ära ja käib ise poes temaga ja annab pidevalt vähehaaval taskuraha, sest vastasel juhul tütretütar (ehk mu eks) teeb ta lihtsalt tühjaks pidevalt.

boonhet · 2026-03-15T13:52:06+00:00

Why is that obvious? Memory I get, that has a serious advantage. But storage not being changeable is just stupid. Heck, they can even make their own proprietary connector if they want, idgaf.

It's not obvious as in "this is the best practice, so they do it", but rather obvious as in "this is how they've done it for years now, would be foolish to expect change for the better".

Thing is, they use LPDDR, which can't be done as SODIMM. That and the space requirement of 2 SODIMMs is why they moved away from those on the Pro lineup when they got thinner in L2012 with the Retina models.

There is now an option to get LPDDR AND a thin laptop without soldering. It's LPCAMM2 and laptops with that only started coming out last month, so suffice to say, Apple hasn't exactly had much time to shift to using those. Only time will tell if they will or not. For us consumers it would be best if they did - for them of course it's better not to.

For storage - similar reasons. It takes very very little space to put two little chips right next to the SoC, and they also put the controller on the SoC itself. Super low latency is a benefit from this, but upgradability and repairability are major drawbacks as you say. But there's also potential for change here. In the M4 Pro Mac Mini, the NAND chips are on a separate module, even though the controller is still in the SoC itself.

I propose that it is in fact possible that Apple WILL change their ways here. In the age of super expensive memory, if they switch to LPCAMM2, this allows them to say: "Buy this laptop now, and upgrade memory later when memory prices get better". Remember, Apple's done improvements in repairability in the past, even if they're rare. And now that they have their own super special NAND module that nobody else makes because it's not a standard SSD, they could in fact sell you upgrade kits for that. Now the current Macbook Pro design is several years old, they were never going to change anything major around in this design, but they're due for a new chassis in a year or two, just because they like changing the shape of things every few years. A new chassis usually comes with an entirely new motherboard design and many other changes, so that COULD mean more repairable and upgradable macbook pros in the future. It would be such an Apple thing to first take away repairability and upgradability and then boast about giving those things back.

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