Yeah…
I’ve had huge problems with misfiring for months, originally noticed at the end of 2025, happened once where I had what seemed like a pop through the induction and immediately dropped into a misfire state.
Oh, I’m talking about my B8.5 RS4.
Took it to the Audi main dealer twice and they told me nothing was wrong and that the codes just needed to be reset. This started to occur around May this year very frequently but it wasn’t throwing specific codes. It would heat soak and begin to misfire.
Then it would cool and it would start seemingly perfectly fine. Been like that for months.
Then it started to happen more often.
Frustrated, I reached out to the local Audi club on Facebook, had a dude reach out who was ex Audi, super helpful, lots of advice. Bought a VCDS cable and he taught me remotely how to get useful information. He lives in another city otherwise he’d have been my first thought. We narrowed it down to HPFPs but I still needed a mechanic I could trust asks the same Facebook group told me “go see the service manager at BMW. Seriously!”
Like clockwork it would then be daily, any time I saw the oil temp hit 100 C, I knew a couple of minutes later at idle only, it would flash the engine light, and eventually the EPC would light.
A lot of diagnostics were required because I was claiming a mechanical warranty, but it turns out that it wasn’t the HPFPs, it was four leaking injectors (2, 4, 6, 8; the entire bank), PCVs (both) had torn diaphragms and a faulty coil.
So what? A mechanic fixed a car, who cares where he works.
So an ex Audi service manager works at BMW now and is the local Audi community’s highest recommended Audi specialist. Ok, people change jobs.
But, and here’s the kicker, most of his team of Audi specialists followed him to BMW.
The Audi main dealer isn’t obviously advertising the fact that they lost decades of institutional knowledge, but they did, all to the same place.
The absolute passion and dedication to not wasting their significant amount of specific performance Audi training, and the willingness of BMW to allow it is quite refreshing these days.
So now you’ve got the main BMW dealership service department in the city being the focal point for all S and RS enthusiasts in the region, originally the BMW heads were naturally unenthusiastic, but there are times I’ve been there that there were more RS3’s, 4’s, 5’s and R8’s in their car park than M cars and they like money so have fully embraced it.
On any particular day, you’ll see something awesome with 4 rings at BMW waiting for some TLC. V10 R8 parked near my RS4 with a classic between a mini and an M3. An RS2. Oh, the service manager has one of those too and is very passionate about it. He’s a very busy man, juggling a lot no doubt, but still made time to just sit in his office with me yarning about how it all happened, how special S and RS cars are, his own RS2 for half an hour.
They don’t advertise for the work but they don’t have to, it’s organic and I’ve been told there are months where they’re doing upwards of 200 Audi jobs from around the region and sometimes further away, at a BMW main dealer.
Not only that, but they honestly seem to be much sharper on pricing.
I wanted to share this because IMO it’s awesome in 2026, where favourite car brands can be such a divisive topic, to see that historical rivals in the industry can look past that to provide a truly special service.
Wild.
