Well we made it to Innsbruck and back without much drama
I had a boot load of 'stuff' in case of trouble and to cover the various driving regs, not much of which I needed. This included two hi-viz vests, not one but two snow shovels, spare set of bulbs, tools to remove the headlamps to change the bulbs, emergency blanket, space saver spare tyre, small and large ice scraper, one with a brush on it - that was handy on the last day as we awoke to four inches of snow, a litre of oil, a litre of coolant, two alcohol testers, all documents (originals) and a full set of waterproofs incase of breakdown - these were also hi-viz.
So, given the above I was sure I had it all covered!
We did 2466 miles in total. The home run was 1171 miles which we did on one go. It took 21 hrs and I won't do that again - it was too much to be honest.
The car average 50.9 mpg over the whole trip. I reckon that's not bad for a 12 year old 100k + car especially when you consider that we were cruising at an indicated 85mph (130 kph on the sat nav) and did a few hundred miles on the autobahn at 95-100mph.
The car used a litre of oil and was surprisingly comfortable and quiet on the road. We did have a couple of problems though.
First issue was loss of coolant. I've been having problems with that for a while but the mechanic that fitted the timing belt and new water pump had thought that the old pump was showing signs of passing fluid. He also pressure tested the system for 30 minutes with no loss of pressure so we hoped that had sorted the problem. I was having to top it up every 500 miles or so on the way to Austria, and it used more at the higher speeds on the autobahn. The expansion tank was wet on the outside so I bought a new cap for it in Innsbruck and it looked like that had solved the problem. 500 miles in to the trip home all was good but after the engine had cooled down waiting for the tunnel it had lost a litre again. I topped it up and made it home to Glasgow but next day when I checked it was down again.
I'm going to try a new expansion tank next, hopefully that'll cure it, if not I'm at a loss - hose maybe?
Only other problem was I managed to snap the end off the dip stick, so I bought a new one at the same time as the coolant cap. The Audi dealer in Innsbruck was a dream to deal with, it took all of five minutes to get the parts as they had them in stock and at only 22 Euros for both parts I thought that was a good deal for original parts.
The little A2 never fails to impress, it was fantastic. I took the rear bench seat out (have you felt the weight of them - very heavy) and it took all our snowboard gear including two boards, three large holdalls, all the above emergency kit and had plenty of room to spare. On the way back I added 86 half litre bottles of beer (very cheap over there) three bags of shopping and another holdall of clothes bought in Innsbruck. There was still plenty of room left. Everything was strapped down using ratchet straps and the handy hold down points in the car.
All in all a great trip in a fantastic little car.
