New member here. I have a 95 A6 with the 2.8l quattro, auto tranny with 121k on the clock. Rebuilt from salvage title. I was given the car by a friend because he was tired of dealing with it. The car wil crank over but it will not start, catch, anything at all. Here's a couple things that I have been able to diagnose/ verify: it has fuel pressure, it does not have spark, was told by my friend that the cam and crank sensors are good, the timing belt was extremelty loose to the point of sthe cams skipping a couple teeth, I have pulled 4 of the 6 spark plugs and each one was fairly black. I have a spare PCM laying around that I can switch in and out with the factory one any time I want, if that helps anything. I bought a new ICM for it, however that didn't do anything as far as I can tell. I think I'm to the point where it's gotta be something to do with the ignition switch. I pulled the switch out today and I noticed that the switch has 8 electrial prongs on it, however there are only 7 wires running to the connectors and each one is connected to an electrical connector. Oh, forgot to say that I reset the cams to the correct position (I think). Any advice on what to do next that you guys can give me would be greatly appreciated

 

I would see if you have injection pulse. Also if you can , i would see if you have power & ground at the ecm. Do you have reference voltage at the MAF or ICM?
Do you have a way to scan the vehicle? It would be a help id you had a Vag-Com to communicate , that way you could see a crank & cam sensor signal.

 

Haven't checked anything that you have mentioned yet, is that vag.com reader like a code reader? How can I heck for an injection pulse?

I wok 12 hours a day so I don't have a bunch f spare time on my hands to look around at things much do updates will be few and far between.

 

I have the same car and I had a starting issue sometimes and sometimes the car would run rough. I swapped out the spark plugs with Bosch +4 platinum. This helped a lot and the car ran a lot smoother.

 

Would yours go through periods of not starting at all? Like just cranking over and over again?

 

I would have to keep holding the key for a min or so to get the car to turn over.

 

Ok. I've tried just cranking it for 15 seconds but it format do anything. When I pulled my plugs, they were fairly black so I'm running into some sort of too rich/no spark situation I think

 

If the plugs were black maybe you should swap them out. It may fix. I would start there.

 

I'm tossing the idea around, but I'm not trying to turn this into a money pit

 

I understand, cars can become money pits quickly. I hope it is a simple and inexpensive fix to get your car back on the road.