Hi -

I have a 98 Audi A4 2.8L Quattro (manual transmission) that appears to be possessed, of late, by electrical demons.

It started with the sunroof freaking out - up and down and back and forth - with no touching of the control switch by me.

Then the mileage on the trip odometer mysteriously started resetting itself every time the car was started up.

The locks are now often sluggish in their response to being told to lock, via the key(no remote on this car). Often, when the car will not lock, I find that jumping in the car and letting it run for a few moments and then jumping out immediately and locking, again via the key, seems to work. I know it sounds like an odd fix but it works too often for it to be due to mere coincidence.

The alarm alert, or "beep," that normally sounds when the car is locked, is often weak and sometimes to the point of being virtually non-existent.

The internal lights, which are to be bright to light one's exodus from the car, are often weak too.

The headlights sometimes ebb and surge in strength.

The CD/radio sometimes cuts out/momentarily, when the steering wheel is turned so far in either direction.

Most disturbingly, the car sometimes stalls in traffic WITH the clutch fully engaged. It starts right back up and is fine.

The battery is almost brand new and showing a more than adequate charge.

Does anyone have any ideas on any legitimate/reasonable DIY fixes before I go nuts and have to sacrifice the kids' college fund(ha ha ha) for a dealer to charge me an arm and a leg to tell me that they replaced some $75 sensor and all is well ?

Any help/guidance would be kindly appreciated.

 

the sunroof is a known problem, do a search on it and you'll find many threads on it. the headlight problem might be a the voltage regulator on the alternator or just old wires. no idea on the radio though. for the stalling are you moving in traffic? it's very weird that an NA engine would just cut out like that. i'd do a seafoam treatment and a very good TB cleaning too.

 

How difficult is it to replace the wires and/or the voltage regulator?

The car is always sitting in traffic, not moving, when it stalls out.

Seafoam treatment ? I'm not familiar - could you elaborate?

 

Run a search on this too, it is very very extensively covered. If you can find the thread started by me on the subject, I have the 2.8 motor as well so that thread will probably be more useful to you than any of the others you find.

As for your other problems though, I've never had anything like that happen, nor heard of any such electrical so I'm not much help there, but if I were to guess, I'd have to agree with hiwords that you've probably got bad or well worn wires, possibly even wires that may be bare and are shorting somewhere. Your best bet would probably be to take it to a stealership (sad to say I know, but they've got the right diagnostic tools and experience dealing with this stuff) and have them plug in one of their tools called a pin tester or something like that which basically runs a current through all of the 300 some odd wires in the wire harness and all through the rest of the car and measures the resistance of each to track which wires are bad.

 

seems to be affecting every system in the car, so....

perhaps something simple - like the integrity of the ground connection from the battery? That's the first thing I would check.

- tcwild