Recently, every few days, randomly while driving the instrument cluster on this 98 Audi A4 V6 30V suddenly rings its bell/alarm for about 1-3 seconds. Not sure if anything is on display (my wife says no but I'm not convinced), but display is also heavily pixelated so it might be hard to recognize an icon in so little time. No fault codes recorded in Engine or Instrument Cluster. All dials normal. Engine is running normal.

What the hell could it be? What indicators control sounding of the alarm?

 

Sometimes the door switch gets stuck and makes your car think your door is open when it's not. Next time that happens, open the door and and close it again to see if that makes it go away. If it doesnt, use your finger to sort of man handle the switch and see what happens. Thats what has been my personal experience.

 

Could also be the seatbelt unbuckled warning...connector under either front seat could be loose. You might want to check, and can zip-tie if that is the culpret.

 

...also check to see if your brake fluid, oil, and coolant are topped up. Could be that one of those is low, and it is not showing on the bad info center display. One other item which does pop up (from another recent thread) is the ABS module / brake warning. Hopefully it is not that one.