Hey AudiForums,

I have had a 1999 A4 2.8 V6 sitting in my garage for a couple years now. I finally decided to break down and fix what was wrong with it. A few years ago, I let the car sit idle for about 6 months, during that time the battery went dead. I replaced the battery with a new one, and when I went to restart the car, the throttle valve wouldn't re adapt. So now I can't get the car to run or idle by itself. I can get it to run by pushing on the throttle continuously, but when I let it go, it stalls out.

Alright, now down to my question. I recently bought a VAG tool,(Memoscan U600 VAG + CAN OBDII Scanner) because I heard that the throttle control valve may just need to have some fault codes cleared to get it to re adapt. But when I plug in the Memoscan to the car and try to access fault codes, I get the error "Failed to Connect". Does anyone know why I might get this message? I have tried it on my Acura and had success, but with the Audi it won't connect.

Thanks for your responses!

Thomas

 

I've never heard of memoscan, but you can re-align the throttle body by putting the key in the "on" position and leaving it for 10 or 15 minutes, you should be able to hear the little servos movin around in the engine bay aligning the throttle body. try that and see if it helps

 

Thanks for the tip, unfortunately, after 15 minutes it still sputters to a stop. (I did hear what you were talking about, although that may have been the climate control system adapting)

Sorry to confuse people with the memoscan brand. What I am connecting to the car is a VAG 5053 diagnostic tool. Do you know of any reasons why I would get the failure message when connecting the VAG 5053?

Thanks!

Thomas

 

Ahhh gotcha. I actually bought VAG COM, but when I upgraded my lap top to Win7 it stopped working, so i downloaded the free version which turned out to be incompatible with the OBDII cable i have

Are you using the serial port cable or the USB cable? And where'd you get it? I've heard nothing but bad stuff about the eBay cables

 

Its the serial port cable. It actually hooks up to a little hand-held unit with an LCD screen. http://www.diydiagnostics.com/VAG_CANOBDII.htm
To tell you the truth, I think I'm gonna return the darn POS I think i'm just going to have to get the VAG-COM cable and software for $235 or whatever it is.

I noticed you mentioned windows 7...is there an incompatibility issue with it?

 

In case anyone else is tempted to purchase that scanner, there is another post about it here:

https://www.audiforums.com/forum/sho...highlight=u600

 

I can vouch for the vag-com OBDII cables off ebay,i purchased 3 cables,2 from china and a used cable from someone that didn't need it any longer,all 3 worked perfect with my vag-com software,installed on a IMB thinkpad with windows xp and even worked on a windows 7 laptop that i had but gave away.

So don't go bashing those cables,they work without any issues,perhaps the people that have been speaking bad about them,don't know how to configure them within windows and think they are suppost to work out the box.

I did'nt need to buy a expensive ross-tech cable for $250.00,my $9.00 vag-com cable does everything the 250.00 ross-tech cable does,just for a cheaper price.

Save your 250.00 for a more important repair,once you diagnose the problem and get a cheap vag-com cable via ebay,i'll even help you configure the cable within windows and the vag-com program itself. pm once you've purchased the cable and i'll help you. ^_^

 

I couldn't get a cheap ebay cable to work no matter what, I messed with port settings, drivers and I even installed XP to see if it would work on that. Nothing worked, I even tried another cable and same results. I returned it and bought a VAG908 replica and got everything running within minutes because the drivers are just modified legit vagcom drivers.

 

I guess it comes down to the software and not the hardware. depending on what you use,it will work or it won't.

 

Hey guys,

I recently had the same exact problem regarding inabilty to connect with Vag-Com or any other code reader. If you have a bad ABS module, this could be your problem. Try disconnecting the ABS module, then rescan. Sounds weird, but worked for me. -Ian