89 Audi 100 - No Start, Battery OK, What next?

Yep, I agree, Dave, the radiator fan is a high-current draw, and if it runs for too long, it'll bring down the battery for sure. I have to go see the mechanic tomorrow for other reasons, and I'll have him check out the components. You may win the prize yet!

stc

Yep, I agree, Dave, the radiator fan is a high-current draw, and if it runs for too long, it'll bring down the battery for sure. I have to go see the mechanic tomorrow for other reasons, and I'll have him check out the components. You may win the prize yet!

stc

He looked a the car today, says that after-run switch on the back of the head could be the culprit, but recommends not changing it unless the incident happens again. After-run circuit can be disabled by pulling a wire on this switch.

His contention is that the after-run switch is programmed to run the radiator fans for 15 minutes max. I wasn't in the grocery store that long, so even if it had run full speed for 8-10 minutes, that should not have brought the battery down.

What do you guys think?

Depends on the battery condition, fully charged before the incident and a good battery, charging system, etc.

If the battery was in good condition with a full charge............then the vehicle should probably have started after 15 minutes. That is a powerful fan though! ;-)

Has this happened since?

The after run should run at fan speed one which is much less draw than speeds two or three. Still if it is acting up there may be other issues with it.

It seems like a good evaluati> Depends on the battery condition, fully charged before the incident and a

Hasn't happened since, but see update below...

Started the car to check the trans fluid level, and heard some "popping" noises from the accordion boot in the drivers door jamb. Listened carefully as I moved the door back and forth, with engine both on and off. When the engine is off, the popping noises stop, leading me to believe that there is a short, or broken wires, inside the boot.

Everything electrical that is controlled from the driver's door operates properly: all four windows, seat adjustment memory, etc. I pulled back the boot, and didn't see any evidence of shorting, or broken insulation on the wires. However there are a lot of wires in there, and I couldn't see all of them. I have had a couple of times lately a problem with the driver's window not wanting to go down, but that is working ok at the moment.

Those of you that have experienced this problem - do these symptoms sound familiar?

possibility look at the insulation very carefully. I have seen & repaired a lot of breaking/broken wiring at the doors.

I still don't think that would have discharged the battery in 15 minutes though!

Took another listen and decided what I was hearing was just the door trim squeaking. The reason it stopped with the engine off was simply engine vibrations in the door. With the engine off, but key on, there is no noise. And, those circuits are live with the key on, and engine off - so I should be hearing any arcing. Plus, there is no smell, and no discoloration.

So I'm going to stop trying to invent explanations, and simply wait for a hard failure like my mechanic suggested.

Have a nice weekend, Dave!

When you come back again....please consider *not* proliferating so many different threads about your problem. Not only is it obnoxious, but in the (somewhat unlikely?) event that you actually figure out what was wrong, it'd be helpful for the answer to be in the same thread as the original question, the debugging advise, incremental evidence, etc, etc, etc....

/daytripper '00 s4 6spd

I agree with daytripper; this problem morphed into so many different threads and consumed way too much bandwidth. This is a NG not a chat room.

P.S. I'm the original Tony (over 10 years with this NG) not the Audi super Guru.

Everything is in the same thread in my newsreader, Outlook Express, is it different in others?

I wasn't aware I was creating a problem, please excuse me.

stc

I have seen many longer threads in this NG that fritter on forever about nothing....isn't this NG for helping people solve problems and have others benefit from the ensuing information? If I am misusing it, then I apologize, but I thought that is what a newsgroup of this type is for.

stc

Listen up, son. The group exists for folks to share information. But there's a right way to do everything in life. Acting like a petulant child won't make up for the fact that you've been abusing the group by thread proliferation, and claiming a defense based on the idiotic behavior of others is unlikely to prove successful.

It's a simple request that benefits the group.

Cheers

/daytripper '00 s4 6spd

I think you are misunderstanding the situation, tripper. First of all, I am not your son.

Secondly, I was not aware that other newsreaders may be proliferating threads, as I have explained.

Thirdly, I apologized for it, even though I wasn't aware I was doing it. The idiotic behavior of others is not under my control.

And, lastly, I am not acting like a petulant child. Just tell me what I need to do to correct the misunderstanding about threading, and I will gladly adapt. I don't mean to offend anyone in this group intentionally, so please stop implying that I did something on purpose.

Perhaps you are having a bad day today?

In message , Stephen Clark writes

All the posts are in a single thread in my newsreader as well, because it uses the Message IDs for threading purposes. You should be aware, however, that other newsreader software uses only the subject line for threading, and your frequent changes of subject in this thread will have caused major problems for users of such software.

Once a thread has been started, the subject line should remain constant IMHO. The subject is not the correct place to add new comments, which belong in the body alone. Changing the subject frequently is like continually revising the title of a book. I usually overlook titles after the first posting in a thread in order to get to the meat in the body and it is only now that this issue has been raised that I have looked and discovered quite how many times you have changed the subject. I find that one of the most irritating kinds of posts are those where the body merely says, "subject says it all" or is a continuation of a sentence started in the subject line, and those are the posters I consciously avoid reading any further.

Another highly irritating form of behaviour in my view, which seems to be prevalent amongst users of Microsoft Outlook Express, is to add new comments at the top of previous comments thereby losing all the context of the discussion. It is like reading a newspaper article from the end backwards. This arises because Microsoft, in their poverty of good software design, place the cursor at the top of the message whenever a reply posting is being edited and the users often fail even to understand let alone correct their error.

Moi? I've been having an awesome *year* - and today is just another day of it. If it was about me - then why the hell did I go through the trouble of opening my Bentley to provide the *definitive* solution to the guy with the sick 1.8T this afternoon?

Besides, I've totally let pass the ignorant top-posting (thought I confess I usually leave such trivialities to dizzy ;-)

No, it's about you. Simply put, it's about you changing subject lines every time something new - no matter how trivial - is added to your sad story. Just leave the subject line alone and post a follow-up to your own thread. I promise, the very same people will read your post, you won't be effin' up every other reader in the group, and if some other poor bastid ever finds himself unluckily following your footsteps, he might have a fricken' prayer of following all the way to the solution. Assuming you ever stumble upon same.

Seems perfectly reasonable to me...

/daytripper '00 s4 6spd

Now that I understand that all newsreaders are not alike, I apologize again to you and all the members of the group that found my discussion hard to follow. It won't happen again. Thanks to you and the others for pointing it out to me. I won't post again on this subject until I find the answer to the problem.

I do sincerely appreciate everyone's suggestions; unfortunately none of them turned out to be the resolution.

Have a good weekend, trip!

stc

Although I'm not generally a fan of top posting, I also dislike how certain posters here will leave ALL the text in their responses before posting at the bottom. Surely, people, you can cut out all the extraneous, already-responded-to stuff to give us less to scroll through, as Dave did in his post to which I am now replying. Please do it. Less is more. Thank you.