I jumped in the old Audi tonight at the grocery store, and turned the key as usual. Only heard a faint "pop" that sounded like a circuit breaker, and the entire electrical system is dead, no warning lights, no starter, no nothing. Just to be sure, I had the car jumped. As soon as we connected batteries, the alarm horn began going off, but I tried the starter anyway - nothing. Lights or emergency flashers do not work at all. Dome light comes on faintly when you open the door, but soon fades out. When you try to crank it, the clock goes dim, but recovers when you stop trying to crank. Battery is relatively new, and shows 11.8 volts at the jumping post. I do not see any burned fuses or relays in the fuse box.What am I missing? Is there a master circuit breaker or fusible link somewhere that I need to check?Could it be the ignition switch? The car has the original starter and ignition switch.Thanks for any suggestions as to where to start troubleshooting this problem.

Checking the ignition switch is a good idea. When you are doing that remove the electrical part of the switch (about a foot back of the instrument cluster) and try to turn it with a flat screwdriver. This is to check if the crappy pot metal tab inside the ignition that fits into the electrical switch has broken (the all do sooner or later).Other ideas Remove the positive battery terminal and check if it is shorted to ground. If it is start following wires to find out where the short is (not a fun job).I seem to remember that there is a controller (probably in the relay panel under the drivers dash) that shuts down all unneeded circuits when the starter is engaged. This is to provide max power to the starter.Another thing to check is in the passenger side kick panel. The positive lead from the battery in the back has a splice in there where the main power splits for the fuse box and relays and for the starter. This splice corrodes over time and can cause all sorts of problems. A quick...

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

May 24, 2007 43 Replies

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Stephen Clark 19 years ago

Is this better? I don't see how you could take my reply personally. I simply explained why I prefer top posting. I am not the least bit contemptuous of you at all... you completely misinterpreted! In fact I thanked you for helping me understand why some people are complaining. You see top posting all the time in this group. I don't want to get embroiled in another posting style controversy, because this one has no answer. People do it both ways in this and other groups.

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dave AKA vwdoc1 19 years ago

Can all this be easily solved by eliminating all of the old message then there is no top nor bottom posting. But then no one will know what I am talking about?

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Stephen Clark 19 years ago

Apparently that will work if you don't change the subject line!

But, then when the conversation morphs into something other that the original subject like this one did, no one would know what you are talking about based on what's in the subject line.....that's the reason I deleted all the old text and changed the subject line to reflect more accurately what I was talking about, and that's what got some people's noses out of joint.

You can't please all of the people all of the time.....

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dave AKA vwdoc1 19 years ago

Ahhh now I see clearly! 8^) thanks

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