The story begins in March 2025, the first steps was to check if the car would fire up. Obviously the battery was totally dead and had to be replaced.
First thing first, replace the battery and try to start it. Result: lights came up in the car and upon trying to start the car, smoke started to billow out of the engine bay.
After replacing the alternator, the car started and moved forward and backward with a few red lights on the dash, main one was ABS second was traction control, the long process to clear all the DTC (Diagnostic Trouble Codes) started. As the car had sat for 9 years in all sorts of weather, luckily under a partial roof, it was not too bad, however the level of corrosion, especially in the ECU box located in the plenum at the back of the engine firewall, was major.
The main error was linked to the transmission and brakes system. Mainly caused by water ingress and connectors corrosion, I checked and dried the ECU box, protected it somehow from further water ingress – on a a side note – why would the engineers at Audi design a system that is right where most of the water coming from the windsrceen would end up flooding this plenum is difficult to understand. If so, make sure that the box is providing a very good seal, which is not the case; it merely is splash proof at best.
Other items that were found not working well or at all:
- Alternator shorted
- Windscreen wipers motors dead
- Wing mirrors folding not proper operation (since stopped working all together)
- Transmission (mainly corroded/unused contacts and ABS fault related)
- Rear brakes calipers seized
- Very very Mushy brakes.
First Start
The first start was epic. But I was far from “start up and go”, the next few months would be quite challenging, the first major step was to move the car from the car port as I needed to repair the roof. So I hired a trailer and planned the move back home.
But before moving her [there we go, am hooked already] , I had to work on the brakes, most importantly lack thereof, the pedal was going to the floor and after a few pumps it kind of “prevented” the car from moving, not good enough, so only one thing for it, flush the whole system.
Went to Halfords and got 3 litre of DOT4 brake fluid, bought a basting pipette to extract most of the old fluid out of the tank and proceeded to flush every single corner, starting from the rear left (furthest away from the master cylinder – Engine Running btw!) and so on. There were a lot of air in the lines, which made sense, after a good 1.5 litre of new fluid in the system, brakes were back to good old firm. But ABS/ESP light was still coming on. I needed a Diagnostic tool.
I initially acquired an Autel, but it was quite basic and I was not impressed by it. So I returned the Autel and got a Chinese XTool, which had a bit more featured to it, still, Had I known, I should have gone for a VAG Tool straight away, as it is obviously the best system for these cars. But that [VAG] came much later, when i really needed the thing.