Anybody a Grease Monkey?

rulian

Okay, after much internet searching and countless dead forums /email writeups over the last month I figured i'd give my good old PHP friends a try cause I think PHP easy translates into the works of auto mechanics.

My 96 Audi A4 quattrro has 2 problems I nor my greasemonkey friends can narrow down.

1st) I switched out my car stereo because I though it was dying, however the new stereo is suffering from the same problem. The radio/mp3 player will work fine for about 20 minutes, then over a period of 3 minutes slowly fade and fade until you can hear anything no matter what the volume.

However if you turn the car off sometimes after a few minutes it comes back, other times it must take rest longer. Which made me think my radio was going. However when I swichted the new radio did the same only it did something else. I also notices last week at a red light when it started to fade that if I accelerated the radio would come back. Which made me think my alternator or battery are going. However just now it faded no matter what I did. Which stumped me. So I dont know where to go next with this.

2nd) The bigger problem is that my car keeps shutting off for causes unknown at very inconvient times like during a right/left hand turn where I NEED powersteering.
I though it was my spark plugs or gas filter so I got a complete tuneup, filter service, injector service, engine flush and air filters, I also cleaned out my intake manifold which was clean to begin with. The tuneup seemed to have done the trick for a while, and it certainly slowed down the occurences ALOT however it
still happens. It's almost like a unregullated idle setting but its not consisent, sometimes its fine then it starts struggling and when I slow down at stop signs or
to make turns the car stalls.

I know my shots are long but I like to think like all things we do well it his just analytical problem solving.

Thanks in advance

Weedpacket

Obviously one likely possibility is that the two problems are related - causally or having a common cause.

rulian wrote:
Which made me think my alternator or battery are going.

If those were at fault then other electrics would also be going strange - including the sparkplugs. The stereo itself is ruled out by the swap, so current is leaking out somewhere in between; a loose or cracked wire somewhere on the circuit might do it and wouldn't necessarily be visible: do you use all the doodads like phone wiring and CD changer, or are they just stubbed off?

The other problem makes me think of two things offhand. First, the engine management: is it plugged in? 😉. The other is something that happened to my car a few years back. I'd be tooling down the motorway quite comfortably when all of a sudden the transmission would drop right down into first gear and the motor would try and leap out of the engine bay. Opened up the transmission and saw something odd; called the car manufacturer to confirm that no, it was not kosher. Turns out that at some time in its murky past the transmission had been worked on and one of the gears replaced. The manufacturer specifies that it be made of brass, but this one was nylon. Over time it had worn down and eventually started slipping. So if you're not the first owner there might be something that's been hacked on that you're not aware of. The other thing is that you might want to call Audi and at least get their opinion on a good auto electrician to take the car to.

Caveat: I'm not a greasemonkey, I'm pretending to be my brother. If I see him in the next day or so I'll run this by him.

NogDog

My gut instinct is a bad wire/connection somewhere in the electrical system, but with modern autos things are so complicated now - especially the electronics - that I'm sure I'd be lost trying to diagnose it myself. I'd get it into the nearest Audi dealership or anyone with the proper equipment to hook up to its diagnostics port. (I'm assuming '96 Audis have such a thing?) The last time I did anything more complicated than changing filters or plugs was on my '82 Subaru, and that car was so simple that you could see pavement all around the engine when you opened the hood, even though the spare tire was stored in the engine compartment, too. Now when I look under any new car's hood, it's full of stuff I don't recognize and I'm lucky if I can find the oil dipstick. :rolleyes:

rulian

Well now that you mention it that they could all be symptoms of a single source, a longstanding problem with my car has been my compressor for air conditioning cooling isnt turning on. We ran a wire directly from the output to the compressor and it did work providing cool air so we know the compressor works, we just figured it blew a line between the output to and the compressor but were to lazy to disassble the engine compartment to get underneath where it all runs.

I am not the original owner and I know the car has had some mod's i've seen some acura symbols on peripherals attached. The car is a stick so my gears and trans box are working optimally never had a problem with those.

I think you guys are right in that I think there is definately an electrical problem. I also though there may be crap IN my gas tank because I forgot to mention another BAD symptom was the stalls would happen much more severely after a fill up. A mechanic did tell me to get into the habit of turning off my engine while my gas is pumping something I rarely did before.
Which is what led me to believe I was in desperate need for a tuneup.

I'll do a ECU scan in the chance my EM light isnt working either, autozone does it for free so if I do get error codes I can have a better sense of things.

If yall have any other ideas feel free to shoot them thanks yall.

trained_monkey

Anybody a Grease Monkey?

no, but i'm a trained monkey 😃

HalfaBee

Sounds like the main fuse might be corroded or the fusable link.
It might also be the main earth cable.

When it fails feel around for a hot wire/fuse.

One easy check for bad joints is to turn every electrical device ON and measure voltage drops from the battery to the ends of cables.
Big voltage drops indicate problems.

rulian

Halfabee: I think you are right, yesterday the amount of play time I got was in proportion to how long the car was on to the amount it was off.
I turned it on after overnight and it lasted about 10 minutes
then I parked and did some shopping at guitar center for about 30 minutes
came back it was came on for about 2 minutes
then I stopped again for about 10 minutes
and it came back on for a less then a minute

So it seems like something is definately overheating, I'll check my grounds again, I did check the fusebox and the swtiched the radio fuse again.

cretaceous

try replacing the earth wire connecting the battery to the car chassis - well known as a key corrosion place - its usually only a short 12inch wire

or as a first test remove both battery wires - clean the connectors and battery terminals with emery paper then apply some petroleum grease to battery terminals and bolt everything back together

then again maybe the session isnt authenticating

rulian

haha, yeah it's a missing ;
thanks i'll give grounding a try

goldbug

obligatory punt to another site: have you asked the monkeys @ vwvortex forums yet?

Have you checked it with a vag-com or other scanner yet? Lots of times the electrical problems are called out specifically in a scan.

fwiw, I'm with cretaceous on the open ground possibility.