Driving down a highway and my gas pedal just stopped responding :((((((

**GuyFawkes** · 08-30-2014 12:55 AM

Hello Audi lovers, audiziners, and gearheads, hope you'll have some insight on this.

I was driving to work I realized that my mpg would slowly drop as I was cruising, so @60mph it would get like 32, 30, 26, 22, 18 mpg and stay around that. So I thought well that's weird. As I'm taking the exit I thought let me go into TiP and stay on 5th gear so that way I try to manage mpg manually. After about 30 sec I heard a faint click and the throttle pedal just did nothing. The engine idling at about 2k and lowering as I was loosing speed I started to pull over. As I was turning the wheel, power steering went, and after I stopped the dash board turned into a Christmas's tree. Turned the engine off gave it a minute and tried to start my baby back up. Of course it doesn't start, the Christmas's show continued on the dashboard and the engine turned but wouldn't start up.

After some research I keep on finding that ppl say that ecu us fried, or that the coil pack harness needs some lovin. Well id love to hear your opinion, and maybe a lil trouble shooting guide on honing in on the issue. Thank you ahead of time for help. And excuse my spelling/grammar mistakes I'm just trying to type this up on my cell.

**Mister** · 08-30-2014 01:17 AM

I think it's a little premature to look at something like the ECU but there are plenty of possibilities. Did you get a check engine light before it cut out? If you can get access to a VAG COM or even a bluetooth adapter for the Torque app try running a scan to see if it threw any codes in it's final moments. I mean assuming you didn't run out of gas, you lost combustion and your engine cut out - hence no power steering and christmas lights. This comes down to air, fuel and spark and some key sensors in between.

First look up how to check if your fuel pump is working, and if you can get access to a fuel pressure gauge grab it and check the pressure when cranking the engine to rule out that as a culprit. Next you have spark which are your coil packs, plugs and some sensors which regulate the timing (Crank position sensor for example). Now usually when this fails you get misfires before hand which throw CEL codes so you can narrow this down by scanning for codes as I mentioned. I wouldn't rule out the sensors but usually the engine will go into limp mode or throw the EPC light and continue to work so I doubt that would be the reason. If you got no codes for misfires it's unlikely to be a spark-related issue but there are ways to check your coil packs which I also recommend searching. Finally is air which could be a bad throttle position sensor or MAF sensor but this would be unlikely based on your description, typically this results in poor idles or stalling engines but since you can't start the car at all I would guestimate a fuel and spark issue mainly.

Also it's possible you threw your timing belt so I would pull the cover off and inspect that too. Hope this helps some.

**vca401** · 08-30-2014 02:22 AM

Same thing happened to me a couple months ago, cruising on the highway when the car started slowing down. I pulled over and the engine shut down and wouldn't restart. Ended up being the fuel pump. Changed that and the car started right up.

Check fuel pump before replacing ecu/coils.

**GuyFawkes** · 08-30-2014 08:18 AM

Wow thank you for quick replies gentleman. So let me try to run down some more info, @mister so as the throttle pedal stopped working the engine would still run even after I parked, all the way u till I turned the key and turned off the car. I believe the first light to go on was the battery light and soon after the rest, which are the check engine and epc I think. So I got a local backyard mechanic to take a look at it and thus is what we did. We loosened the lil cap on the fuel pipe going to the injectors looked like the fuel was pressured and flowing. Ima still see if I can find a fuel pressure Guage somewhere. I'm pretty sure we weren't able to get a spark outta the plugs, he put a screw driver on top of the spark and tried to start. Personally not sure about that test but wasn't about to start arguing with a nice men helping me. And finally a most crucial clue, I believe, is that there's a fuse that keeps blowing. It's the engine management one. So after a quick search online they wait to one disconnect the coil packs, it blew again, and than try to disconnect the ecu, this time it stayed alive.

**GuyFawkes** · 08-30-2014 08:19 AM

@vca401 I'm going to try and get a furl Guage just be sure, thanks mate

**Mister** · 08-30-2014 11:03 AM

You're saying that you lost control of the car but it remained at idle until you turned it off? Are you sure? That seems very unlikely if you lost power steering and if the battery light went off. Let us know what your fuel pressure results are and I still think you need to scan for codes immediately.

Also I can't stress enough that a bad ECU would almost definitely just throw the car into limp mode. You would get a Check Engine and EPC lights come on and the car would have restricted speed and transmission. Some other engine/timing management sensors such as the crank or cam position sensor could completely stall the engine but again you would have seen those lights go off.

I might also add this could be a battery/alternator issue. Try to get a friend/family/neighbour/whoever to give you a jump to see if that helps just to rule it out as a problem. If you're able try to run a voltage test on the battery too.

**old guy** · 08-30-2014 11:18 AM

If you keep blowing an engine management fuse you may have a cracked and exposed wire somewhere in the harness powering the coil packs,

**GuyFawkes** · 08-30-2014 11:26 AM

Yeah the the car idled as i was pulling over to the side of the road at about 2k and went down to normal idle on stop 1k. The power breaks worked and the transmission went from tip to drive. The only thing that went is the throttle and than the power steering. After it just wouldn't turn on, just turn over. The battery is pretty new, and seems to be charged, so it turns engine over whenever. I'll try to run the voltage test tho and get a jump anyway. I'm in Denver and posted on the local to see if anyone has a vagcom. Hopefully ill have an update soon. Thanks for all the great feedback

**Mister** · 08-30-2014 11:49 AM

Yeah this is definitely looking more electrical then anything else but still gotta rule out certain things. Look forward to hearing your results.

**GuyFawkes** · 09-08-2014 09:26 AM

Hello good ppl,
Thanks for all your help last Monday I started with stripping the coil pack harness and yeah guess what all of the wire insulation by the connectors turned into hard plastic and cracked up, probably overtime and because of high heat. So I went down to WalMart got some heavy duty electrical tape and some more fuses and about an hour later was driving to the gas station. All it took was a lil cleaning and isolating. 5 dollar fix. But now I'm starting to feel as I'm playing wack a mole with the Audi yesterday I woke up to find my battery completely drained for no reason, got a boost, on the way to work the check engine light came on, after about 5 hours I tried resting the commuter and the esp came on and after that I couldn't shift out of park. One problem solved 3 popped up. Just like ugh. Honestly considering trading my babe in for a Subaru, and it has only 82,xxx on it like what's going on.

**GuyFawkes** · 09-08-2014 09:28 AM

Resetting the computer***

**walky_talky20** · 09-08-2014 10:28 AM

Gotta pay to play.

You can either have a nice Audi that didn't cost too much to buy, drive said Audi, and deal with the occasional [read: constant] fixing of stuff you didn't even know it had.

Or you can buy a boring Camry, and have your car experience be completely about "the destination" and nothing about "the drive". Subaru is not a bad choice for a middle ground, though. IMHO Lexus IS would be a better choice for retaining the sport/luxury experience whilst adding quality and reliability.

**Mister** · 09-08-2014 11:41 AM

Mr. Fawkes, may I inquire if you scanned for any codes yet? Also how exactly did you reset the computer and why?

**vinny.dtw** · 09-08-2014 11:45 AM

Originally Posted by walky_talky20

Gotta pay to play.

You can either have a nice Audi that didn't cost too much to buy, drive said Audi, and deal with the occasional [read: constant] fixing of stuff you didn't even know it had.

Or you can buy a boring Camry, and have your car experience be completely about "the destination" and nothing about "the drive". Subaru is not a bad choice for a middle ground, though. IMHO Lexus IS would be a better choice for retaining the sport/luxury experience whilst adding quality and reliability.

Subaru is NOT a good middle ground at all

**GuyFawkes** · 09-08-2014 10:56 PM

@walky dont get me wrong I love the hell out of my baby but when it's between her and me loosing my job because i'm calling out every week to replace a sensor, its kinda outta my hands. So i've been looking at imprezas, vw gti, focus/fista st, or an A3, but idk it will probably have the same thing, i hear them electronics are like the audi curse. What do yall think of the line up? maybe i missed something or is it worth just keep on throwing money at my a4 b6.

@Mister I have gotten a scan forgot to get it emailed to my self going to put it up tomorrow. I had like a hundred codes come up, probably because it hasn't been scanned in years. as for the reset i meant that thing you can do with your key where you turn it to the second position twice and start on the third.

@vinny Why do you say that? I mean yeah the leather nice interior, the devilishly sexy body, and probably one of the best if not the best community inst really going to be matched but as a compensation you get better mpg due to the boxer engine, best awd, and slight off-road/rally capabilities.

And here's an update, I read a trick somewhere online, that with a half turn of the key i can move he shifter, move it right between the neutral and drive start it up and let it drop into drive. That worked, i took it into TIP and drove steady 60 and the way home, from time to time the car would downshift to 4th, for like no reason, quite often actually, about 30-40 times in 20 mile drive. later as i was messing with fuses i discovered that a) no matter what i do the "put your foot on the break" light is not lighting up at all, and b) if i take the fuse number 31 out the shifter works again. the fuse num 31 is the "Reversing lights, gear lever gate, el, mirror" idk what that means, but hopefully one of you might'ev heard of it. So doing that let me do driving in d/r/s/TIP without much problems. Sometimes as i would be driving slowly all of the lights (p/r/n/d/s) on the dash would get selected at the same time, so i would just restart the engine and everything would be fine again. Thanks to that, I took the car to a mechanic that I found thanks to Audizine, (once again you ppl prove how awesome you are) he scanned the codes and got like a huge list of stuff, the break light sensor, the solenoid and i think even the pcu gave some sort of errors among a huge list of other stuff. And she has only 82,xxx miles on it. Now he said that this could be due to the drained battery, that was totally drained for some unknown reason the morning that the problem started but either way the plan of attack would look something like replace the break light sensor, if that dont help then the solenoid, and then the pcu and so on. Now that's somewhere between 200-2000 in repairs. So my thought's are instead of possibly investing one forth of the car's value into repairs that might fix or might not fix the issue, that i cry myself to sleep, say goodbye to my beauty, and part ways.

So idk how about newer Audi platforms, maybe the b7/8 has those problems fixed but i havent heard anything like that? I know that just like women, there isn't a car out there that wont give you headaches every now and than, so I'm open to suggestions.

**Mister** · 09-09-2014 09:42 AM

There's no way you have $2000 in repairs. If you can't DIY this then I would take it to a shop that does good diagnostic work.

Simply taking shots in the dark and replacing random parts is a bad way to go. It's highly unlikely you have a mass failure of systems here, this is usually caused by one or maybe two simple issues. This looks like some kind of fuse or relay-related problem, a bad ground or something. Get the codes cleared, check every fuse related to the engine components, try a different battery, run the car, if the CEL pops back up re-scan it. Post every code that comes up on here. IF a part needs to be replaced or swapped out to help diagnose the issue, get them from a junk yard as this will help reduce the cost. I would also grab a replacement coil pack harness since yours is apparently in such poor shape.

I'll give you an example to help understand why. Last year I would turn on my lights at night and suddenly my brake and traction control warning lights would flash. It wouldn't happen every time, and only at the moment I turned my lights on. Some silly people here and elsewhere were quick to assume I needed to replace all my brake sensors and so forth, but using simple logic and common sense one could conclude this had something do to with my HIDs. One day I popped the hood and noticed the positions of the HID ballasts, which were snug to the chassis on each side of the engine block. I moved the ballasts and tied them to a plastic piece in the engine and voila, problem solved. Simple issue, no cost to fix, minimal effort, but caused severe debilitating issues. Get me?

If you're going to attempt to DIY this, get a VAGCOM or if you have a smartphone download Torque Pro and get a OBDII Bluetooth Adapter. You can order that off ebay and scan/clear the codes from your phone. It's extremely convenient and VITAL to fixing it yourself. Otherwise as I mentioned, take it to a specialist who is good at electronic diagnostics. It might cost you a few bills for the labour but it's far better then some clown who wants to replace everything.

**GuyFawkes** · 09-09-2014 11:11 PM

@Mister thanks mate, i think i just had a bit of a panic attack since this was just so one after another.

Either way after some more research i found a couple more posts with the same exact issue. http://www.audizine.com/forum/showth...l-isn-t-pushed and http://www.audizine.com/forum/showth...-stuck-in-park
its the same down to the oil sensor. well i hope they figured it out and will get back to me sooner than later.
i think im going to go with the disconnecting the solenoid instead of driving without fuse #31 as described here for now http://www.audizine.com/forum/showth...ine-starts-but
personal ross tech wire is a priority but i guess im just going to use friends for now.
also going to create a new thread for this issue with the vag com report and hopefully the solution.

**GuyFawkes** · 09-09-2014 11:13 PM

and could you tell me more about what was happening with your HIDs and how you fixed the issue. i got the same thing going on with mine, at this point i was just taking it as normal.

**Mister** · 09-10-2014 09:33 AM

Originally Posted by GuyFawkes

and could you tell me more about what was happening with your HIDs and how you fixed the issue. i got the same thing going on with mine, at this point i was just taking it as normal.

Basically the ballast on the driver's side of the engine was sparking a current through the chassis and disrupted the current to one or more of the brake sensors. I didn't bother to look into which one or exactly how since it was unimportant. Basically if you have HIDs just make sure the ballasts are secured somewhere not connected to the chassis and preferably on plastic.

**GuyFawkes** · 09-10-2014 06:14 PM

ohh ok i'm going to try that, thanks mate. here's a link for this issue with th Vag Com if you would take a look, much appreciated.
http://www.audizine.com/forum/showth...7#post10089017