catalina142

good afternoon, new to forum--looking for insight into electrical issue. arrived home from trip at airport and went to start car. my son saw 2 or three sparks come from beneath the rear of the car as it was turning over. it then went completely dead. no lights nothing having had a dead audi before, i knew it may be just a dead battery (8 months old though). the sparks concerned me, so i got a jump, it ran fine and i drove home 65 miles. when i turned off, dead again--battery is not getting power to starter etc, so my question -- what was the spark?? is there a fusible link from battery back there, has anyone seen this before ? need to go on a trip again tomorrow, so no repair shop til thurs earliest

thanks in advance--i am not a mechanic but do know my way around basic car repair and actually rebuilt an engine one and reinstalled and it ran. i am stumped

raj99

I'm going to make a couple of assumptions first:

1 - you don't have a VCDS so there are no codes you can pull to assist with the diagnosis

2 - you have not actually tested the battery in the car

Based upon what you described, the fact that it fires up and drives as per normal after a jump start would lend me to believe the issue is with the battery itself. Even relatively new batteries have been known to fail (i.e bad cell) and therefore, I'd recommend you test the battery to ensure it holds a full charge. If the battery is not charging at all then the issue could be the alternator...however, let's troubleshoot one issue at a time.

As for the 'sparks', I've got no idea what they could be and may be a red herring or something major; related or not.