Sci-fi_Wasabi

Tell me about it. What a lesson, I had owned the car for less than 24 hrs at the time. My last car was an 92 acura legend, so simple, when it's battery is low, it lets me know by just dying completely.

mishar

It is easy to be smart afterwords, but this is not about being smart. I am trying to figure out what went wrong with this tread so nobody was able to help you with something so basic as a dead battery. I think that you missed to say that many things are not working. You just mentioned it in your second post but everybody missed it (including me). If we knew that it would be obvious.

And about dealers. They are there to sell us their fancy cars in fancy showrooms and fix things under warranty. Everything beyond that is a war. Some of them have discounted online prices for spare parts (thank you guys)and I believe they are making some money as these cars are getting older and cheaper to buy. Beyond that we are on our own. Good mechanic or/and DIY.

Sci-fi_Wasabi

Thanks Mishar. Wow , you guys are great, I look forward to contributing to the forum in the future. Yes, it was not until after my 1st post and on the 20 min drive to the 1st stealership that i noticed some other funny things... parking guidance lines were off, left side steering controls were not working, and parking brake would not disengage on the 1st try. Who knows what else was malfunctioning, that was just what i noticed in a short drive... Man, i just figured the dealership wold know whats up... The "war" analogy really hits home. I'm still learning to use this car... the manual will make some good bed time reading. Anyway, as with any used car I'm discovering little things here an there that need some work. I can handle some mechanical things, but electronics was something I never had to deal with in the past.
Thanks

MikeNSX

I've used Autohaus Lancaster for my Porsche and Audi service for the past 15 years. Most of service is out of warranty. I'm very pleased with them.

$650 for a new battery? I just had them install the factory battery. Total bill was $295.

YMMV

andys809

Hi Sci-fi_Wasabi;24397332

Thanks for the information. I have a 2009 S8 in the UK. Last night i moved the car (not been out in it for 3 weeks). The instrument clusted did not light up, however everything else worked on the car. While the car was running and when moving the needles where flat on the bottom of both the speedo, the rev counter, the oil temp and the fuel. Nothing lit up either, though the auto lights and auto wipers did. The car drove fine just with no indication of revs, speed, fuel etc.

Tried accessing instrument display through mmi and it said 'please start ignition to access controls' - problem is the car was running at this point.

I, like you checked fuses and all apeared fine. i noticed when locking the car the dash blinked, so as i feared the battery would drain down i tried disconnecting the battery, this triggered the alarm so i had to reconnect it to lock the vehicle over night.

6am this morning, battery dead and wouldn't start. Revovery came out, jumpstarted and loaded it on flatbed.....

needed a jump to get it off at the dealer and is in with them now... estimates are around needing a new cluter instrument at approx £600 - £1,000 plus the £120 diagnostic.

Any advice would be appreciate and will update this post once Audi come back to me, hopefully with an explanation.

ltooz_a6_a8_q7

Just buy a cheap battery charger, charge the battery until it's fully charge = 13-14V across the terminals. Buy a cheap DVM. Did you read the posts and the answer was just the battery? Always starts with the most simple thing before thinking about the worst scenario.

<a href="http://www.ebay.com/itm/Digital-LCD-Multimeter-Voltmeter-Ohm-Volt-Tester-830-XL/280666763297?_trksid=p2045573.m2102&_trkparms=aid% 3D555003%26algo%3DPW.CAT%26ao%3D2%26asc%3D146%26me id%3D7238870189063053184%26pid%3D100034%26prg%3D10 79%26rk%3D1%26sd%3D230860368955%26">DVM</a><br/>

Select DC voltage meter selection - NOT ACV - NOT Ohm -

<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Schumacher-SC-600A-SpeedCharge-Frequency-Battery/dp/B000H94F6E/ref=pd_sim_auto_5">Battery Charger</a><br/>

<a href="http://www.dognmonkey.com/audi/things-we-shouldmust-know-about-our-audis-in-case-of-emergency.html"> how to charge A8 battery</a>

The Audi A8 uses lots of power for all their electrical stuff and when the battery is cold, it's even worse. If you can't afford these tools or do some simple things with the car, sell the car.

If the car is on the street, remove the battery, take it home, charge it fully then take it back to install them. Don't install any battery unless the voltage across the terminal is higher than 12.5V.

When my battery went down to 12.25V, the keyless start button doesn't start. The key would. It did start when the battery is 13V.

Cheers,

Louis

MP4.2+6.0

Simple battery stuff as first thing to look at. Over and over on these gremlins in the board posts, the battery seems to end up being the issue 80-90% of the time. It is often masked by the power management module that is killing non critical functions when it needs to so you can still start the car (with a key if it gets way low) to get home or to a shop.

Sci-fi_Wasabi

Andys809,
Yes, I think you can squarely say the primary culprit is battery charge (umm, don't sell the car, just a bit of a learning curve to understand it's quirks, I'm going through it too, the fear will be replaced with familiarity). Unfortunately the stealerships seems so focused on the error code print out, which can be complex, they can't seem to see the bigger picture. i really think you need to tell the dealership what to do in this case. They don't seem to take the time to appropriately charge the battery with a nice slow charge to get it to the right voltage. A jump start does not help the charge status. Your battery is probably not bad either (the dealer WILL try to sell you one) as the car was siting for 3 weeks and that will strain any battery.
Well, if you still have the opportunity, I would have them just fully/slow charge the battery before the expense of diagnostic charges and drive it a bit (you need to give these systems time to reset). Maybe they will have to input component protection codes to the cluster (that is one of the errors mine gave) at worse. After this fiasco, may car has sat around for a few days, no problems with the battery again.
Let us know how things go... guess it's already Monday afternoon there, so they may have already started tinkering with the S8.

andys809

Firstly Sci-fi-wasabi, mp4.2+6.0 and itooz a6 a8 q7.... really appreciate the advice and thank you for sending a reply through.

Having seen your comments I have phoned the Audi dealership where the S8 is and informed them that it could be the charge on the battery. Fortunately the dealship it's at have been pretty good with me in the past and will put in on charge for me to come and see it tomorrow.

They have not diagnosed it yet and they say they don't see a lot of these come in so its useful to get a heads up on the issues (quite good for a main dealer to be this honest).

Anyway will report back and let you know if this reolves the matter... would be good as the car is perfect and has not had any other issues.

Again thanks for your responses and hope everything is good with your cars...

andys809

Right.... Audi Stealership just called... No communication with Dash... They are finding out the part number to quote me for ordering a new dash insert, as well as a new battery as they're saying it wont hold a charge. I requested they try a new battery or a test battery in the vehicle to see if that works and they say its a specific part as they don't carry a lot of S8 parts in UK...

Everyones response to this issue on here has pointed to battery and i have informed them of this but they seem to be ignoring this and following the dash insert route...

Any advice guys?