The last week or two my 97 A4 2.8 QM has been hesitant to start. Something that I have never encountered with this car. The times it is acting up seems to be when I have not driven it for a while (usually when I start it for the first time in a day). It was taking longer to start and today it took me three times to get it to finally turn over. First time starter was cranking but no engine start, second time engine started after a few seconds but RPM dropped to about 100 and then died. Third time started after giving it a little gas and was followed by a rough idle. After letting the tach settle down I tried backing out and had to give it a lot of gas to keep it from quitting on me. My first suspicion was the battery. I had it tested and it was fine. The negative cable was lose however (the guy who tested it said that could be the culprit and to tighten it and clean the positive contacts) and if that doesn't fix it the starter could be going bad. I have yet to tighten the cable etc, but after searching through the forum I have come to the conclusion that if not the battery that I should check the fuel filter and sparkplugs, next. Those seemed logical as it felt like it was a starvation issue as it was having problems accelerating initially. But after I get it going it seems to move fine and start fine for the rest of the day. I was hoping someone could shed some insight of what other causes of this problem could be.

Second problem is I seem to be suffering from the erratic gas gauge problem. The fuel gauge started out registering a little low then it actually was and slowly degraded to the state it is in now. On a full tank it seems to be registering almost a quarter tank lower then normal and when the tank gets close to half full every 10 or so seconds the cluster will beep followed by a gas light and the needle will plummet to below empty and then it will go back to its original position rather rapidly. Did I diagnose this problem correctly as the "erratic gas gauge" involving the sending unit or could it be something else.


Thanks in advance for the help!

 

Similar symptoms happened to me in another car, once. Turned out to be something related to the fuel filter or fuel pump relay, can't quite recall exactly.

That was not an Audi though.

 

Do you remember aprox how much it cost to fix?

 

Hmm. I believe that bill was ~$600, except that I had other things done at the same time including a replacement starter and some wires.

Could be wrong, my records are at home.