CRS8

Hi there,

I have been reading along and finding a lot of answers to questions I have had over the times about my Audi S8 from 1999. You have all been of great help to me so far. I will definitely introduce myself and my car further soon.
However, I have an urgent issue. I think I might be on the right track to fix it, but I'm not sure, and would like to have your opinion.

I have a (very) small leak of coolant somewhere under my car, so a couple of days back I decided to have a look and find out where it was coming from. I jacked up my car on the left front side to a respectable height and after I removed the bottom plate, I started my car up to see if I could detect any leaks. After having it running for a minute or so, I turned it off again and went on searching for the leak (which I couldn't really find, yet that's not the problem I'm getting to...).

After I put the bottom plate back in place, I lowered the car again and wanted to drive off, yet it doesn't want to start any more. When turning on the ignition, the dashboard lights which normally turn off after a couple of seconds all stay on (except the key detection light, indicating that it does recognize my key and I think it is not a faulty immobilizer). Also, the center display shows all gears (PRND432) in red. I have never seen that before. When I get back to my car again, I will make a picture. The starter engine works, but it doesn't catch on. I tried taking the battery off for 10 minutes to try to reset things, but that didn't work. I am not a hero when it comes down to car electronics, so this is a grey zone for me to discover what might be wrong. I also don't have vagcom / rosstech available, but might know someone who does and might be able to come by soon to check any errors.

I read about the crankshaft positioning sensor that can go bad after the car has been started when jacked up on one side. Is that true?
Is there anything else that I can check that might cause this?

It's quite annoying, since it's my daily driver. The car ran beautifully before this, without any errors as far as I know. It had a major inspection just a couple of months ago. It has about 245.000 kms on the clock.

Hopefully anyone here can help me find the answer to make my car run again!

jfrahm

I have not heard of jacking up the car affecting the crank sensor. If your crank sensor and ECU are working you should see your tach needle move when cranking.
Do you have an OBDII scanner that can read codes? I think just connecting to read codes might tell you something about the ECU. Hard to live without at least a simple code reader.

Naturally you could check relevant fuses and for water in the cowl area and so on. If it's been rainy and the car kept outside it might have a cowl full of rainwater.

CRS8

Thanks! I keep a close eye on the cowl filling up with water. When I first bought the car 5 years ago, it was completely full with water after one rainy night. I drained everything immediately and keep an eye on those drains closely. It's been dry ever since :-)

I checked every relevant fuse, but can't detect any failures.

I'll try to get an OBDII scanner or vagcom asap. But I don't know how fast I might be able to do so.

Razman

My car has been doing this occasionally for about two years now. Before I could just jump in and start the car - now I have to turn the ignition to 'on', and wait anywhere from 10-30 seconds for the car to 'boot up'. Then I can start it. Occasionally it will show all the transmission gears highlighted in all red as you described; I turn off the car, then turn it back on, and it's fine.

However, my car won't start now but I think it's a different issue. Going to try Vag Com and see if it finds anything. :-(

Raz