baows

Hello Audiworld! I don't know if I'm in the correct forum, and sorry if the picture is too big, but here goes.

I have an Audi A4 B7 2.0TDI 2005, Automatic with approx. 218600km (135800 miles) on the meter.

Last week, all of a sudden 2 lights started showing in my dash. One of these was the traction control system light. The other one was the "preglow plug (?)" light. This second light was also blinking. My brakelights was on all the time, and my cruise-control didn't work.





I had the car into a garage and they changed the brake-light switch (original audi part, although not an audi garage). This seemed to be the problem as my brakelights wasn't on anymore, CC was working and I had no lights in my dash that should'nt be there. I rode the car home, and no less than 5 minutes later two lamps started showing again. This time it was the ABS and traction control lights. I took the car back to the garage, he reset the fault-codes, and I was on my way home again. 10 minutes later the lights came up again.

I went back the day after to complain. They took the car in again, but couldn't find the problem that caused them to light up. He said I should talk to/get the car into an Audi garage. The Audi garage has no time on their hands and their next available spot is in mid-September.

The first time I was in their (the non-audi) garage with my car they found fault-codes such as:

p161c, Glowplug Cylinder 3
p1588, Faulty Throttle Control Unit
p0571, Cruise Control/Brake Switch 'A' Circuit Malfunction

The second time I had these:

00293, Multi-function Switch F125
00526, Brake Light Switch, Circuit Malfunction

I also got a fault-code saying that something in cylinder 5 didn't work the way it should. Weird since I only have 4 cylinders, or am I wrong?

I still get the lights in my dash, but its less than it was to start with. I tried recently to make them appear, and they seem to appear only when the brake is pushed all the way in. They don't go away until I've restarted the engine. I do sometimes get them when I'm driving regularly, but its when I've sped up and for instance stopped at an intersection shortly after.

Everytime I press the brakepedal in I hear a "blowing" sound, kindof like when you blow up a balloon or a football with a pump. And the brakelights doesn't react until I've pushed my brakes further in. The car slows down, but no brakelights. The "brakepedal" symbol on my gearstick doesn't react either (as if it's not pressed in) when I'm in park and cautiously press it in. It reacts when I'm pressing it "hard". I don't know if this is normal, but just throwing it out there.

Over to my second problem:

I have an unknown leakage. I'm not good with cars, I don't know how to do this and that so I don't know how to check where it comes from. I also don't want to ruin anything so I usually keep it to the pros.

Some months ago I started noticing something under where I'd been parked. When I touch it, it feels like oil. I don't think it is oil though (I may be wrong) because I do not have any loss of oil (not alot anyways, just sweat) and it feels thinner than oil. It has this light brown, sometimes darker brown-ish color. I have no idea what it is and where it comes from. I just know that it leaks under the front of my car (kind of right under the hood/radiator) and drips down from the cars front "shield". I feel like it's more now than it used to be, but that could just be my guts.

Pictures from earlier today of the leakage:

The color, and way it looks

Spots on the ground

Under the car, the "shield"

I had the car to a garage to check on this one aswell, but at that lucky day the car didn't want to leak, so they couldn't find anything.

Third "problem":

The way the car shifts is weird. When I'm running the car on fully automatic it spends ALOT of time in 1st gear, up to about 3-4k RPM, then shifts to 2nd and nearly skips the whole gear before going over to 3rd.

If I've used tip-tronic it's shifting weird aswell. Say I drive at a speed of 70km/h (43-ish mp/h) and running the car in 5th gear, switch over to fully automatic the car itself shifts down to 4th and the RPM spikes to 3-3.5K RPM as if it's not ready to shift yet even though the RPM is way higher than it should be.

Anyone have any suggestions to what my problems might be?

Sorry for the long thread!
Thanks in advance,
baows

John535is

I'm thinking your problem 2 & 3 are related.
I would be pulling the covers off under the engine & transmission and checking for a transmission oil leak. That would account for the oil and the poor shifting if the oil is low. You will probably need remove the covers, clean everything including the lines to the oil cooler then drive it a few times before you will find the leak.
Problem 1 - I would have done what your mechanic did and replaced the brake switch. make sure they definitely used a genuine one, I've replaced a few of these and aftermarket ones can be troublesome.

baows

He told me that they got an aftermarket one first, but he thought it looked funny, changed to another aftermarket one which also looked funny so in the end they just got the original one from the Audi-garage in my city.

Do you think even though it is a genuine one it may be defected?

The real question is why the ABS/ESP is lit after the car was in their shop instead of the pre-glow/ESP.