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Electrics, brakes and steering died travelling at 70mph now waiting for replacement.

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Old 03-02-2012, 07:04 AM
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Default Electrics, brakes and steering died travelling at 70mph now waiting for replacement.

Interested to know if anyone here has had the same problem as me. I think my issues are very rare and in fact I may be the only person in the world thats developed the faults my car did, well I hope so.

Travelling at 70mph with three passengers onboard all the lights in the car flashed extreamly bright and then suddenly the car thought it was off, in fact i was travelling at 70mph with no braking or steering towards a junction. Luckily the car decided to restart, but not before taking at least 5 seconds to do so. I was fortunate in the fact that this was at night and no other cars were on the road.

Audi technical were called out, they registered numerous communications faults within the cars systems, basically nothing was talking to each other causing the car to totally shut down (apart from the engine).

After over a month of testing audi have been unable to find the route cause of the problem but have decided the car is dangerous and should be kept off the road. I am awaiting a replacement A6 S-Line to be built in germany and delivered.

I am hoping nobody else here have had any issues like this?
Old 03-02-2012, 07:27 AM
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wow...that is incredibly scary that that happened. good to hear there were no injuries from this though.
Old 03-02-2012, 08:27 AM
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It was very lucky that we got out ok. Everything started up just in time to be able to stop short of the barrier. Must say when the brakes do work they are effective. My family refused to get back into the car after that. The car is being shipped back to Germany I believe.
Old 03-02-2012, 08:53 AM
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That's scary! I'm glad to hear everyone's okay, and that Audi has stepped up and given you a replacement.
Old 03-02-2012, 08:58 AM
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I had a new Cadillac Eldorado do the same thing, the whole car just died. I had to go to neutral and restart manually. You can still brake and steer with the engine off, its just much harder.

Turned out my problem was a bad ground connection somewhere. Glad it turned out well for you and the family and you're getting a new car.
Old 03-02-2012, 09:37 AM
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Originally Posted by PJRed2008
I had a new Cadillac Eldorado do the same thing, the whole car just died. I had to go to neutral and restart manually. You can still brake and steer with the engine off, its just much harder.

Turned out my problem was a bad ground connection somewhere. Glad it turned out well for you and the family and you're getting a new car.


At the time that is what I assumed about the steering and braking when the power is gone, but actually with the all electric steering and the parking assist here in europe the brake pedal would not budge as the car thought it was in park and the steering was totally locked, so I had no use of either at all. Luckily i was going in a straight line.

Audi only stepped up after they worked out they had no way of fixing it as they have no idea why all the faults are showing. There is no way in hell i would let anyone travel in that car again.

I guess my only concern is that this is a problem that goes un-detected until in some cases it may be too late. I can just desribe is as being a bit like your house's power overloading, a massive flash and everything going off.

On a plus side im waiting on a nice new Ibis White, 3.0 TDi S-Line. They have thrown in alot of extras on my new car to say sorry.
Old 03-02-2012, 09:56 AM
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Glad that you and passengers came safe, this is indeed scary, sounds like start/stop button was pushed or some short circuit occured that triggered to stop engine. I was looking at technical manual for A6 at:
http://152.66.93.29/audi/download/audi/A6/
It is amazing how many sensors A6 has, was it rainy/snowy when you had incident? not that rain or snow should cause it but good thing that all came out safe.
Old 03-02-2012, 10:22 AM
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Originally Posted by stoulana
Glad that you and passengers came safe, this is indeed scary, sounds like start/stop button was pushed or some short circuit occured that triggered to stop engine. I was looking at technical manual for A6 at:
http://152.66.93.29/audi/download/audi/A6/
It is amazing how many sensors A6 has, was it rainy/snowy when you had incident? not that rain or snow should cause it but good thing that all came out safe.
Start/stop defo not pushed. All the diagnostics show that the cars systems had communication failure between them, sopmething that seems to have been the case for weeks before hand. Effectively what happened was the same as what happens to your windows PC...it got confused and shut down.

btw, i have tried the start stop button when moving, it defo does not switch the car off when you are in motion, you must be stopped. even in neatral is has no effect if you are moving.

It was about 10 degrees and a clear night when it happened, so no water etc in any of the sensors. in the week leading up to this issue i noticed a ticking sound coming from the instrument cluster when you turned the car on, this ticking lasted up to 5 minutes. Apparently this would of been because of a systems communications error and some of the systems resetting. Anyone else come across a weird ticking sound?
Old 03-02-2012, 12:51 PM
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I wonder if your experiment with the 'stop/start' button had anything to do with the failure. Even after the fact, I wonder if that could have caused the 'brain' a cramp. I think I will let someone else try that out before I do ! Best of luck and very glad nobody was injured.
Old 03-02-2012, 02:23 PM
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chaff: was you car that failed a C7 model?


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