Mark P

My neighbor called to tell me his '99 A6 2.8 Tip wouldn't start the other day. He bought a new battery and it still wouldn't start. Somewhere in there he got a jumpstart and all was well.

I went over to check it out last night and found the terminals were not on tight and were all corroded. I cleaned them up, tightened them down, and now there was power in the car. I tried starting, but it just did keep an idle and stalled. I figured maybe it was flooded and waited a while. Tried again, and same thing. I ended up giving some gas while starting, and managed to get it to run maintaining a 2k+ rev. I quickly shifted to D and drove around the street, managed to shift to R and get it back in the driveway, but then I think it stalled out on me (or I shut it down, I forget).

I pulled the codes and got the following one as well as some other malfunction. I cleared them and this one continues to come back:

17967 - Throttle Body (J338): Fault in basic settings

I searched on here and found that this may be the Throttle Body. It seems it's not a common failure. However, I also found someone gets this code with one ECU, but doesn't get it with another ECU. So now I wonder if it's actually the Throttle Body that is the issue or if it's the ECU.

Also, I found on here that some A6 2.8's had a recall on the TB due to cold conditions (it did frost the other night here). I had the owner call Audi today and based on his VIN, they state the recall does not apply to him. Here's teh recall:
<a href="http://auto-recalls.justia.com/content/04V495000-AUDI-A6-1999.html" target="_blank">http://auto-recalls.justia.com/content/04V495000-AUDI-A6-1999.html</a>

I doubt he had this issue before the battery problems as I'm sure I would have heard about it. That makes me wonder if the problem didn't start while the car was jumpstarted or battery replacing, etc. If that's the case, now I wonder if it's the ECU and not the Throttle Body.

Any advice on ways to approach this? I don't know of anyone with a comparable ECU that I could swap in for this car, or else I would try that first.

Here's the A6 in question, when I was doing it's Timing Belt last year:
<img src="http://ctny.audiworld.com/mark/s4/other/friends_cars/dsc04512.jpg">


Thanks!

ModifiedA4

did you clear codes and try a TBA?

Cypher2k

You can take em apart and clean the position contacts. but my stepper motor seized up on mine.

GPZ

Throttle body adjustment procedure per Bently manual, then check to see if it cleared.

Vier Glühende Ringe

let it run and it will say adaption okay or not okay. If it is okay start up the car and it should run better than it did after you get any excess fuel out of the combustion chamber. If it says not okay then you need to replace the throttle body. What state are you in. The recall was based on the state you live in. Give me the VIN# and I can find out some information for you. Sometimes when a battery goes dead the ECM loses the throttle body adaption memory and you have to reset it. The other ECM may work because it has a throttle body adaption stored that it is not loosing. If the car was ever jumped with the terminals reversed you could have fried the throttle body control module. Sometimes they even fry when you jump it correctly, due to the spike in voltage.

Mark P

him to bring it in to see what the issue really is. He did that before consulting back with me, so we'll see how it goes today...

We're in CT, which is one of the affected states.

I guess his car must have been built after the cutoff for that recall.

I wished I had tried a TBA via VAGCOM, but I didn't. The code would not clear with the key just in ACC position, so I wasn't thinking that a TBA would be the issue - I was assuming more of a permanent failure.

Mark P

the code wouldn't clear - hadn't tried a TBA

ModifiedA4

as a last ditch, i'd clean the hell out of it, reset codes and try a TBA.