Type 44-pulsing headlights, strange idiot light behavior, low voltage

[Keith Lawyer]

First off I apologize 'cause I'm certain much if not all of this has
been covered before.  A cursory archive search revealed little so I'm
gonna ask here anyway.

I suspect many if not all of these problems are related:

1)at night the headlights "pulsate," both low and high beams.  They
don't seem to do it at idle, and are most fond of pulsing above 2k rpm.
Dash lights pulse at the same rate.  It does not always happen, seems to
oftentimes be set off by an obnoxious seat heater relay which loves to
click, but THEN continues even after the seat heater is off and relay
has stopped clicking.  Sometimes starts irrespective of seat heaters.

2) at idle the BATT and BRAKE idiot lights bleed together ever so
dimly.  I've seen this on several Audis I've owned - WHAT causes this??
If it's truly low voltage, why wouldn't the BATT light just come full on
by itself?

Also these two lights begin to flash together *dimly* at night above
4k, and only above 4k.  What gives?

3) I do think the alt is suspect, at night w/headlites on and cooling
fan running I only record 12.3V, both at the batt under the seat and at
the "jumper" terminal in the front of the engine bay.

4)and I'm sure this has been beat to death: do I really need the
plastic cooling "scoop" Audi attached to the back of these alts?   Or is
this just more German over-engineering?  I recently discovered my 200
has been missing the hose which goes from the grille to the scoop for
who-knows-how-long after seeing the hose on my '87 5k parts car; but I'd
prefer to leave the plastic off the back of the alt entirely.....?

Please email me off-list if you wish.  TIA for any help!

Keith L
7 various Audis sitting around the property LOL