[s-cars] My Ailing 94 S4 Saga Goes On

[Gregory Wolters]

What a day,

So I gather together all the information from the list and start to try to 
figure out what's wrong with my car.  The first thing I do is what Scott Mockery 
suggested... accessing the ECU and checking the fuses and circuit breakers as 
per his site.  I have never accessed my ECU before so off I went pulling trim 
and cutting carpet... it was a hot day today and it seemed to take forever to 
get the carpet pulled back.  Then the plastic cover... just take off 2 screws.  
There is a trick to taking that thing out and I finally did it.

There it was... my ECU!  All the fuses on top were fine and the fuse in the door 
kick panel was fine.  I had pulled the 5 amp one and probably cleared the stored 
codes.  I didn't quite know what to do next and decided to try to start it up.  
After a couple of tries, it started.  It was stumbling, but the check engine 
light wasn't on.  The RPMs went up and down and then stabilized.  It was idling 
perfect with no stumble.

Off I went on a test drive.  I got on the freeway and all was fine.  When I got 
off on the next off ramp it was back to stumbling.  I got on the freeway and 
headed home.  I wanted to get home and pull the codes before it quit.

I hopped out of the car and noticed my just changed pentosin coolant draining 
onto the road and the engine died.  The water hose from the reservoir to the 
radiator was leaking at the radiator.  Then I noticed the plastic radiator 
shroud was damaged... then I noticed that the radiator fan had broken apart!

Now I figure I'll have to pull the bumper, the radiator, put a new fan and 
shroud on, put it together and see what happens.  Then I'll be back to where I 
was this morning.

I guess my question to the group is do 16 year old plastic fans with 180,000 
miles on them come apart?  Or might there have been something related to my 
other problems?  It seems possible the fan could become brittle and come apart 
in that high heat situation.

Oh yea, after I fix that and my starting/running/idling problem I will need to 
work on getting the windows and sunroof to work, fix the sunroof control panel 
that dropped out and I lost the clip (tore my car apart looking for it, I figure 
it's in the body of the car roof somewhere), get the turbo running and get both 
passenger side doors to work from the inside.  I'm sure there's more but I don't 
want to think about it.

Meanwhile my wife's 95.5 S6 keeps hummin' along.  Even without Samco hoses!  
She's at 115,000 miles.

Greg
94 S4
95.5 S6
97 A8