[V8] re: I'm In!...."

[Roger M. Woodbury]

Your car is bahaving correctly.  Oil temp will not go up much according to 
the gauge, and coolant temp will be somewhere on the gauge also.  Oil 
pressure MUST read five bar at normal engine operation speeds, (ALL of 
them), unless the engine is warm and sitting at idle.  Then it will read 2-3 
bar.

I STRONGLY recommend that you order a V8 owners manual from Audi.  The 
instruments in the car are vague at best and the manual will give some 
information that you will want to at least read once having come from the 
car's "Mother" Elf in the Black Forest, or whereever they screwed yours 
together.  It will be pricey:  at least $35 or so, but well worth having in 
the glove box.

Your instrument cluster lights are behaving the same way they did on my '90 
V8.  My car was Tornado Red (NOT my favorite color) with black leather, 
which IS my favorite interior color.  Anyway, just after getting the car I 
was on its first trip from Maine to Florida at night, and suddenly the dash 
lights went out.  MAN!  Was it ever suddenly DARK inside that car.  And no 
dash lights are really not acceptable because driving one of these things on 
the Interstate when there are no other cars around and no idea how fast you 
are going, you will soon be going VERY fast and have lots of pretty blue 
lights in your rear view mirror.

I ended up smacking the top of the dashboard with the flat of my 
hand.....AND, suddenly there were lights.  I lived like that for a few 
months especially after finding out that Audi's "fix" was a new instrument 
cluster main board.... NINE HUNDRED DOLLARS WITH EXCHANGE!

Finally after a lot of poking around, and talking to a lot of people...this 
was before this list was around...I discovered a recycler in Colorado who 
had a couple of V8's that they were parting out.

The problem is that the dimmer switch is soldered to the big board that 
contains a whole lot of stuff and operates the instruments.  The solder 
stripe for the dimmer switch is VERY small, and as it gets older, it breaks. 
Mine had been resoldered several times before I bought the car, and I had 
the Audi dealer tech resolder it too...but it didn't last well.

The REAL fix was a new rheostat, which Audi DID NOT sell as a part, but only 
as an entire panel, thus the $900 price.

The auto recycler sold me a switch by itself ($15.00, as I recall, and about 
five bucks to express it here.).  I took it to my friendly Audi dealer, and 
the tech soldered it into place ($35.00 if I recall correctly), and voila! 
Dash lights that never failed again for as long as I owned the car.

Since you have some light function, I suspect that you have a rheostat 
issue, and would advise pulling off the dash cover and looking around 
carefully, at all the pretty things that are underneath...it doesn't sound 
like a real big deal, although the Official "Audi" fix will drive you to 
drink and religion at the same time.  Be patient:  there is a simple fix.

Roger

No longer V8 owning, but a veteran of two....and if I find that illusive '94 
with perfect service history and about 47,000 miles, I will get a second 
mortgage in the blinking of an eye!