[V8] Roger's speedo intermittancy

[Ed Kellock]

The only issue I know anything about is the pins between the boards that
make the fuel and temp gauges misbehave. In go posted a fix for that. I
used that to fix my 5spd IC. The 94 has a pegged oil psi gauge and possibly
a slightly misreading fuel gauge. Maybe...
On Jan 20, 2016 3:04 PM, "Roger M. Woodbury" <rmwoodbury at fairpoint.net>
wrote:

> On Christmas eve I drove to Rockland to do a few errands. Rockland is ten
> miles away and I wanted to go to Home Depot and recycle the cans and
> bottles.  When I came out of the grocery store after recycling the
> returnables, the 1994 Audi Avant started, and in drive, jerked a few feet
> and died.  It refused to restart. After sitting in the parking lot for half
> an hour, periodically trying to start the car, I decided that it was most
> likely the car had suffered the more or less anticipated fuel pump
> failure.  (205,00 miles)  Last August the car had failed to start in my
> driveway after returning from a ten mile drive to town.  The diagnosis then
> was "most likely" the fuel pump, but it could still have been a cam
> position sensor.  After the first failure warning shot, I motored on
> thinking that maybe, just MAYBE I'd luck out for a while. Well, on
> Christmas Eve I was done!
>
> I did not then have a cell phone.  Although I do own one, it is of the
> prepaid minutes variety and in August of 2012 I realized that I was out of
> days of use while still having more than 35 minutes of time available.
> Since we have zero cell phone coverage here at home, I just let the service
> lapse and since then had no use nor need for the thing.  Of course there in
> the shopping center in Rockland the only pay phone was outside the grocery
> store.  Inside the store I was told the phone had been shut off by the
> supermarket company since it was never used. Obviously this had
> inconvenienced at least one person other than myself because when I looked
> at the phone, I noted that someone had slammed down the receiver so hard
> that it had broken the thing and the moutpiece was dangling by a thread.
>
> Eventually, I got the nice lady in Staples to make a call for me to the
> wrecker which came and hauled my Audi back to their shop twenty miles
> distant, dropping me off in my driveway.
>
> All of this is a preamble to say that my V8 is now back on the road.  The
> day after Christmas I called my insurance company and put liability
> insurance back on the car. My V8 has most sat in the garage since August
> 2013 because it really wasn't needed, the station wagon being the vehicle
> of choice and the vehicle most capable of doing what was needed.  The V8
> has spent quite a bit of two summers out beneath the large sugar maple in
> the front yard though. There were several months when I needed the whole
> garage to use as a work shop while building my wife's new kitchen and a
> dozen other antique house restoration projects. Nevertheless, the V8 fired
> right up and on Saturday after Christmas I went to town hall to register
> the poor dear.
>
> And it was GREAT to be driving the V8 once again.  That first day was
> bright and sunny and I went off to run a couple of errands to the village
> center, ten miles away.  Lovely, lovely mild day for late December and the
> car was great!  Smooth and quiet as it should be.  Still less than 100,000
> miles, so relatively young as things go.
>
> After loading up in the grocery store, I headed back up Route 3 which is
> the main state route between Belfast and Augusta. Ten miles up that smooth,
> open two lane road is the turn that takes one the three miles to my
> driveway.
>
> I was about three miles from the grocery store. The road in front of me
> was open, although traffic that morning had been slight for a Saturday
> morning anyway.  I decided to let the car have its head for a mile since I
> had clear view that length before me, and I pressed on the accelerator.  It
> seemed a bit stiff at first. At about a quarter throttle, the accelerator
> felt just as though it had met the "kick down" detent....so I pressed
> harder.......and suddenly the throttle was wide open with no return
> pressure on the throttle at all.  I snapped off the ignition and coasted to
> the side of the road, dead as a doornail.
>
> Of course I knew exactly what the problem was. I have a certain list of
> BTDT with my Audis and I even had considered the possibility of this
> happening as I backed the car out of the garage. But I was so excited to
> actually have an excuse to drive the V8 again, that I just dismissed that
> little voice in the back of my head that said, "You really SHOULD do......"
>
> The car had spent part of two summers outside and during those months
> there had been a fair amount of rain.  What can happen in such exposures is
> the throttle cable can get corroded where it is exposed.  I had this happen
> once before and the cure is to remove the airbox and filter, the spray the
> exposed throttle cable, working it free, where it will remain easy working
> I guess forever, although this simple procedure, one that takes abotu ten
> minutes to do, probably should be repeated a couple of times per year.
>
> Naturally, I had to have the V8 picked up.  Of course I was three miles
> from other than some private homes, but a passing Sheriff's deputy stopped
> and called the wrecker for me.  Fixed again, the V8 roared back into
> service.
>
> .....well almost.  Three days into the next week, the discharge warning
> signal flicked on and I knew I was in trouble. Fortunately I got the car
> home and back into the garage that night.  The next morning though it was
> dead as a doornail once again. I recharged the battery and then drove to
> the wrench's shop. They tested the alternator and found it was charging
> down around eleven amps or so.  Up in the air it was clear that the
> alternator connections were badly corroded, so......Let's just say I've
> done a bunch of biz with Bosch over Christmas!
>
> Oh, and one question for anyone who has suffered through this story
> (believe me:  living it was MUCH worse!).  I have intermittant speedometer
> syndrome.  My speedometer was rebuilt just after I bought the car and the
> rebuilt speedo has about ten thousand on it since rebuild.  More and more
> though it suffers from intermittant operation and I think this is primarily
> related to temperature:  when the car is very cold, the speedometer will
> often not work for perhaps ten or even fifteen miles before coming to life.
> Sometimes it will come to life earlier then drop off before resuming.  I
> suspect this might well be a ground issue that is temperature sensitive.
> This is the only failure in the instrument cluster, so it is a speedometer
> failure/ground problem alone. When the speedometer stops working so does
> the trip computer, but I suspect the failure is in the speedo.  Any ideas
> or comments?
>
> Roger
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