Help! new problem with my 4000CSQ

[Steve Dambrowski <steved@panix.com>]

I again seek the collective wisdom of list members with a problem I am 
having with my Audi....

Car: 1986 4000 CS Quattro
Miles: I think about 90,000

  Tonight when I left work, I went to turn on my car and the battery 
light on the dash came on. 

  Here is what did *NOT* work/come on:

    Oil temp and volt gauges
    temp and gas gauges
    RPM gauge
    Trip computer would only display time
    Turn signals
    
  Things that *DO* work:

    Headlights
    Speedometer
    a/c / radio
    power windows/locks
   

  Hmm.. I think that is about all I noted. Any ideas what it might be? 
Since it is night, I couldn't really take a good look under the hood. But 
I checked the belts, and they look ok. (3 of them, right? - one a/c, one 
v-belt, and one p/s belt) I didn't check any fuses, again because of the 
dark.

Now, after thinking about the above, here are two other "odd" things that 
have happened. I'm not really sure if they are connected to the current 
problem or not, which is why I didn't include it at first. Anyway, here 
they are. First, I've had a ticking sound coming from somewhere under 
the hood for the past several months. I just figured it was the valves or 
lifters or something, so I didn't really do anything about it. I'd say 
about 80% of the time the noise was present, no matter how long that car 
was on, or what the RPMs were. (For example, when I would rev the 
engine, the ticking just got faster. Sometimes it would stop for a minute 
when the RPMs returned to idle level, but the noise would almost aways 
return. Annoying as heck, but it didn't seem to make a difference in 
performance. The interesting part is that I didn't hear the ticking at 
all AFTER the above problem. (About 15 min worth of driving) I started 
the car a few minutes ago and let it idle, and no ticking. Granted, since 
it did not do this 100% of the time, maybe it's just "being good".

  Other odd problem. About a month ago I waxed my car, and listened to 
the radio while working. (About an hour) The next day when I was leaving 
for work, the car would not start. Dead battery. Then, 3 weeks ago I went 
on vacation, and the car sat for about 13 days. Again, dead battery. I'm 
not sure how old the battery is, but I've had the car for about 19 
months, and it wasn't new when I bought the car.


   So, any ideas? 



               STEve

 
---
I'm okay. I've got magic beans.

- Internet: steved@panix.com   GEnie: s.dambrowski@genie.geis.com