200q20v speaker fires

[Brett Dikeman <brett@pdikeman.ne.mediaone.net>]

The rear Bose speakers have a nasty habit of catching on fire. 
Wagons aren't affected because they didn't come with Bose speakers.

I'd like to build a list of cars we know have died because of speaker 
fires some time, get an idea of how many cars this has affected; if 
you know of one(or owned one that did so :) please email me, if 
available:
-VIN(if you have it, great, if not...oh well)
-int/ext colors for identification
-any visible damage(I know at least one person looked at a car that a 
dealer had tried to "clean up" after a customer returned the vehicle.)
-approx. dollar figure for damage/rough description of damage to vehicle
-contact info for owner of vehicle

This information may prove useful in arguing a case against audi for 
a recall(see below.)

Brett
(actually spoke to a "customer advocate", who agreed wholeheartedly 
that "a vehicle, no matter how old, should not spontaneously 
combust", as I put it :)  I think I also got her attention went I 
said that I ran a mailing list for 75 or so other 200q20v owners. 
They're opening a case on it, and according to the rep, they'll 
"document it" and see if it "is happening frequently enough for Audi 
to be concerned about it and consider taking action."  What a load of 
shit; this sounds too much like "well, the gas tank modification 
costs Y dollars per car, but only Z cars will explode, and that will 
costs us maybe X dollars to settle in a lawsuit, which is financially 
acceptable compared to modifying all Pintos(W times Y is much greater 
than Z times X)"(Ford's corporate policy on the Pinto.) This is 
"well, only x number of 200q20v's are catching on fire, and we'll 
just handle that in each case rather than do a recall."  I'm sure 
some faithful Audi employee will actually escalate this case a bit 
until some PR jerk gets his hands on it and permanently causes the 
company to "forget" about it rather than potentially hurt sales 
figures this year.

   Time to get a hard list of the # of vehicles and take it back to 
Audi or the federal transportation safety board.  I also submitted a 
request at the audi USA website for total production/distribution 
figures.  I have a feeling that the ratio between # of fires 
proportional to the number of 200q20v's on the road will be much 
greater than the ignition switch problems ford had and so on.

At 8:48 AM -0400 8/20/99, Steven B Hackett wrote:
>What's this about speaker fires?  I thought the radiator fan - smoking wire
>harness was bad enough! - Talk about recall alert! (I'm in the middle of
>fixing an '88 5000s Avant - not pretty)  Don't tell me it's another unfused
>wire ...  Radiator fan looks to be about the only unfused (scarey) component
>in the car (save for our '91 200's with the fused fan ground wire).  I'd
>love to go to Ingolstadt and Necharsulm and have a chat with the head of
>electrical ...
>
>On an unrelated subject, my MAF just quite - car just suddenly went into
>limp-home mode.  Extracted code and replaced unit ($265) - all is well.
>
>                    sitting here debating whether to go up to LimeRock
>today,

------
Brett Dikeman
brett@pdikeman.ne.mediaone.net
~~)-|
"Diplomacy is the art of telling someone to go to hell and making 
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