Just wondering if anyone here has any experience of VW/ Audi fault finding.

Fault has appeared intermittently for about the past year.

The interior light will illuminate itself steadily, stay lit for a couple of seconds and then begin to dim until it goes off. The whole process takes about 6 seconds and it will do this constantly. (on/off, on/off, etc.) It happens whatever position the ignition key is in and when the vehicle is parked, combined with a loss of alarm function.

This will normally last for a day or so and the car then rights itself and the fault will not re-occur for weeks.

No dash warning lights are illuminated during this process.

Because the illumination of the interior light is so uniform and steady I think that the light is some kind of fault warning possibly to do with the alarm.

Local Audi dealer is baffled and it is difficult to take the car to him because the fault is so intermittent.

Model is Audi A3 1.6 Sport. MY 2001.

Anyone with any similar experiences or fault finding expertise, your advice would be greatly appreciated.

 

I love how car makers call a 1200kg hatchback with a 1.6 or diesel engine a Sport.

 

and for the money you could of bought something 'sporty' instead.
I bought a 1.8T one of of these in 2000 and that wasn't quick or indeed sporty.

 

Some people argue that darts is a sport.

 

Does it work in the same way as normal dimming? i.e. is the behaviour the same as if you'd just got into the car and shut the door and after a few seconds the light dims out?

I'd check the switch that gets pushed in when the door shuts, the connector to that switch etc.

Is there any problem with water in the footwells? (the computer that controls all this may be located in the footwell (I know it was in the A6 for example) and if water has got in then corrosion may be bridging 2 connectors intermittently.

Again this is another example of incompetent dealers, one of the main points of senfing a car to main dealer is that they supposedly know everything about the car, the really should never be "baffled".

 

Hello Dracoro! Thankyou for the reply.

Yes, the interior light is a soft illuminating/ dimming type and it comes on/ goes off just as it would when you open or close the door.

It stays on for a few seconds then goes off. Stays off for a few seconds then the cycle constantly repeats itself.

I've checked all of the switches in the doors and hatch.

No sign of any water ingress.

Dealers are quite pants TBH. It's my mothers car and I remember her taking it to them for a service 3 years ago when they told her it needed front brake pads at a cost of around

 

I had a 2001 S3 a few years ago, and was never anything but shocked by how bad the Audi dealers were. They tended to cause more problems than they fixed, and I owned mine during the infamous coil-pack situation, so I had cause to visit them a few times !

No idea what could be causing hte problem but it sounds like an alarm problem if its disablin the alarm too - does it unlock the car or just disable the motion sensor, or disable the alarm?

 

Sounds like the POS Honda UK alarm to me.

Interior lights are usually ground-switched, so it could be a damaged, shorting cable somewhere, which could cause alarm problems too.

The car is probably a spaghetti of wires and I'd not remove the headlining either. But you could try yanking the light unit or something.