Over the last 4 years of owning this car, I loved every minute of driving it, but hated how many times I had to take it into the shop, for things ranging from little cover plates falling off to the sunroof breaking. One of the most annoying problems has been electrical - it turns out that every time I leave the car over one week without driving it, I come back to find a dead battery. Luckily all the airport parking lots are pretty prompt with helping. I took the car to the dealer the first few times - and then stopped doing that on subsequent occurences, because they could never find anything wrong with it. I was toldthat this is normal, because the car has too many circuits running in the background - so I actually bought myself a jump pack.Once they actually replaced the battery.

Last Tuesday, after a very cold night, the car did not start in the morning. The engine did not make any noise, did not even try to turn over. I tried to jump it from a big SUV - nothing. I had it towed to the local shop - it started right up without a problem. They did some testing and found that the convenience control module had some faults. The convenience module is what controls the alarm, etc. - so this made sense to me - the behavior had been exactly as if some interlock were preventing the start (or, as if the clutch was not pushed in all the way). I wondered if this could be related to my previous numerous battery draining problems - so I called the Audi dealership and explained the whole thing, asking them to take care of this, since it most likely was the cause of my previous problems. Intermittent problems are hard to diagnose, so finally I felt that it was nailed. They said that I need to bring the car to their shop, only then they could work with me on that. The local shop did not have the part in stock, and since the car was running,Ijusttook itand drove it around for various errands the whole evening.

The next morning, it was deja vu - the car would not start again, in exactly the sam fashion - not even an attempt to turn the engine over. I then had the car towed to the dealership (one hour away, it cost me $162!) - where the same thing happened - the car started right away. The car is still there, and it has started every day without a problem. The guy at the dealership is not very helpful - he just repeats like a broken record that since they cannot find anything wrong with it, there is nothing they can do. Every scenario that I try to raise he says - 'it could be, but I cannot prove it'.

Here is my theory: I think that it is some sort of a switch/theft prevention mechanism that malfunctions intermittently and drains the battery. Last Tuesday, the cold weather probably made it malfunction, and I just happen to catch it 'in the act'before it was able to recover. I just moved 9 months ago - so before that the car used to be parked in the garage overnight at home -this is the first winter that it is not in a garage.

My car just went out of warranty - Audi is willing to work with me on fixing this problem, given all the past electrical problems I've had - but the dealership cannot prove that anything is wrong, so I'm stuck.

In a desperate attempt to try to reproduce the malfunctioning, yesterday I actually sentthe dealership the key that I used when the car would not start, and asked them to follow the exact sequence of what I did.Originally, I gave the towing service my spare key, which is seldom used.Unfortunately, the weather is much warmer now.

Any advice?Any ideaswould help.

thanks a lot,
silvia