Please bear with me, this may be a little long. I'm driving back from a football game tonight, car is running perfectly. All of the sudden, my gas light, oil light, and temp light all come on. Additionally, the temp guage goes to hot, and the tach gets stuck at 3500, and my speedometer gets stuck at 62. I pulled over, double checked to make sure that the car is not overheating(it was not..) I start the car back up, and realize my odometer is no longer working, either. I also realize that all of the backlighting to the instrument cluster and radio stay on regardless of whether the lights are on, or the key is in the ignition(read, stuck on permanently).

After i figured out that this was electrical and i wasn't going to destroy the motor driving, i decided to just get the car home. I continue driving, and the check engine light comes on.

At this point, the ONLY things working properly on the instrument cluster are the clock, the outside temp display, and the transmission indicator. Once i get the car back to my garage i disconnected the battery for about 5 minutes, reconnect it, start the car and everything is fine with the exception of my check engine light is still on(no doubt because the car thought there was some major failure occuring...).

I should also note that over the time driving it home my speedometer and tach kept creeping up higher at about the same rate as the temperature guage...

What on earth happened?!??!?!? My bet is on a loose ground connection somewhere, but where do i start looking? Also, without a vag-com, how do i turn off the check engine light, and would it even be helpfull to pull the code, or would it just think something crazy is wrong that really isn't?

I absolutely love this car, but i dont want it to be an electrical nightmear for me, and things like this really make me reconsider selling it.

Thanks in advance for your help, i can't imagine this is a common problem, and i dont even know where to begin searching to see if this has been covered before.
Ryan[/align]

 

that sucks....

 

Thanks for the reply....i think haha.Any thoughts on how to fix this? And yes, it definately does suck.

 

You really need to pull codes on all modules. The instrument cluster probably stored some faults that may be helpfull in isolating the problem.

 

I will definately have my mechanic pull the codes tomorrow, i'm just doubting their usefullness, as obviously the car thought there was alot more wrong than there really was. I should have noted, that throughout this whole electrical episode the car drove perfect like normal, and the only indication of a problem was the wacked out instrument cluster.

 

The light turned itself off today within driving about 5 miles. Pulled the code anyways and it came up as vehicle speed sensor out of spec, which is totally useless like i figured.

Someone MUST have some sort of an idea, any input at all is appreciated, HEEELLLLP!

 

Bad alternator maybe?? My friends A4 had a bad alternator and all his gauges started acting weird. Also maybe your battery is dying. Try using someone elses battery that you know is good and see what happens.

Josh