I did some searching and couldn't immediately find any answers so...

my 01 A6 2.7T won't honk when I arm the alarm or when the alarm goes off. It works fine from the steering wheel, but doesn't when I lock it or when it goes off. Any ideas?

 

Your horn and your alarm horn are different horns. The alarm horn is in the rear of the car.

 

Knowing what I know about this car now... of course it is. Any advice on how to troubleshoot and/or fix this?

 

BTW, I remember someone saying a while back that it might be because my alarm is not arming correctly, but I believe I determined that it is. Or at least the red lights on the door locks blink slowly when locked (which, I was at least told, is a sign that the alarm is properly armed).

 

I have no advice on troubleshooting it, sorry. But I have some worthless advice if you want it? Search the forums, and somewhere there is a writeup from someone a long time ago who swapped out the dieing duck alarm horn for a more appropriate siren. If you can find that writeup, you'll at least have a place to start.

*** warning, I have a TERRIBLE memory, and it tends to be completely inaccurate, the following advice is probably worthless....*** I "remember" reading years ago about how you could disable the seatbelt buzzer via vag-com, the downside was it disabled the headlight buzzer. I also remember you could disable the audible part of your car alarm through vag-com. In my car, if the horn doesn't sound, the alarm was not properly set. but I do believe the led lights still flash.

 

hmmmm... okay. So I have a vag-comm cable (never used it)... I need software to go with it though right? Can that diagnose for me why it's not working? I know thats a shot in the dark, but wth...

 

Well I found the no horn article, looks like you can disable the horn from sounding on alarm setting, but it will still sound when the alarm is set off.

http://www.audiworld.com/tech/elec13.shtml

As far as the vag-com, do you have a official ross-tech cable or the ebay variety?

Here is how you disable the seatbelt chime, which IIRC disables the headlight buzzer. by the way, does your seatbelt buzzer buzz? If so, then don't waste your time looking any further into this.
https://www.audiforums.com/forum/sho...sable+seatbelt

 

interesting article. From the combinations involved there, I might be able to determine if this is a failure of some kind of a setting.

As for the cable, I'm afraid I don't know the difference. The guy I bought the car from (original owner) gave it to me and said he never used it. Is there a way to tell? And does it make a difference? Just asking as I don't know.

 

If it's a genuine cable, it acts as a hardware dongle (a software license built into the hardware) and allows you to use the full, registered version of the vag-com software. If you have the ebay generic cable (as I do), you are only able to use the older versions of the software. The OEM Ross-Tech Vag-Com cables will say Ross-Tech on them.

Does your seatbelt buzzer buzz?

 

OEM Ross-tech cable generally looks like:

http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.ross-tech.com/vag-com/interfaces/HUC-big.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.m3post.com/forums/showthread.php%3Ft%3D182396&usg=__tsOObsmoTkdZEsQz rp6fBSllPg0=&h=878&w=585&sz=44&hl=en&start=40&tbni d=5-XNhrwwZVnyCM:&tbnh=140&tbnw=93&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dvag%2Bcom%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26client %3Dfirefox-a%26sa%3DN%26rls%3Dorg.mozilla:en-USfficial%26channel%3Ds%26biw%3D1292%26bih%3D614 %26tbs%3Disch:10%2C912&um=1&itbs=1&iact=hc&vpx=123 &vpy=54&dur=1001&hovh=275&hovw=183&tx=89&ty=156&ei =lEpYTMPKN5KhnQedjIzNCQ&page=3&ndsp=18&ved=1t:429, r:0,s:40&biw=1292&bih=614

ebay cable generally looks like:

http://t3.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:A...-IW71e-nP4oLo=