2005 A8L Tailight and Trunk Issue
 

I ran into a problem the other day on my 2005 A8L when I was driving home from work and I thought that I would share it with everyone in case it might help someone else out down the road.

Problems:
I was coming home from work and all of a sudden my car starts telling me that my left tail light is out. I find this kind of odd since I just had it replaced due to someone chunking it out with a rock from a lawn mower. When I get home I go to open the trunk by using the button on the driver door and nothing happens. I then get out of the car and try using my key, still nothing. I try the button up by the license plate, nothing once again. So I break down and use the key to open the trunk. I find that the motor on the trunk works just fine to lift it up and down, I just have to use the key to open it. Once the trunk closes, the auto assist would not suck it down to seal it. I found it rather odd that all this happened at once. I also noticed that the section of the taillight on the trunk was not working either as well as the light bar across the rear window. :mad:

Troubleshooting:
First thing I did is to check all the fuses. As you all know, there are a ton of fuses in this car in 4 different areas. They all looked just fine. Then I took the tail light off both sides and I put the one that was not working on the side that was working and it worked just fine. So I verified that it was not the tail light itself as I had figured. I checked the harness that hooks up to the taillight and found that it was not getting power. This is where I decided that I had no clue what else it could be. :confused:

Dumb Luck:
So I went back to the process of checking the fuses and in messing with one of them in the back near the battery I heard it clicking like it was trying to bridge a circuit. I turned on the headlight switch and had my wife stand back and watch the light while I played with the fuse and she told me that it was coming on and then going out when I did it. I took the fuse out and tweeked the prongs so that they were not perfectly aligned any longer and put it back in. Viola...I tested everything out from taillight to brake light to turn signal to opening and shutting my trunk with every possible button and it works like a charm. Everything works again! I guess dumb luck is better than no luck at all, right? :D

I just thought that I would post this out there since I was unable to find anything in my research and I thought that it might be possible that someone else may run into the same issue. If you do run into this issue, there is a group of 5 fuses that are one on top of the other back near the battery. There is a 20amp a few slots up from the group as well. The fuse that was causing me the issues was the 20amp fuse that is on top of the goup of 5 fuses, not the one that is up closer to the top. Hope this comes in handy to somone else becuase I am sure this would have cost me a load at the Audi dealer. :cool:

More of a wacky problem that someone else won't have, but im sure it will help someone down the road. :)