The Audi is being incredibly frustrating right now.

It's been sitting at my mom's house, which is 120 miles away from where I live, unable to start. A buddy and I pulled the starter off and took it to Autozone and it tested as dead. So we put a replacement one on, but it still wouldn't start.

I bought a replacement power steering pump from evocoupe1racing (Greg) for it, and it hooked straight up to two of the three hoses, but the filter-equipped banjo bolt for the third hose was too narrow for the pump. I then went to the Audi dealership and looked up the part number and eventually found what we believed to be the correct bolt. I ordered it from ECS Tuning and then had to go back home for New Year's.

Fast forward to this weekend. The bolt arrived over a week ago at my mom's house, so I came up this weekend to install it and then begin work on the starter. The bolt ended up being the exact same bolt I already had, so that was a bust. Failing that, I began trying to diagnose the starter. The voltmeter in the car was reading below 12 volts, so I jumped it with my Grand Prix. It wasn't going up quickly enough for my patience, so I took it to Autozone to get it tested. As expected, it needed a charge. They charged it for free and the battery tested as good. It's only just over two years old, so that's to be expected.

I moved on to the starter, but can't really figure out what's wrong. I have a battery that has tested as good, a replacement starter, and a new (within the year) ignition switch. This is incredibly annoying.

 

Just tested the wires. Attached the black cable of the multimeter to the negative battery terminal and poked around on the starter's terminals with the red cable and it was registering 12 volts. From that, I can only assume that the replacement starter is bad.