I picked up my audi on the first of the year... and considering that this was an upgrade from my previous car, i couldnt be happier except for the 2 small problems that have come up in recent days.

1. my drivers side door has no power at all. windows worked fine until a fe days ago... as of this morning eerything related to the driver's side door is out.

Alarm will not arm
all doors will lock with the remote, except the drivers side door
interior light are permanently on, ive manually switched them off.
door will lock with the key
i can see power coming to the doors for a few seconds after i open it, but all buttons are still unresponsive.

ive searched everywhere for a fix, or a reason as to what is going on and and ive read about damaged wires and issues with the rubber boot in the door.
I checked into mine and found it like this:


is this normal? the boot is all twisted

and problem 2:
my esp indicator in the dashboard display is randomly coming on and off... ive run the system check and i see it cycle through stuff with an ok at the end. which is kind of confusing since a coolant display comes up and a oil display come up in the middle display as it is going through its cycle.

any advise or suggestions would be greatly appreciated, i love the car but coming from a honda and 12 yrs of driving them and messing with them i am finding audi ownership a little frustrating lol

 

I have exactly the same problem! Does anyone know how to fix the wiring harness?

 

After months of planning and being lazy i decided to tackle this problem today.

As it is widely mentioned across these boards the problem is not a switch or anything too technical. It was simply that the wires leading from the car to the door had become old weathered and were breaking and splitting.

I used the advise posted here:
LINK TO VERY USEFUL POST
items used:
electrical shrink wrap
wire cutters
wire strippers
heat gun
18g wire (the actual wire used in teh car is a little smaller but this is the smallest i could find.)
plastic tie wraps (i only used one)
LOTS of patience

as always disconnect the battery (the negative wide) as you will be working with electrical wires... cant be too safe.
I pulled the door apart
took the speaker out
disconnected the door panel to give me some room.
and pulled some of the clips used in keeping the wire harness tight against the door off (for wire slack)
took the paneling inside the car off:
- Fuse cover
- Small inside panels along the floor board
- Small piece right by the fuse cover
- Insulation leading to the connector to the door wire harness (not necessary)

Pulled the rubber boot covering the wire harness between door and car
- Must push the door side of the harness from inside the door
- be patient, my hands are not small and i had a tough time getting this done lol
- use tie wraps to compress the rubber boot to expose the wires
- there is a pink slip on the connection on the car side, keep in mind this does not pull in and out it slides towards the front of the car to unlock, you can then pull/slide the connection off the door from the bottom
- CAREFULLY strip the wires in the harness from where it cracked and split
- use a section of replacement wire to connect both sides
- I used heat wrap to ensure a clean and secure connection on top of electrical tape
- be patient as the harness wire is scarce and if you cut too much you're going to be in trouble lol
- i checked all the wires and used electrical tape wherever needed (small amounts)
- I then checked all connections and splices done to ensure it was done right
- used electrical tape to make a single bundle of cables. FYI cheap electrical tape is a pain in the ***... get the a good brand!
- Put everything back together and prayed for the best lol

windows worked perfectly
door locked locked perfectly
remote locking worked once again
interior's lights are once again working properly when car is open and closed and even when locked
all other doors worked like a charm once again, no issues anywhere


All in all it took me longer to get the umph to get this done lol as you can see i did a bit of reading and read some tips on doing electrical wire repair as i had never done anything like this and had it come out clean and working hehe

NOTE: FYI i bought splice connections but i thought that the wires needed to have a little bit more flexing that it was allowed by the little metal piece inside the connector, so i did not use them

If possible and you have the ability to do so i would def. reconnect soldering the wires as it is a better way of doing this type of repairs and as always be aware that if it broke once it is likely to break again, repairs are temporary fixes and u run the risk of always having the same issue arise again.

In my opinion the best way to fix this is to suck it up and get a replacement harness, though it is considerably more expensive.

Y'all are going to have to excuse any typos and grammatical errors lol I'm about to go wash my car, get it cleaned up and I'm excited to be able to once again drive teh car with the windows down lol

Thanks to kaz62 for the pictures and post, it was very helpful!

 

I had the exact problem with my 1989 100Q and fixed it the same way you did with tape and shrink wrap!