Greetings all!

First time to the boards. Really excited to be here =) I ran into some good fortune this weekend. My uncle is making a pretty serious move up north...but long story short; he's giving me one of his old cars, a 1997 Audi A4 2.8 Quattro MT. This is a welcome upgrade from the 94 Camry I'm "borrowing" at the moment Anyways..

The car only has about 55k miles on it. It's been sitting in his garage unused for awhile so when i went over to try it out, it was very dead. I jumped it off once and let it run for a couple of minutes and everything seemed to be fine. Fluids were all good. Obviously there were some groans, creeks and whines that I'm associating with being dormant for awhile...but. So I killed it after idling 25 minutes or so. I went to crank it again, and absolutely nothing. No clicking, flickering...it was stone dead again. So I tried to jump her again..but now I get zero engine activity. Just some rapid clicking from the onboard electronics. I tried hooking up a battery charger, it wouldnt ever recognize the battery...i couldn't even start the car with the battery piggy-backed off AC power (same story, rapid clicks, nothing from the engine).

My inital question is, does this pretty much sound like a bad battery? Couldn't be the alternator or something? And if it is the battery, does anybody have recommendations on how to go about replacing it? As I understand, these precision german cars only work right with certain proprietary parts....so do i have to find a dealership and hope they don't rape me too hard on the price? Any suggestions on where to find one would be appreciated.
Sorry for the long-windedness. Also if this has been covered before, I'm not used to the search function just yet.

Thanks!

 

that sound like the batt. Anyways you are in luck. you can go down to your local auto parts store and get a battery and just put it in yourself. Its not that big of an undertaking, just a few bolts and a vent tube and your done, Hope you can get here running again and if you have anymore questons feel free to PM me and I will respond as soon as posable. Welcome to the forums and the deminishing 12V 2.8 family.

 

You may also want to just clean the posts/cable connections.. I have had a battery that looked perfectly clean and wouldnt' charge and wouldn't start, but.. I took the cables off and there was a film of corrosion just on the posts.. cleaned them up and bang.. I got it going well... battery lasted at least 2 years even.. worth a try anyway