Hi folks,

I'm working out of town and returning to the hotel, (on the highway) doing about 120 k on cruise control and touch the brake to disengage it as traffic ahead is slowing. The check engine light starts flashing but otherwise everything appears to be normal. I continue into town and park at the hotel.

Next morning, I start the car, planning to gently drive to another hotel where I can catch the crew bus to work and discover that I have absolutely zero throttle response.

Is this normal "limp mode" for this car?

Does anyone have any suggestions?

Can anyone recommend a shop in the Cranbrook BC area with VAG-Com or Audi knowledge?

I've taken the car to the local VW dealer who claim to be an Audi service center but they appear to be entirely without a clue about this.

Help!

Randy.

 

Well we figured it out...

The issue was the security feature of the APR reflash I have deciding to randomly engage itself.

Having never used it, (I asked them not to install it but got an argument) I didn't recognize the signs.

Cost me nearly $900 for nothing.

I was a long way from home and tired from working 10 hour shifts for 3 weeks so paid with minimal argument and got on the road.

Be aware of what this looks like if you have had the reflash done!

Randy.

 

Have you contacted APR or their dealer abut this?
What are they saying?

 

No...other than to vent my frustration I didn't think there'd be much point JC.

Cheers! Randy.

 

Amusingly this also happened to me this weekend. Fortunately I quickly remembered how to fix (it's happened to me before) it but my girlfriend was pretty shocked by it (she had taken the car when it happened).

The mechanic who did the flash warned me about this (I assume that APR instructs the mechanics to talk to the car owner about this) but I foolishly didn't think to apply the safeguard, which is to engage the lockout feature. That way you need to reenter your pin before you can make any changes -- like activating the anti-theft feature.

I have to say, this is a fairly serious usability flaw!

If you look at the instructions which you should probably keep handy for some types of cruise control stalks the feature can be engaged by a series of SET and RESUME commands, which is pretty bad considering that it's very, very easy to randomly do the exact sequence required to engage the anti-theft feature. When that happens you will see the CEL start flashing immediately after you enter the last command in the series. The next time you restart the car you will not have any throttle response, but you can still move the car very slowly just using the transmission and the engine at idle.

 

Yeah...I figured that out almost $900 later. Thank you Arrow Motors!

 

It's really an APR issue, though. I mean, I've done this *twice* completely randomly in the past 10 months already and I don't even drive that much.

Literally for my car it set-set-resume-resume-set-set-resume-resume. Drive on a highway for a few hours and you're bound to do that particular 8-move combo randomly.

src: APR - High Performance Development for Audi, VW and Porsche Vehicles.

 

But your link indicates that the each step in the sequence has to occur within 1.5 secs - I read that as, you need to complete that exact sequence within 12 secs while driving. That sounds far less likely to occur during normal driving. Not saying it didn't happen but would suggest there might be some other reason that is causing this scenario and locking out the engine.