Hi Folks

I'm back in a B6 (my third) after a three year hiatus in a B5. Previously I had a 2001 1.8T quattro Sport and then a 2003 S4. The latest is a 2001 2.5TDI quattro Sport.

I've had the car just over a month and I'm experiencing a frustrating and annoying problem I've not encountered before in five previous Audis. Periodically, the nearside parking lights turn on by themselves and cannot be switched off by any means. This occurs randomly, and without anything obviously triggering it. It happens after I've driven the car with the lights on and without, and on a number of occasions the lights have turned on all by themselves during the day or night, leaving me with no option but to disconnect the battery in order to avoid draining it. Usually, doing so kills the light only for it to return again randomly sometime later after re-connecting. It will also re-ignite straight away if I re-connect the battery shortly afterwards, but not always. The problem has disappeared once or twice for several days in a row, and then re-occurred daily over the following few days - there's no pattern to it.

The parking lights work perfectly normally in isolation, with the buzzer sounding when it should (stalk down or up with key out). Equally, the lights themselves all work as they should and there are no other obvious electrical anomalies.

I had the car scanned for DTCs at ADI and it showed the following:

http://wiki.ross-tech.com/wiki/index.php/01561

http://wiki.ross-tech.com/wiki/index.php/01562

http://wiki.ross-tech.com/wiki/index.php/01134

The guy who scanned the car felt that these codes weren't necessarily related to the problem with the lights, and as I hadn't had the car long I had no way of knowing if these were old stored faults. They were cleared but unfortunately I don't have easy access to VCDS so I don't know if they've since re-appeared. All the doors and the boot lock and unlock normally as I would expect them to. There's no water in the plenum chamber and no damp passenger footwell carpet, so no obvious signs of CCM water ingress.

When I first noticed this problem and realised that all attempts to turn off the lights were futile, I removed the rear light cluster and pulled the bulbs. As soon as I did so the offside tail light lit up instead, together with the offside front side light which also came on in addition to the nearside one already lit.

All my Audi-owning friends are stumped (including past and present B6 owners), so I'd be very grateful to anyone who may be able to shed any light(!) on this or offer any suggestions as to a solution. This is spoiling what is otherwise a very good car.

Any B6 owners out there had this problem? Thanks.