Engine Management Light came on whilst joining A1

Hi

I've been looking through the forums to see if anyone else has had a similar problem to me or knows what may be wrong with my car?

I have a 58' Audi A4 2.0TDi (143) SE with about 8k miles. Yesterday whilst joining the A1 from a very short slip road, I noticed under heavy acceleration that I didn't have the normal power. When I had joined the road (after severely irritating the car I had pulled out on and not been able to accelerate away from) I looked down and noticed the engine management (glow plug) light flashing amber at me. I pulled into a layby about a mile down the road and switched off the engine to see if the light would go out when I re-started, however the engine would not restart. After the fifth attempt, the engine fired and the light was no longer on. Drove home (177 miles from where I had stopped!) and there was no further sign off the light or loss of power.

I phoned my local Audi dealer who told me that Audi Assist should deal with this, yet when I phoned Audi Assist they told me there was nothing they could do unless the light was still on.

Has anyone else had this or do you know what my next move should be? The car fired up fine this morning and drove as usual to work.... but I am now nervous about pulling out into what would normally be a big enough gap in-case I experience power loss again.

Any thoughts?

Thanks in advance!

my A3 2.0 Tdi did a very similar sounding thing to me several times - turned out to be a MAF fault sending the car into 'limp home mode' - ie no turbo

very similar sounding symptoms - sounds like something has tripped the limp home - no turbo - safety mode - it resets when you turn off the ignition and restart the car

fault code reading with a vag-com should confirm this triggering of limp home mode and hopefully (and more importantly) what triggered it

just tell audi assistance your wife doesnt feel safe driving the car. At least they will come to your home and read the fault codes.

You pay for their service in the price of the car so let them come out, usually very nice guys

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Originally Posted by mguk79

Hi

I've been looking through the forums to see if anyone else has had a similar problem to me or knows what may be wrong with my car?

I have a 58' Audi A4 2.0TDi (143) SE with about 8k miles. Yesterday whilst joining the A1 from a very short slip road, I noticed under heavy acceleration that I didn't have the normal power. When I had joined the road (after severely irritating the car I had pulled out on and not been able to accelerate away from) I looked down and noticed the engine management (glow plug) light flashing amber at me. I pulled into a layby about a mile down the road and switched off the engine to see if the light would go out when I re-started, however the engine would not restart. After the fifth attempt, the engine fired and the light was no longer on. Drove home (177 miles from where I had stopped!) and there was no further sign off the light or loss of power.

I phoned my local Audi dealer who told me that Audi Assist should deal with this, yet when I phoned Audi Assist they told me there was nothing they could do unless the light was still on.

Has anyone else had this or do you know what my next move should be? The car fired up fine this morning and drove as usual to work.... but I am now nervous about pulling out into what would normally be a big enough gap in-case I experience power loss again.

Any thoughts?

Thanks in advance!

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You should make the dealer check it out , they should be able to identify what fault made it go into safe mode.

Having said that I had a Mercedes several years ago, which did the same thing several times and no fault was ever recorded - it was just one of many problems with that car - but that's another story.

A very similar thing happened to my 58 2.0TDI 143 SE on 01/05/10. However, before the glow plug symbol came on flashing, the DPF warning symbol came on whilst driving and after about 10 mins the glow plug came on and I in effect lost the turbo. I got to my destination and read the manual. When I turned the car back on, the flashing glow plug had gone out and after driving the car for 15 mins above 2,000 revs (as suggested in the manual) to clear the DPF warning all was well and I've had no problems since. I just assumed that the flashing glow plug had come on in response to the DPF warning.