ryalex

Okay, so the car I bought has this problem. The door chime goes constantly, and the interior lights/clock/hatch are off, fuse #24 blown.

I've been reading all the threads I can find here on it. I went and bought a few fuses and started troubleshooting it last night.

- Dome light and rear dome/hatch light: all clean, very little grime, no loose or stripped anything around it for as far back and my hand could feel. I'm not experienced with electrical wiring, but they looked tight at the connection and no corrosion or wear.

- Door white and red lights: again, all clean. The red lights still had nice rubber tubing around it that was nice and soft still, pulled that back a bit to see good connections.

- Door pins, I didn't pull those yet because my 11mm socket didn't fit my extender, but frankly they are shiny with no hint of wear and the little pink gasket looks very clean. I'll check those later.

I pulled all the lights and it still popped the fuse every time I reattached the battery. So there is clearly a bad ground somewhere.

Only thing I haven't tried yet other than the door pins is the area under the ashtray. The car was stored for a decade so mice may have gotten to it, or it might have been pulled when the PO was trying to fix the sloppy shifter.

Any other ideas on where the problem might be?

ryalex

One ominous thing I did find on the right side of the trunk area under the carpet was this cut bundle of wires - I'm not sure this is part of the same relay though. The only other electrical thing that I know doesn't work are most of the speakers.

danglerb

For now I will just say, eeeek! but I don't know for sure its eek or ok.

ryalex

Nicole

That cut wire loom is strange... Since everything else appears to work, it's probably from something that was installed later, and then removed - perhaps a CD changer, amplifier, or an alarm system.

Have you tried tracing where this goes? Or have you seen it reappear near the fuse box or in the center console?

ryalex

I haven't tried to track it back yet - there is another tube of cords the same size you can see on the right of the cut one. I don't know if it's redundant or from something else - it still has the stock blauplunkt tapedeck stereo but only 2 of the 8 speakers work.

Reading the tutorials here has given me a lot of confidence though - I haven't done many things on my cars since my old '88 Mercedes, which was straightforward enough for me to do some basic maintenance. Every system on my Audi was a computer in a box that needed special keys and tools to open.