Audi warranty denial....

how much did you pay for the house alarm and cctv system? I had a car broken into but luckily it wasn’t taken just broken glass perhaps they got disturbed.

It probably cost me £1000. had a 3 camera system. Since then I've found the beauty of Ring products and now have a ring floodlight camera for the back garden and a ring doorbell to complement my existing setup. I cannot recommend Ring products enough, very straight forward to install, the app is easy to use and the cameras are reliable.
 
I had the car recovered out of the dealers yesterday.

The vehicle now starts and runs under its own power. They removed the steering rack that they fitted and replaced it with my original (none working rack) so that saved the whole argument that was going to come with that and them saying I needed to pay for it.

I have tracked down a few reasonably priced racks sub £300 so its not going to cost me anything like the £2000 Audi were quoting me for the rack that they fitted.... Just need to confirm the part number fitted to the vehicle before I go ahead with this.

I have found a few fuses blown which have been replaced and have now enabled those systems to function again. I believe with the rack replaced many of the other issues are going to be minor. At the end of the day it starts and drives so how bad can it be....
 
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Yes the steering rack is dead.

After speaking with a few VAG specialists they have seen jump started VAG products numerous times end up with dead steering racks so this is not a new problem. The rack also denies communication with the car via diagnostics UNTIL the steering rack is unplugged!

For reference the finance company weren’t bothered about the ghost. They just said that the responsibility of the car for repairs last for 6 months with them. After this it’s over to you and presumably your warranty should cover any issues...
 
So an update....

It appears we have located the original cause for the breakdown. The alternator with the vehicle running is only pushing 12v when it should be at a minimum 14v so that explains why the power gradually degraded in the car going from a yellow warning to a red warning.

The diagnostics carried out on the car also found damage in the body control module including a short to ground...

The steering rack also communicates with the vehicle ok. Just needs programming.

I cannot believe the perfect storm I have found myself ending up in.

The alternator was the cause of the breakdown and the jump start appears to have fried some systems. That’s the theory at least....

Cost in parts to me at the moment stands at around £350 (excluding the alternator which can be sourced for £200). Slightly better than the £2k Audi wanted just for the steering rack....
 
Final update on this guys. So the used steering rack was fitted and a few other things replaced. Tested the alternator and it ended up showing that it was operating correctly!?

Had the car fully updated and coded for the rack and it’s working fine again now.

Really all very odd but thankful this saga is over now.

Thanks for all input over the last few months as well ;)
 
That is an interesting point; are you going to remove the device now turbo?

Well rather handily the garage that fitted the Ghost were also the only garage in the area to have access to the main dealer ODIS portal. So I had them code the vehicle, remove the ghost and 4 wheel align the car. The total came in at £350 for all of this so not to bad considering the removal of the ghost was £130 and the tracking £100.

The above work plus the parts I sourced stands me at about £700. Considering Audi were quoting me £2000 plus VAT and labour for the steering rack alone certainly makes me feel perfectly happy with that cost figure.

As for trying to reclaim costs from Audi or the RAC it just seemed to be one big merry go round which was going nowhere fast. I did contact a forensic vehicle expert to see if any blame could be detected on the vehicle and used against either party but he was really not convinced that any of the issues could be 100% laid at anyone's door so that sort of closed the book on it for me.
 
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