Intermittent Limp Mode And ESP Fault

[Stano]

Hi all newbie here,

Had our A3 for around 2 and a half years now and never had a single issue with it and always been reliable compared to our other car being a Ford.

But starting around 2 weeks ago it'll randomly go into limp mode with a ESP Fault showing on the dash screen, pull over and turn it off and back on and everything clears and will run fine for a few days until it'll do it again randomly out of nowhere.

Just wondering if anyone else has had the same happen and possibly point us in the right direction to get it sorted as we love the car and don't want to get rid of it.

Also it's a 1.6 8v MPI.

Thank you for reading and will much appreciate any response.

 

[cliffcoggin]

Those are common symptoms of a failing battery. Get it professionally tested if you want confirmation, and get the new battery coded to the car.

[Stano]

Hi Cliff thanks for the reply, I've attached a picture of the battery as I can't figure out how old it is, am I right in saying that these cars come with the battery from OEM? Also used a multimeter on the battery and it was reading 12.1V and dropped to 9V whilst starting it up. But the car always starts up first time every time?

[cliffcoggin]

Jordan.

Voltage readings tell you nothing about the condition of the battery. To do that requires either a modern professional tester or the ability to test during a 200 ampere discharge, neither of which are available to most people. Nor does the fact that the battery cranks and starts the engine mean that is in good condition.

The electronics on the car require a stable power supply, not just any old voltage between 10 and 16 volts as was the case years ago. A failing battery can not supply that stability, leading to spurious electronic faults that come and go at random. Limp mode, loss of radio presets, loss of air con are some of the faults that can arise.

The age of your battery is not as important as its internal condition which can only be tested as mentioned earlier, though a life of five years seems to be all we can expect nowadays. I suggest you buy a new battery of decent quality, not one of the cheap unknown brands, and get it coded to the car to avoid spoiling it. Exide and  Varta are two names that come to mind, though other folk in the forum can advise better than me.

[Stano]

Thanks for the info, I'll get the battery tested and I'll update this thread with the outcome.

[Stano]

Hi to anyone still reading, had brand new battery put in the car today and the fault still persists with the limp mode and the ESP.

[Stano]

Just had computer plugged in, cylinder 1 and 4 misfiring. HT leads are all good, getting new spark plugs put in and hopefully that fixes it!