Hi,

Can anyone advise?  

As the battery was dead on my Audi A3, we isolated it to charge it up.  This seemed to work and the charger indicated that it had charged.  However, though the car seemed at first to respond (the dashboard lights etc came on) after a few second suddenly an alarm went off.  The ignition then would not respond.  

I searched through the manual and it is not obvious what to do to get the car to start or why this happened.  Can anyone give me some advice?

Thanks.

Hello Julia,

I'd be guessing on this, but in the absence of other replies, it may be worth Googling re- programming Audi remote key fob which usually entails putting the key in the driver's door lock etc. - I'm sure you will find various references. Let's hope this may sort it. 

While of course it is good practice to disconnect the battery before trickle charging - and will be recommended whenever you read about this - I always have always charged older cars such as yours without disconnecting (ensuring the charger is connected the right way first!) for fear of issues such as you are experiencing. More modern, "inteligent " charging system cars - no. 

One question I would ask is why did the battery run flat in the first place? If not through leaving something on, then it's possible that the battery has suffered a catastrophic failure - as they sometimes do - and its worth having it's serviceability checked following an overnight charge. Halfords should be able to do this for you. If it proves to be unserviceable then you have to decide whether to replace it with a Halford's battery or not! 

It would be interesting to know how you get on from here.

Kind regards,

Gareth.

p.s.I should have mentioned that it's always worth having the battery checked first in such cases before looking for any other issues. If you do need to replace the battery, you could try Battery Warehouse at Tewkesbury or Tayna Batteries ( there are others, and no connection). Such companies usually get batteries to your door at reasonable cost - the flowing day. I always go for batteries with a minimum of 4 years guarantee. 

Gareth,  

Thank you so much for replying to my post.  Your advice was really useful.  

The battery was changed as it wouldn't hold a charge.  The car hadn't been used for months. 

Julia

Hello Julia,

Thanks for coming back on this. I'm not sure if we we suffering from a bit of predictive text here, but in your first post you mention the battery was charged, and I asked if that battery had now been checked for efficiency (following being charged). 

In the latest post you mention the battery was       Changed.       Not sure whether this as a misprint for   Charged...

I wonder if you have now actually renewed the battery and you are still in problems, or if you are still trying to work with the original (recharged) battery.

If it is the old battery, then you must first recharge it, and then get it checked before looking at the problem issues.

Kind regards,

Gareth.