800 miles from home car wont start HELP

So I'm on a business trip w/ family, went to leave my brother's place and the car did a slow, didn't want to start, rrrr rrr rrr rr r. I bump started it out of the driveway, no big deal, figured my phone charger did something the battery wasn't fond of...
Hour later went to leave my other brother's place and I turned the key and got a click. That was it.
Figured the starter was shot.
Replaced starter. New starter just makes rapid clicking noises, will try to turn the engine over, but can't.
Battery shows 14v.
Ideas?
I've cleaned all my grounds... Stuck at my parent's place, need to be back by the end of the week.

Start reviewing this:

http://forums.tdiclub.com/showthread.php?t=199398

This is a 99.5 sedan, ALH engine.
In my investigations, I came across the 4-pin connector on top of the starter. The orange/red wire (to the rear of the 4) was broken. Does anyone know what it does?
I just jump started the car, it started right up. I could be looking at a new battery according to the no-start page tutorial. Bright side is I have a spare starter now!

Battery is junk under load it has no juice.

I key "on," headlights stay bright for about a minute... You really think battery? I could have it tested at the local NAPA tomorrow.

If it jump started fine, sounds like pooped battery. One quick test is voltmeter on batt terminals, then get a helper to crank engine. If it drops to the floor (like 6v), then either discharged or failed. Once running, alt should keep it around 14.

Tom,
What is the voltage at the battery?
Engine running and when its not .

Voltage doesn't mean much. You need AMPS. (I know you know that).

I agree that your battery could be toast. Check your connections really well between the battery and the starter including grounds.

scdevon said:

Voltage doesn't mean much. You need AMPS. (I know you know that).

I agree that your battery could be toast. Check your connections really well between the battery and the starter including grounds.

Click to expand...

It would be good to have an idea as to what his alternator is doing.

Battery. Trust me. Classic symptoms.

thanks for the replies everyone
I don't really have the means to check current at the battery, but the voltage I'll have to get back to you on. My tools are of course at home, what I have available here is, well, you can imagine.
The battery is a 47B (?) that's about four years old, so...yeah, I can see that.
The alternator was replaced back in late April or thereabouts. I hope its not related, but like I said I'll look at voltage at the terminals tomorrow. There's a NAPA about 1/4 mile from where I'm staying.
I have to say, I'm surprised by how easy it is to bump start these things.

So does anyone know what the orange/red wire does?

Seems to me that if you weren't getting a light while running after it started your alternator is ok.

Four years isn't very old. Could just be corroded terminals. Disconnect and clean them up and try again.

I say bad battery. The heat this summer in my area is/was killed a lot of batteries.

KLXD said:

Seems to me that if you weren't getting a light while running after it started your alternator is ok.

Four years isn't very old. Could just be corroded terminals. Disconnect and clean them up and try again.

Click to expand...

Four years isn't very old depending on climate, and history. That battery may have taken an ass-whoopin last year when his alternator failed. my oem battery only lasted about 3.

I just returned one last night that is 3 years and 9 months old, won't hold a charge anymore due to a shorted plate. It happens.

Well I'm stumped.
The battery was on a charger all night, of course it fired right up this morning. I left if alone for about an hour, started right up again. I turned the lights on, waited and watched for about a minute or so until the voltaged dropped to 12.5, car still started right up. While it was running voltage read 15V.
Waited an hour, voltage standing was at 14.
Battery seems fine.
I think I'll just pick up a pair of jumper cables before I head out, maybe swing by the local stealership for a positive battery cable (mine is less than perfect).

Does anyone know what that orange and red wire is for? I don't know if it's related or not, but broken wires anywhere aren't good.

15 Volts ?

That is high for a battery while charging.. By the sounds of that you have a voltage regulator that is on its way out. This high voltage can cause other issues like blown MAF / ECU if voltage stays way to high.

Sounds like it has caused your battery to constantly get over charged, and cause loss of plate material. Hence why your battery is flat once left overnight.

I would make sure your battery voltage stays Max at 14.4-14.8v to keep it from getting boiled dry... Has the water level been checked in the battery ?

Mark

Looking at the wiring schematic the only wires this one shows is red/black to ignition switch and black to battery. Two other wires go to ground from the starter. This is from a 1999 Bentley engine wiring diagram.

Too-high charge voltage is a symptom of a high-resistance cell in the battery that has a very low (but not zero) charge-acceptance capacity remaining. AGM's fail this way all the time and when on a 13.6 - 13.8v float charge they will appear to be just fine (e.g. in a UPS) but their output voltage collapses instantly when put under load as their internal resistance is extremely high (ohms instead of thousandths or hundredths of an ohm) once the first couple of percent of their rated power is drawn down. This produces a very interesting failure mode on a UPS as the unit will pass a short (~5 second) self-test (the usual automated once-weekly check that these units do) but lock out on low voltage in a real power failure before it can signal the computer it is attached to that it's about to die.

Flooded batteries (what we typically have in cars) fail this way more-rarely, but it does happen. Once it occurs it will happen again -- you can sometimes charge a battery in this condition and it will appear to be ok as the nearly-dead cell will accept enough charge to lower its resistance but it has a tiny fraction of the rest of the cells' capacity and as soon as it gets down a few percent from full the output voltage collapses again. The worse news is that the usual source of this is actually a partially-shorted cell that self-discharges and once it begins plate sulfation makes it impossible to reverse the condition; leave the battery alone for a few days without a charging source connected and you'll come back to find it dead again.

A moderate-rate (e.g. 20A) electronic charger will flip out when attached to a battery in this condition as it will immediately go high-voltage and "trip" with an error when it tries to apply the 20 amp charging current. A low-rate or "dumb" (ferro-resonant) charger will appear to happily charge a battery that has this going on but it it's lying to you about the state of charge.

A decent load test performed on the battery will detect this condition in a starting battery but you have to draw down ~10% of the battery's capacity at high amperage with the tester to do so.

Check the condition of both the primary starter feed cable and ground as well, as high-resistance connections there will result in symptoms that look like this as well but of course have nothing to do with the battery itself.

Genesis gives good advice: follow all his points.

Genesis w/ the awesome info, indeed. This makes perfect sense. Two weeks ago I replaced my steering rack. To bleed it, I cranked the engine w/ the air shutoff disabled.
Of course, it wouldn't start when I went to start it half an hour later. So I put it on the charger, and it showed--of course--a trouble light. AND it wouldn't start.
So I jump started it and it'd been fine, until now.
The charger I used last night is my dad's, and he said it was older than I was (I'm 43). No fancy stuff there.

To make a long story longer, I drove over to the local NAPA and had them load test it, it checks out fine according to them.

The local VW dealer doesn't have a positive battery cable, and it'd take them too long to get one. I instead bought a pair of booster cables; if need be I can go direct to the starter's lug from the battery. But I drove around all day today, started four different times, no problems.

IME, charging on a running vehicle at 15 is fine, considering the equipment I'm using to measure it is old or older than I am. My multimeter at home is analog; DMM's don't work on old motorcycles. 15v is ballpark enough to see that it is indeed charging, for all I know a DMM would show 14.something. The alternator is only 2 months old, I've no reason to suspect it.