My car is fixed... but shouldnt be?

[engineerjet]

So the million dollar question that has experts stumped.

For those who have been following my saga of P2014/P2012/P0642/P0089/P0237. Lately it all came to a supposed end when I reseated the connector for the flap motor. But unfortunately I was wrong and the problem came back. I was at a loss. I went back and forth with apr, shooting wires, making sure I had good grounds, no shorts or broken wires. Everything checked fine, but I KNEW it had something to do with the flap motor. So in an effort to troubleshoot, I decided to leave the connector for the flap motor off, and I went for a drive. Car is 100% again. All the power is there, no DV issues. I mean I drove the crap out of it and I've been driving it all weekend to make sure it's really fixed and sure enough, no CEL has come back and no more limp mode.

I told APR support and they are currently baffled as well. The way it is supposed to work, is the flap motor still needs to be plugged in even with the flap delete kit, as the Ecu still checks to see if it's there even if it doesn't use it anymore. And according to them, unplugging it should lead to the infamous P2012/P2014 codes we are all familiar with, and thus lead to reduced power via limp mode. I feel like I'm in the twilight zone because disconnecting it and leaving it off should not have fixed it, but it did!

I figured it may be a bad flap motor but it's brand new, and why would plugging it in lead to P2012/P2014 but unplugging it lead to no codes at all? I'm thrilled my car works now, but I'd prefer to know why. Any thoughts from the Audi think tank?

[drmonkey]

Maybe somewhere in the plug the wires are actually crossed/bridged and all it's looking for is a voltage present (to detect the flap motor). Therefore, it would be detecting a "ghost flap motor" in a sense...I'm not entirely sure that's how it works but it's the only way it would make sense to me...