My 2003 Passat 1.8T station wagon's battery was dead when I tried to
drive home last Monday evening. The headlight switch was off, but a
coworker told me that my lights had been on earlier in the day. We jump
started the Passat and I drove it home successfully.

The next morning, when I parked at work and exited the car, the
taillights were on. I reentered the car and stomped the brake pedal
several times, and the taillights eventually went off.

I had noticed for some weeks that the cruise control would only engage
about every other time I tried to set it. It makes sense now - the
brake switch was occasionally stuck on, preventing the cruise control
from engaging. Anyway, I took the Passat to the dealer, duplicated the
taillight stuck on condition for them, and they replaced the brake
switch.

Looking back over maintenance records, I see that my wife's 2000 New
Beetle has had four brake light switch replacements - the first three
all failed open preventing the transmission shift lock from releasing;
the fourth was changed preemptively this January under the recent N412
recall.

The brake switch on the Passat was the first VW brake switch I've had
fail in the opposite direction - stuck closed. From here on out, my
practice will be to check that the brake lights are off when leaving the
car. That's certainly not something that I would ever have expected to
have to do on a routine basis...

I'm quite disappointed in VW component quality. Not only have I never
experienced brake switch failures on any other make of cars, but the
plastic handles on both the Beetle and the Passat's oil dipsticks broke
off. I definitely anticipate trading these cars in sooner that I had
planned based on their demonstrated unreliability to date - count me as
an owner who has not been impressed.

passats use a different brake light switch and failure in rare. The other
switch is another story, but the blame goes on the comapny who makes it for
VW and not VW. Like many auto/truck makers they don't make many oif their
own parts anymore. "demonstrated unreliability " sound like you got a few
good VW's if that's all that was needed since new.


"Donald Prevett" <dprevett (AT) earthlink (DOT) net> wrote

In article <EWxLh.3$Kg.153751 (AT) news (DOT) sisna.com>,
news.wildblue.net <w3cdk (AT) asdmonline (DOT) net> wrote:
They are built to specs provided by the car company. The blame could
either be at the car company which provided inadequate specs to the
supplier it subcontracts a part to (e.g. telling the supplier to make
parts meeting some specific durability standard when it was really
necessary to have a higher durability standard), or the supplier who
failed to produce parts of the required specs or quality.

--
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Timothy J. Lee
Unsolicited bulk or commercial email is not welcome.
No warranty of any kind is provided with this message.

"Timothy J. Lee" <remove22 (AT) sonic (DOT) net> wrote

to VW's spec... that's if the company really did build them to VW standards
and not cheat VW inorder to make a more profit. But yes VW has messed a lot
of things up.



"Timothy J. Lee" <remove22 (AT) sonic (DOT) net> wrote