Hi all,
Luckily, I already have an appointment (1 month wait) with my local VW service shop on Tuesday for a transmission problem. (See post at the bottom of this message. Coincidently, I am having some weird problems right now.
The problems that came about today are as follows. I parked my car today, and I notice that my engine and lights were turned off, but my brake lights were illuminated. The lights stay on, when the car + lights are off, and no one is pressing on the brake. I had to rip the fuse out of the fuse box for the back lights, as I would have had a dead battery in the AM.
I turned the car on and checked if something was stuck, and I noticed that the "EPC" light came on a stayed on,(didnt flash), and on the LED display, it flashed "ENGINE WORKSHOP". In addition to those 2 things, I no longer need to press the brake to disengage the park lock. You can select whatever gear you want without stepping on the brake to unlock the gear lock.
Any ideas? I'm about ready to tell VW to keep the damn car, because I've had it. Big VW/Audi fan, but with not even 35,000 miles on this car, I've had:
Gear lock swtich broke once Window actuator broke Electronic door mechanism, driver side broken Enginge Temperature Sesor busted
2 Oxygen sensors broke CD changer is brokenI really hate to say it -- it really breaks my heart, honestly -- but I'm thinking about selling it and heading over to Nissan or Acura, simply for the reliability.
I do love the car, but I cant deal with the mechanical problems of such a "new" car. It always seems to break down on times when I really need it. (Supposed to go away Saturday -- this is the 3rd time ina row where I needed to take the car on a major trip, and it's crapped out on me.) Frustrating.
Oh well, any ideas on what I'm looking at here. Warantee issues? Is this the coil pack issue? I need a vacation bad (VW tech shop visit Tuesday, leaving on vacation on Saturday). Already going to the rental car place to pick something up for the week, as my gut tells me this is gonna be a doosey.
Jeff
[old post]-------------
I have an '01 Jetta w/ the VR6 and an auto tranny. Starting about a week ago, occasionally reverse will not engage. Sliding the gear selector knob to R will do "nothing" 50% (about) of the time -- the car sits like if it was in neutral. Sliding the gear selector back up to park, and then into reverse again, has always "fixed" the problem. Like I said, only about 50% of the time does "R" not engage from the start, but so far, 100% of the time it works if you slide it back up to "P" and then into "R" again.
All of the other shifts work as they always have. Yeah, the adaptive tranny (I don't have tiptronic as it wasn't available in '01 on the Jetta) seems to have a mind of it's own sometimes with the shifting, but I've grown accustomed to it. So, 1-->2-->3-->4, even under hard accelleration, all work fine as they normally have, and the car sounds and moves great. No bad sounds, no grinding, everything else is fine.
Any idea what this might be? I called my local VW dealer today, and they said that my earliest appointment would be 9/4/03 (??? Yeah thats what I said too), or I could bring it in as an "emergency", where it would sit there for 3 days (at least) before they looked at it. Still, $82/hr to diagnose. (Why didn't I become a mechanic.? lol)
I believe my GEICO policy offers me a free loaner for situations like this from a rental company, but I wanted to check out the consensus here about what this problem might be before I got renting a car for a week and giving VW my Jetta.
Being that this problem is very "hit and miss" --- I can't reproduce the problem whenever I want -- , I'm tending to think that it's something with the CPU, and nothing essentially wrong with the tranny. Then again, I'm no car expert.
FWIW, I have done nothing to the car. I haven't chipped it, I haven't added anything aftermarket yet. It's all still stock. If there is a problem with the tranny, is this covered under the warantee, even though I'm past 2/24000?
Thanks everyone for their help.\
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