Strange door locking on 2002 Passat

My wife had a scary thing happen in our 2002 Passat this week...

She returned to the locked car with our 3-year-old son and unlocked all doors with the remote (two pushes on the unlock button). She opened the rear passenger side door and put our son in his car seat, leaving that door open. She then opened the front passenger side door, leaned in, inserted the ignition key and turned on the engine. She did this so she could turn the air conditioner on while she was buckling our son in his carseat (it was a hot day). Then she closed the front passenger side door and went back to our son to finish buckling him in. After he was in place, she closed his door. At this point, all of the doors on the car locked automatically!

After a few moments of panic and trying to get AAA using a friends cell phone, she managed to get our son to open the door.

To confirm what had happened, she rolled down the front passenger side window and repeated the process to make sure she wasn't dreaming. Sure enough, when she closed the rear passenger side door again, all the doors locked.

We looked in the manual for any mention of this "feature" and only found the auto-locking of doors when you get up to 10mph - this feature *is* enabled on our Passat.

Can anyone enlighten me as to the purpose of this behavior? Seems like a "feature" that is geared to locking you out of your car. I can't figure any useful reason for this.

-- TRW _______________________________________ My e-mail: t r w 7 @ i x . n e t c o m . c o m _______________________________________

Reply to
Tim Witort
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That's not a feature but a problem! I have not seen that problem yet since the Passat came out but anything is possible. The control unit is mounted under the driver side front carpet and it may just be wacky or maybe has water inside of it from a leak into the car. What you may want to try, which is what I would do first is "reboot" all the computers in the car. To do this disconnect the negative battery cable and then turn your key and lights on. After about 10 minutes... turn your key off, turn the lights off, connect the battery back up. This procedure will drain all the left over memories from the computers and when you connect the battery back up it's like a "cold reboot". The go and check you locking problem, if it's still there then go to your dealer...

Reply to
Woodchuck

The way it should work, is you have 30 seconds to open a door from the last time you hit the unlock key. If you don't open the door, the car locks itself. Once as you start opening doors, the program of self locking is suppose to turn itself off. I mean, what do they care if you forget to lock your car. My 99 Golf seems to work perfectly. I have never tried this trick with the key in the ignition but I have started my car, with the door open, remained seated in my car, then closed the door, and had to wait for the person I was picking up, give or take a minute, nothing happened, my door, and the door I unlocked for her (she had a choice of three as they all were unlocked.... she could have even came in through my door... but.. yah...) were open.

The only problem I have ever noticed with the locks, is that is incredibly easy to lock keys in the trunk. The trunk automatically locks itself, regardless of the locked state of the rest of the car, and it needs to be unlocked on its own. BTW I have a Golf not a passat.

Next time I goto the dealer I am going to make myself in charge of locking, one click to open all doors, unlocking when the car goes into park (my friends hit their door locks if the car doesn't do it for them.... I think they are crazy, but oh well, crime isn't much of an issue here either) and the trunk on the main locking system, either that, or I will disable instant locking for it.

I know this is all reprogramable, I will get it done, get ti done on your car.

Reply to
Rob Guenther

Thanks for the ideas, Woodchuck and Rob. I will see if the problem persists and possibly ask the dealer how much locking reprogramming we can do. The only auto-locking I'd keep is the locking of the doors at 10mph. Relocking after 30 seconds I don't like. And double-clicking the remote to unlock all doors also seems an unnecessary step. I suppose everything had some initial design reason...

thanks,

-- TRW

Woodchuck seemed to utter in news:3f637277$0$65925$ snipped-for-privacy@reader.city-net.com:

Reply to
Tim Witort

Reply to
Rob Guenther

The relock is in case you accidently hit the unlock button while you're walking away from the car etc. My new Honda does the same thing; I'm assuming other do to. Double clicking is also standard as a way to enable you to just open the driver's door, ie, prevent others from entering your car through the other doors.

Reply to
TL

Almost All VWs since 1999 have automatically unlocked the doors and activated the interior lights after airbag deployment...The only post-1999 vehicle that didn't do this was the Cabrio.

- Peter

Reply to
Peter Cressman

Reply to
Rob Guenther

True. I just wish they made them user customizable, as does GM. On GM cars, you can reprogram the locks from the remote, without the need for a dealer visit or the VAG-COM software.

Reply to
4Motion

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