96-97 passat ignition switch warranty.

I just spoke to VOA about this and they were surprisingly straight forward.

The lady told me that the warranty on the "electrical portion of the ignition switch" had been extended to 8 years or 100K miles and that any dealer would honor the extension. For me that's excellent news because I know there's something wrong with mine in a 1997 Passat GLX. I just hope that my problems are related to the "electrical portion of the ignition switch". It does sound like they are very carefully parsing how they describe the problem, or at least the part that they're willing to eat.

My symptoms include:

Intermittent problem (3 or 4 times out of 10) when the key is in the "start" position; A buzzing sound comes from behind the instrument cluster and the clock resets.

Windshield wipers sometimes act as if they have a mind of their own. The intermittent setting produces two "wipes" instead of one, the other speeds may or may not act weird.
With the key completely out of the ignition, you can press on the lock cylinder and the radio comes back on.

Of these, the most annoying is the thing that happens sometimes at start-up. Loosing the clock isn't so bad, but the buzzing coming from behind the dash sounds terrible and I just know it's doing something bad. It actually sounds like the chatter of a mechanical relay. Unfortunately, I haven't had the presence of mind to push/pull/tug/press the key in different directions while starting to see if there's a motion that makes it better or worse. If anybody else has done that, I'd be interested in their results.

In a few days, I guess I hit the local dealer up and see what he has to say.

trebor