Question on my car

[Vas Deferens]

(12-17-2015, 11:34 AM)Wyche Wrote: Fun times....I had to pull the entire steering column on my wife's VW to replace the ignition switch.  VW (in the Mark III Jetta anyway) put it all together in one piece with the actual cylinder.  Then, they ran every accessory through that switch (which continued at least through the Mark IV Jetta).  It was kind of a pain, but kind of ingenious.  As the switch degrades, you begin losing accessories, but the car will still run.  As voltage breaks down across the circuit, the CPU shuts off accessories one by one, from least important to vital, to keep the car running/starting.  Pretty clever.  Of course, it took me a day or two to figure out why my wipers and radiator fans just shut off for no reason, and I had ran hot wires to the fuse panel to run them.   The most interesting part?  To self diag the problem, you turned on all of the accessories that had failed (a/c, vent blower, wipers, radiator fans, etc), and then pulled the bright switch in and......voila, they all start working....you now know you have a bad ignition switch in a Volkswagen Jetta.


The issue was, that in the Mark III, the ignition cylinder was held in place with a tiny set screw that required a jeweler's sized screwdriver to remove.  The only way to gain access was to remove the steering column and turn the whole thing upside down and access it that way.  It was corrected on the Mark IV by running a harness from the cylinder to the switch itself and placing the switch on the underside of the column.  All you had to do then was remove the plastic trim covering it.  I have some pics on my phone, I'll try to upload 'em later.  Love talking cars....lol.

You're a braver man than I.  Stopped working on electrical in my VW's after my 86 2 door jetta.  One of the greatest whips I ever owned, so easy to work on.  01 Jetta / GF's 04 T Beetle, not so much.