Hello Scotty and the community, I hope you are having a great day!
I live in Europe and have a 2004 VW Golf 2.0 FSI, manual transmission and 192k kilometres (120k miles). Sometimes (only sometimes) I have a weird issue with the air vents. When it's very hot outside and I turn on the A/C, it can happen that the car just closes the vents, so no air at all is coming out. You can hear the system working at full power, but it just doesn't come out any air out of the vents. This only happens though when the motor is working at a higher stage, so if you turn it down a bit manually then it starts blowing normally and also cold air, but as soon as you turn it up again, the motor works stronger (you can hear it), but no air at all comes out of the vents. This only happens quite rarely, so sometimes when I start the car the next day, it works normally again, even at full power. Then the issue might come back a few days later, but might also not, there's really no rule to it. It happened to me for the first time last year and I fixed it when I disconnected the battery and reconnected it, so to reset the car, then it never came back again until this year. This time, it didn't work though. Oh, and when the issue occurs, it works even on full blast for the first few seconds and then the air vents shut down. So if you turn off the climate motor and turn it back on again, it works again for a few seconds and then it shuts down again. Do you have any idea what could be the cause of this issue? I'm not sure if this helps and if it has anything to do with it, but (also only sometimes!) it can happen that when you turn on the heater, it only blows hot air on the driver's side (also the center air vents only hot air from those vents on the left side). On the passenger side there comes out only cold air, no matter how much you turn on the heater. Again, it only happens sometimes, not sure if it's technically at the same time as the other issue, because one I notice when it's hot outside and the other when it's cold outside. Other than that, the car is in great condition, no issues at all.
Have a good day and kind regards
Steven
Well Volkswagens have extremely complex HVAC systems. I could show you a manual I have that goes on for almost 100 pages showing how to diagnose them. You would have to find a guy with a Volkswagen dealer level scan tool. Have them hook it up and see what happens when the car acts up. It could be a actuator valve. It could be a computer circuit problem, but you can't. Guess you'd have to actually see it with a Volkswagen scan computer hooked up
Thank you Scotty, it's so good to talk to you after so many years again, I'm not sure if you remember my name 😀
Yes, I took it to my mechanic and he couldn't find out what's wrong with it, so we'll go to his friend tomorrow who works at a Volkswagen garage, then he can scan it. I hope it isn't anything major, since I like the car and it held up great for the last 3 years and 50k miles that I've owned it, despite its age...
Stay safe and have a wonderful day, my friend! 🙂