Hello Scotty and the community, I hope you are having a great day! I live in Europe and have a 2004 VW Golf with a 2.0 FSI, standard transmission and 211'500 km (133'000 miles) on it. It has dual automatic climate control in the front and I am having issues with it at times. It can happen that all the vents on the passenger side only blow cold air, despite having the heater on. Never happens on the driver's side, but only on the passenger's. In the winter, this doesn't happen, it can happen during a time of the year where temperature switches frequently and I use the A/C and the next day the heater. It doesn't always happen though, just sometimes. On top of that, it can rarely happen that in summer, when I start the car and turn on the A/C, all the vents just shut down and close, as if I turned them off manually. But the motor is still blowing strong, you can hear it. This only happens when I have the climate control on Auto. When I turn up the temperature, so it blows less hard, it starts blowing again (with cold air) and as soon as it intensifies the blowing, the vents close again, it's really weird. But this only happens rarely and then it goes away the next or very next day, though it can happen again a few days or weeks later. What could cause these issues? I've owned the car now for 3 and a half years and about 96k kilometers (60k miles), apart from some minor and cheap issues, it has been dead reliable and it is still in very healthy condition, hardly burns any oil and has close to zero rust. Theoretically I could live with these climate issues, since they don't happen often and I know how to handle them, but do you know what could it be and how expensive it is to fix?
- Realize one thing about Volkswagens And that is they have the most complex HVAC systems around. I have read hundreds of pages on how they work in the problems they have. One of the many reasons I advise people never to buy them. When they break down like that. You need a Volkswagen mechanic with a dealer level scan tool and years of experience to work on them. They have so much plastic electronic crap that can and does break without a bi-directional scan tool to activate and test them you're more or less pissing in the wind trying to fix them
Thank you for your response! Yes, I can see that. The thing with the air vents that shut off, I experienced for the first time almost 3 years ago and I could fix the problem by disconnecting the battery, not anymore now and I have the feeling that it happens more frequently than it used to. But obviously only in summer, let's see how it will go this summer. Would be kind of a shame to get rid of it, since it runs otherwise strong and it's not that big of a deal