Volkswagen radio button pealing

Shop Shots Volume 33 Insider Pictures of Automotive Service

Hey folks! Wednesday is here and you know what that means. It’s Shop Shots day! As always, these are your behind the scenes pictures of Volkswagen service. Also, make sure you read the entire post. I have something special at the end 😉

Volkswagen radio button pealingIf you own a 2005-2008 or so VW, then this will look really familiar. This is a radio from a 2006 VW Jetta with the radio buttons peeling. The black “soft touch” has peeled off, it almost looks like it melted. This happened on some of the switches in the car too. My thought was that chemicals we put on our hands, lotions, and anti-bacterial, accelerated the wear on the buttons.

The buttons are not replaceable individually. I have heard of companies that can replace the face of the radio so you could keep the stock look. Like with any factory radio issues. I think you are better getting a good aftermarket radio. You will get more features at a better price.

Strange Volkswagen PartsI was walking through the parking lot one day last week and walked past this little part bag. I happen to read it while walking by. It took a second for my brain to catch up and realize that the description was something weird. I had to walk back and pick it up. DRUCKTASTE, what the heck does that mean? Since I do not know German, it was Google Translate to the rescue.

It turns out that DRUCKTASTE means PUSHBOTTON. This was a package for a trunk release button. In all the years I have worked for VW, and all the push buttons I have replaced. I never noticed what the package said. That is your German lesson for today.

Smashed VW Transmission PanI feel like I post a lot of smashed VW engine oil and transmission pans. This pan is from a 2007 or so Beetle. If you look at the lower left part of the picture, you can see some grass smashed up into the sub frame. This car had ran off the road. The good thing for the customer is they didn’t break the pan. It smashed it, but there is no fluid leaking.

The thing to be concerned about is the damage to parts behind the pan. There are electronics that live on the other side of that pan. Any impact can destroy them. That makes for a very unhappy transmission. I am surprised there is not a fluid leak.

Okay, you might be wondering why I am posting a picture of a Snap-on cake pan. Well this is actually a really cool Snap-on magnetic tray. I got this from my tool dealer a while back. I am so excited to reach 33 volumes of Shop Shots. I want to give this away. So here is how you can get this tray.

  1. Share this post on Facebook. You can either click the icon at the bottom of the post, or share it when from my Facebook post.
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It is really just that easy. You can enter as many times as you share the post. Just post a comment here and let me know how you shared. I will draw someone at random and send them this brand new Snap-on tray! It is just a small token of my appreciation for all of you! I will pick a winner Friday evening 10/05/12!

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Volkswagen electrical repairs

Strange Things That Fix Cars

We talked yesterday about getting stuck as an auto mechanic. Like I said it happens to all of us. So today I thought I would share some auto mechanic secrets. 😉

Over the years I have seen some strange things. You can read just about any Shop Shots post to get an idea of some of that stuff. There have also been some really weird things that have fixed cars. These are all real. I could not make this stuff up. Trust me, I have tried.

Hard Reboot aka Battery VooDoo

Volkswagen electrical repairs

Thanks to a fellow VW tech for this pic

This is my go to repair. When ever I have a strange electrical issue I do this. It is basically a hard reboot of all the car’s computers. It is kind of like your computer at home. Sometimes it gets stuck in “stupid mode”. Or like my old TV. Sometimes the sound would not work. If I pulled the plug out of the back, then plugged it back in, it would work. That TV just died. HA

To perform the “battery voodoo” Disconnect both cables on the vehicles battery. Then touch them together. I generally leave them for about 5 minutes or so. This will reboot the entire car. It forces all the modules in the car to recheck themselves and talk to each other. There is probably a million different things that this has fixed. It is fun to watch new technicians faces when they learn this for the first time.

This is generally the first things that VW tech line tells us to do when we call them. One word of caution. If a car has to batteries, disconnect BOTH batteries, or make sure you don’t try and start the car. It turns out that a Phaeton will start with the convenience battery disconnected. It then sets the jumper wire on fire. 🙂 Oh, another word of caution, don’t put out car fires. Just let the car burn.

Soft Vehicle Reboot
While this does not fix as many issues as the battery voodoo, it does do some cool stuff. VW had a flash update a few years ago.Sometimes when the update finished, the MIL would be on. There would be no codes stored, or information given. The light would stay on until you locked and unlocked the car. Why? Your guess is as good as mine, but it worked.

There are 2 ways to soft reboot a car.

  1. Simply turning the ignition on and off. That is called a key cycle. That will make the car do a partial reboot. Plus many sensors need to see a key cycle before they come online
  2. The second way is really simple, but sounds tricky. All you have to do is get out of the car, and get back in. If you get out of the car, lock it, unlock it, and perform a key cycle, the car will do a full soft reboot.

From time to time we have issues with cars not communicating with our scan tools. The fix was a the full soft reboot (#2). The soft reboot is nice because it does not delete all the cars values like the battery voodoo. This is a good first step specifically for a customer.

Unplug The Problem Module
This one is pretty new to me. We had a guy in the shop going round and round and round with an issue on a 2001 or so Passat. He replaced what he thought was the issue. Double checked, then triple checked his work. He tried to do the battery voodoo and it didn’t work. Left with little choice, he called VW tech line. They told him to unplug the module for about an hour. Would you believe that fixed the issue?

It seems that some of the older cars get stuck in “stupid mode”. That was the first time I have ever seen that happen. I know that he felt great to get the car fixed, and even better knowing he didn’t mess up the car.

Recode The Module
Most, if not all, modules in cars have a coding. That is what tells the module what it is, and what features the car has. Recoding that module performs a hard reboot, but only on that module. The best example is the older Touaregs and Phaetons. When I would run into a strange electrical issue on either one of those cars, I would recode the “Gateway” module. That was like the main communication point for all the modules in the car. I would go into the module with the scan tool and recode it. I would not change the coding, but recode it to the same coding. The coding was 6, and I would just recode it to 6. That would force that “Gateway” to recheck the entire system. It worked like a charm.

On the newer cars, this is not such a great choice. Codes are now “long coded”. Instead of being a coding of 6, it is more like 015b05661a0000001b. Getting that coding wrong can be a disaster. I miscoded a convenience module on a 2007 Passat one time. Many things didn’t work, but when you opened the trunk, the gas door opened. When you opened the fuel door, nothing happened. I had to call VW and get the proper coding.

I have no doubt there are many other strange things that fix cars. Do you know any? Post them up in the comment section. I know I get a kick out of that type of thing. I am sure that everyone else will too.

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What Happens When An Auto Mechanic Gets Stuck

Hey everyone.Today I want to talk about the strange things auto mechanics do to find issues with a car. This video is one of my all time favorite automotive sketches.


Thanks to Kids In The Hall for such a funny video!

In all reality this type of thing happens a lot. Granted we don’t paint a car to try and figure out why it doesn’t start. Mechanics do get stuck and sometimes “trying it now” is the only thing you can do.

What a mechanic does when they get stuck really defines what type of mechanic they really are. From my experience, there are only a few things that mechanics do when they get stuck.

  1. Whine
    This seems to be the most common thing to happen when a mechanic gets stuck. It is really easy to get caught up in “whine mode”. It gets you no where.
  2. Ask around until you find the answer you want
    This is what generally follows whining. This one drives me insane. I worked with a guy years ago. He was not a very good mechanic. That is not a huge deal. We can fix that with training. However it got to the point that no one would help him. If he got stuck, he would ask everyone in the shop what they thought he should do. He would ask until someone either helped him, or told him what he wanted to hear.
  3. Quit
    Thankfully this is something that does not happen that often. In fact I have only seen it happen 1 time. One of the guys in the shop was putting cam adjusters in a W8 Passat. I don’t remember the exact circumstance, but he just up and quit. In the middle of the job. That left one of the other team leaders in the shop to finish the job. Not cool!
  4. Try it now
    This is what seasoned mechanics do. When you are stuck on fixing a car, you have to do something. There is no possible way to fix a car by doing nothing. That could be anything from rechecking something you already checked. It could be whacking something with a hammer, and everything in between. Some times you are a luck auto mechanic, and sometimes you are not. But powering through the problems is really what makes a top level diagnostic mechanic.

Getting stuck on weird problems is part of the job. It will never go away, no matter how cars are built. It doesn’t matter what year, make or model. It does not have to be a VW to have crazy electrical issues.

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