For many folks the FAQ's DO answer their questions and many are simply not aware of the FAQ's and Search feature, but for some the FAQ's and Search will NOT answer their questions, so of course they can then post about that and all those who wish to answer in that thread can do so. ***** Is what I posted above. Of course the FAQ's are general but as I've said they do help many folks and if they don't, then the person can start a thread and ask. If you look at my first post in this thread I said that the reason I posted it was b'c I knew that many folks didn't even know about the FAQ's and the Search feature. And it's for them that I tried to help. So of course the FAQ's are NOT a substitute for a more full discussion of some issues and I had thought that I had made that abundantly clear in what I cut and pasted to this post. As it is, most of the folks who have posted here already are not new folks, but those who have been here a long time. And for those of you who haven't been here a long time what happened back in the early 2000's was that many folks ASKED for such FAQ's and I volunteered to coordinate that effort and what was to be put in the FAQ's was available for ALL to read before they were posted. After it became too much for me to do b'c of other obligations Paul took over and did the uploading after each of them had been presented to all GW members for input. And yes, it took a great many people and a lot of hard work and dedication to do those new FAQ's , meaning, some of them were there from before after tomatoes were moved to this Forum from the Vegetable Forum where at that time the majority of posts were about tomatoes. Just a bit of history on the background of how the new FAQ's came to be. And never were they intended to be anything other than general b'c no way could ALL aspects of any of them be mentioned b'c sometimes no one even knows what issues will be raised. So, speaking personally, for those who are NEW to GW and those posting here already and didn't know about the FAQ's and the Search Feature, I at least hope that they will be a useful beginning to learning more about tomatoes. Carolyn

To quote Steve...However, the government created a tremendous loophole in classifying minivans, pickups, and SUVs as trucks exempt from those regulations even if people use them as cars (the spirit of the law instead of the letter of the law). And everyone pays pretty much the same in road taxes whether they're pounding the roads with a three-ton-plus Lincoln Navigator or a one-ton Nissan Sentra. Everyone's insurance has gone up because of increased damage claims made by people in cars who've been hit by a truck or people who don't know how to drive trucks to begin with. There's nothing proportional about that................... Our government has really fumbled the ball here, and after so many years has yet to rectify this situation. I suspect they are trying to protect the remnants of the American auto industry.. I believe we should be far more united with Europe in protecting the environment - that their approach is more balanced and fair.. We have a government that responds too easily to the pressure groups rather than the people in general. The environmentalists and their supporters are probably the single strongest pressure group in Washington and many state capitols as well. I feel that national interests are more important; that we must no longer continue to be dependent on Islamic oil.. One of the solutions to this problem is the Diesel and a much higher standard for fuel economy...

VW's "VagCom" is just their own version of a scan tool. I've never had one in my hands so I don't know exactly how much it really does. FWIW, I'll never own one either. I do have a VeDis scan tool which is one of the strongest aftermarket European scan tools available but it is still an aftermarket tool, and I just don't expect it to be 100% complete. But it's the best I can afford. (5K+ there are others that are over a $20K investment, they do more than my VeDis, but imagine spending that kind of money and in a years time not expect to even get $1000 in diagnostic labor money back while using it) It's really tough fixing cars these days when it comes to tooling and equipment. I can justify (to a degree) owning O.E. tools for some 90% of the market. (GM, Toyota, Ford, Chrysler, current model years and Honda through 2004) But even with Honda I cannot justify staying current with the O.E. tool, because at $9,000 for just Honda's since 2005 I don't see enough of them to justify any greater expense in supporting them than whatever I can get through my VeDis Asian, or Snap-On scanners. But back to doing the diagnostics on this TAC problem. Even the VagCom does not actually tell the tech what is wrong. The cars are not sophisticated enough to do that. When a problem is determined by the system, say an open in one of the circuits. The system is good enough to flag the circuit affected, and in some cases might have a code that is accurate enough to say that the circuit was "open", although most of the time it will be more like circuit open/short. The problem with intermittents is the circuit is going open/short at any point through that entire single circuit, but the diagnostic system is not capable of saying where it occured. Likewise a scan tool, displaying serial data will show what the microprocessor shows that a particular sensor circuit is reporting, but it's up to a technician to figure out exactly why a given sensor is reporting incorrectly when/if it is. Many events we deal with have a circuit that has a problem, the computer stores a code, but the circuit then just happens to operate correctly when the vehicle comes in, and we end up in a no-problem found situation. redpennies car at this point appears to provide a challenge to any technician because it is not broken all of the time. Combine that with her frustration from the expense of both related (potentially) and unrelated repairs and the fact that in a flat rate shop the techs quite often don't get paid correctly to take whatever time is required to get it to act up and diagnose it and you have a perfect example of just what fixing cars can be like for a technician as well as the public. In every real sense, my getting involved with any of these threads is time spent at work, that I don't get paid for. The techs at the VW dealership when they work on her car now in all likelyhood don't get paid for their time either unless they can justify replacing some part, that redpenny pays to have replaced. It looks like such great customer service to not pay anything to a customer when they have a complaint, but it's actually decades of a robbing Peter to pay Paul situation. The price of which is starting to finally become obvious. Could I diagnose and fix red's car. Yep, no doubt. Would she really be happy if I did? Hard to say......

Issues like this cannot always be accurately explained in a "silver bullet" answer. The alarm lamp, and the issues with the door locks do suggest that a common failure with the drivers door wiring harness "might" be occurring but starting the diagnostics expecting to find that is a tactical mistake that I call "Tainted Intuition". You need a properly trained technician with the correct tool a VAG-COM, or preferably VAG5052 which would give the technician the ability to communicate with the body, immobilizer and door modules. BTW, I don't agree with the assumption that the check engine light being on won't hurt anything. Your number one warning should another failure begin to occur would the the Check Engine light getting turned on. With the lamp already on, and obviously a hard code set you lose that warning because of course the light is already on. When the lamp is on, it means the car is suspected of polluting the air at least 1.5 times the FTP testing limit that the vehicle is certified to. The tendency for owners to ignore the lamp is the primary cause for active emissions testing in many states. Finally once the car noticeably runs bad and you finally decide to have it fixed, exactly where would you expect a technician to accurately start and stop the repair? You could have any number of active failures by then, and who knows how many blocked tests have failed to run because of the active failures. Replacing the PCM would not cost $1300 all by itself, what else did they say the car needed?