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Today was up and down in a couple of ways.
I was looking forward to getting out of the house for a spell as I needed to go do some supermarket shopping but at the same time I could do without those people who think the pandemic is some kind of conspiracy from the governments of the world and try to get as close as possible to you regardless (not good when you’re in the “vulnerable” category).
I got myself all kitted up (like an Eskimo Dr in a blizzard with gloves hat and snood) and just leaving my eyes semi exposed with a pair of shades on.
Opened the car door using the “keyless” feature and got in, that’s when the dash display decided it was going to flash up every fault known to man and multiple buzzers/chimes/sirens started blaring out at the same time, all the locks were going mental locking and unlocking like a drum & base tune and it was all accompanied by a loud whirring/clicking sound and then,,,,,, nothing,,,,, and I do mean nothing, the car was dead unless you opened the drivers door and then a siren/buzzer went off while ever it was open.
I did all the usual checks, no sticking door switches/locks, changed keyfob battery, disconnected the battery for 5 minutes etc etc, still the same, with the car only being built on the 14th of Jan this year I thought I’d better give the RAC a bell rather than troll google for common problems and so went back inside and made the call.
A little over 2 hours later a nice man in orange turned up and I handed him the key dressed in full battle suit and off to the car he went, 50 minutes later he knocked to ask if it had start/stop (Yes!)
15 minutes later he came back to give me the key back and said it was all fixed, I asked what the problem was and he said the new Bosch battery on the car had a defective cell and I was lucky it was stationary as my car is an auto and if it had failed the way it had while driving wouldn’t have been good as I would have been stuck in gear with no brakes or steering and it could possibly have locked up the front wheels.
The nice man had replaced the battery and it was good as new.
I did manage to get my shopping done in the end (my god there really are some utter plebs wandering about in supermarkets nowadays), I even managed a takeaway costa coffee to bring home with me so what could have been a nightmare wasn’t too bad an experience really.
One thing did strike me though is that everybody goes on about French car problems but it was a German part that let it down!
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Good to hear RAC sorted it.
I don’t buy the whole total loss of brakes and steering though. Both items are merely assisted when the engine is running (electrically or hydraulically), so a total failure of engine power (mechanical or electrical) would no doubt remove the steering and brake assistance, but the basic functions would remain.
Just saying 🙂
I think that’s what he meant but about the brakes etc but just didn’t give a full explanation as he said he’d been very busy because with the virus a lot of staff were off. I knew what he meant though as I’ve had a diff seize in an old transit van while doing 70 in the outside lane of the M1 years ago and that was not fun to say the least.
With the new electric power steering it works differently from conventional fluid assisted systems and when it fails the steering is unbelievably hard to turn, I had a Vauxhall Meriva that had an intermittent fault with this (refused to do a factory recall) and almost crashed on a few occasions until Vauxhall UK agreed to replace for free.
On a positive note the Supermarket had plenty of stock of most things, still a bit sparse on loo roll, hand cleaners, milk etc but they did have some stock and I could see some trolley baskets ready to go out, all in all very near normal stock wise.
Vinal… I’m no expert but all those symptoms you had sounds very much like you had a close encounter of the third kind and wondered apart from the electrics going wild was there a bright light from above with everything floating about in the cab. ?
If there was no bright light could just be a virus and the car needs to be self isolated for 2 weeks. ?
On a more serious side with the supermarkets I’m getting a bit pee’d off with them not having milk on the shelves and when they do have it you can only have one or two containers (if your really lucky) meaning you have to go shopping every other day just for milk where at other times my milk supplies lasted up to two weeks.
What is the problem with milk? Tonnes of everything else, in fact went to supermarket last night and they had stacks of bread on the shelves reduced to 6p a loaf because they can’t get rid of it, but no milk.
Maybe just lucky with the area we live in, we have 3 Aldi, 2 Morrisons, 2 Sainsburys, 2 Sainsburys local, 2 Asda, 1 Jack’s, 1 Farm Foods, 1 Iceland and 2 service station Spar shops, just a case of finding one with what you need.
On the UFO situation I didn’t notice any bright lights but I did have on my Polarized shades so culd have missed something. ?
Had the same problem not long after getting my current mk7 golf. So we go to the car to pickup my daughter from school, it started as normal, at the 1st set of lights stop start activated, it started up as normal at the next left turn i brake and slow down quite a bit as is dodgy one. Then it flashes many warnings like stop start and acc not available… but was still running, at no time did it say battery low just virtually every system was not available.
we gets the daughter and car starts, drive to morrisons for few things, Mrs goes in, i had a call i needed to make to vw and car never started again. Rac came and it was the battery, replaced it with a higher rated one as that was the only one he had, not had a problem since the cells was only working at 20% he said.
It did not stop like say if the alternator was not charging the battery, i had that happen many years ago in my first car and no lights, no hazzards, no nothing and no mobile phones then.
Also had a battery cable work lose then the car just died as well.. but I did go over a dip because of road works just before, so checked it and terminal was lose.
So personally i don’t think it could cause the car to stop running once it’s started unless you stall it. but if you have a dsg that’s not going to happen, just ain’t gonna startup again..
my guess is the stop start was gonna activate when i slowed almost to a stop as it does.. and wouldn’t of started again so it deactivated it and everything. a bit like limp mode.
but it should of said battery low, if the key battery gets low it says.. but not the actual battery.. Stupid imo.. Luckly for you, you was at home, not in the car park.
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