UK-POLOS.NET - THE VW Polo Forum

Hello all

Has anybody experienced this before, having had my car since may 18 with 14k miles and no issues, this evening I was driving in Wales at around 50 on a country road, speed limit 60, when the car cut out completely. Very scary especially as it was an automatic, there was a brief warning I think to say the engine had cut out, I kind of already realised that as the car shuddered to a halt with no time to clear the road safely.

There it sat for 3.5 hours until the AA via VW breakdown arrived. To be fair the guy fault found it to a fuse but insisted on following me for a few miles. After a mile it blew again. After changing the fuse about five times now I can’t even turn the ignition on without it blowing instantly.

so now im towed to the place I was visiting overnight and need to call VW in the morning to see what they are going to do.

Having had this happen it makes me really concerned as this could have happened in the third lane of the motorway.

Any advice on how I should proceed?

Thank you all.

Rejecting the car isn't an option as you've had it for so long, so your only real option is having work done under warranty to rectify. As VW Breakdown were called and can testify that the car is unfit/unsafe to drive, VW should provide a courtesy car immediately rather than waiting for availability at the dealership that'll fix the car.

There's something fundamentally wrong with your electrics right now, to keep blowing the same fuse in quick succession. Hopefully it'll be a quick and easy diagnosis.

I never experience this before.

But were you driving on a wet roads (Raining etc.)?

Do you know which fuse keep blowing?

Sometimes it could be just something small, for example something like a plug in the engine bay is not clipped in properly and moisture manage to find a way in which will result in short circuit (Fuse Blow).

Thanks for the advice.

It was torrential yesterday in Wales...

It could well be but the AA guy went through 5 fuses before deciding to recover. What was most worrying is that a fuse could cause such an instant shutdown. Dread to think what would have happened on the motorway at even higher speed.

Thank you

Carlblake wrote: Sat Oct 26, 2019 8:16 am Thanks for the advice.

It was torrential yesterday in Wales...

It could well be but the AA guy went through 5 fuses before deciding to recover. What was most worrying is that a fuse could cause such an instant shutdown. Dread to think what would have happened on the motorway at even higher speed.

Thank you

Hello Carlblake,

When you know the root cause of the problem, can you please kindly share the answer with us here.

To be honest the root cause of the problem is not the fuse, the fuse is there to protect electrical equipment in high current or in short circuit situations. So, the fuse was doing its job to protect whatever electrical equipment it is designed to protect.

A fuse will not just blown for no reason, the root cause is there is something wrong in the electrical circuit. And the AA guy was just trying his luck by keep replacing the fuse, but not fixing the actual root cause of the problem.

On the other hand, unless you are driving a very old car without any electrical equipment fitted. Any brand of cars will cause an instant shutdown, if it happens to be the engine related fuse is blown.

I rue the day the infamous BSOD arrives in cars .. gotta love the tech though

Hi.

Yes I will certainly share the outcome on here.

To have had this happen on a motorway could have been catastrophic.

The response from VW Stockport this morning was
“ yeah... bring it in and we’ll have a look at it...”

I’m not impressed with the lack of interest personally!

Carlblake wrote: Sat Oct 26, 2019 1:38 pm Hi.

Yes I will certainly share the outcome on here.

To have had this happen on a motorway could have been catastrophic.

The response from VW Stockport this morning was
“ yeah... bring it in and we’ll have a look at it...”

I’m not impressed with the lack of interest personally!

I am in South Africa, but I can feel the same pain as you when it comes to the VW dealership's ability to fix a VW.

But if you know which fuse keep blowing, you can at least look at the Fuse diagram and know which equipment is related to that fuse. And when the VW dealer fix your car, you can at least know they are not bull s**t you by telling you a different electrical equipment is faulty.

I have the VW Workshop Fuse Diagram, if you need it I can email it to you.

Thanks you very much that would be very helpful.

The guy I have dealt with before is South African actually. Very helpful, he moved from working in the factory in SA I believe

Adding my 2p's worth; once had a new Astra in which all electrical items, including the lights, would randomly switch off whenever they felt like it, which was often. The parking brake had a mind of its own, the radio would suddenly jump to full volume and an electric rear window would open itself when the car was parked, many times I had witnesses confirm all windows were closed to help preserve my sanity. At least the engine never cut out though it took forever top warm up and never rose above 25MPG. Neither dealer nor Vauxhall believed me but with a solicitor's help I managed to dump the car after a 6-week battle. Then weeks later I received a 'recall letter' saying some kind of voltage controller was at fault (sanity maintained) and I should return the car for repair / upgrade, way too late. The point is, as other have posted, fuses blowing are the car protecting itself so perhaps the OP's Polo has a similar fault to my (not at all missed) Astra and can easily be fixed. Good luck with it anyway....

You would like to think that once the phone call had been made initially, VW UK or its agents would be on the case, okay it was AA that responded, but under their contracted obligation to VW UK, sounds like the owner is expected to "knife and fork" this sort of thing through by themselves, that does not say much for VW UK support does it?

If the VW main dealer mentioned was the supplying dealer, get them sorted out, ie "come and get it ASAP, fix it and return" this incident has been logged surely, now if that was not the supplying VW dealer, then you need to get them to work with you and as that car is still covered, I'm assuming, by the VW new car warranty, and it has not be sorted out by the call to VW Breakdown Support, then a VW dealer needs to recover it to their workshop.

Hi all.

It’s got worse today. As I tried to drive it to the dealers go avoid having to wait 6 hours for recovery it went again.

Only this time it lit up like a Christmas tree with numerous error messages, the car stayed all lit up and functions with the key out and there was a strange burning smell emanation from somewhere.

Needless to say I’m well into my 6 hour wait for recovery...

Seems like it'll be an issue with the controlling module that governs all things that have been highlighted in your warnings. You never get just one thing anymore as the set of modules each control multiple systems.

6 hour wait is an absolute p***-take worst case should be 2 hours - repair/recovery companies like the AA and RAC would not get much business if they advertised those kind of response times being typical.

That car should stay with the dealers until you're assured that it has been sorted. Its unsafe to drive.

Carlblake wrote: Sat Oct 26, 2019 7:28 pm Thanks you very much that would be very helpful.

The guy I have dealt with before is South African actually. Very helpful, he moved from working in the factory in SA I believe

Can you please PM me your email address?

I can't upload pdf file on this forum.

Hello

I am not being allowed to send PM as I haven’t posted enough apparently.

Thank you very much for your kind offer though.