2015 VOLKSWAGEN GOLF Complaints

Clock spring issue in VW golf’s should re reinvestigated. These are failing on these cars and companies are not looking into fixes or warranty help for these devices that should last. It’s shortsighted for consumers to continue to deal with this issue.

My vehicle has been smoking inside cab and through vent system. After troubleshooting, discovered the brown ground wire and surrounding plastic of the PTC auxiliary heater has been burning. VW said the have no inventory for replacement parts and no date getting these in. I asked if there was a recall for this issue and they said there was not. Once the issue was located, I discovered a recall for the exact same issue on Audi vehicles. I am fortunate a fire did not ignite next to my leg while driving, however I did breath in a large amount of the smoke as the issue intermittently occured and the issue wasn't easily discovered. I am very frustrated VW would allow a fire hazzard to exist next to foot pedals. This should have been fixed long ago with a recall instead of forcing me and my family to breathe in smoke and risk a much larger fire. There were no warning lights and a dealer has not inspected the issue. However, brown cable housing is burnt/blackened.

The contact owns a 2015 Volkswagen Golf. The contact noticed that the fuel pump would frequent stop while fueling the vehicle. The contact then stated that while his vehicle was being driven by a valet, fuel began to pour out of the fuel tank while on an incline. The valet attendant managed to drive the vehicle down a decline which stopped the leak. Despite the failure, the contact was able to drive the vehicle home. The vehicle was then driven to a dealer where a diagnostic test was performed. The dealer informed the contact that the suction pump, seal, and emission filter needed to be replaced. Upon investigation, the contact linked the failure to NHTSA Campaign Number: 16V647000 (Fuel System, Gasoline, Engine and Engine Cooling) however, the VIN was not included in the recall. The manufacturer was notified of the failure and informed him that the vehicle was no longer under warranty. The vehicle had yet to be repaired and remained in the possession of the dealer. The failure mileage was approximately 115,000.

Loss of coolant due to cheap plastic housing leads to damage to the thermostat and water pump. Researching the forums on this issue has shown that it's a common problem with the vehicle that Volkswagen hasn't addressed.

Suction pump recall was completed by Karmart the dealership I purchased the vehicle from. Suction pump continues to be an issue with fuel purging or leaking. This has been an ongoing issue for the past 5 months. Most recently a few days ago.

A defect that meets the definition of a nonconformity in Washington State, and that is covered under warranty, caused the vehicle to stall while driving and caused the vehicle to not accelerate when the accelerator was pressed. My safety was put at risk when this happened on a 50 mph road because vehicles behind me expected my vehicle in front of them to accelerate in a predictable way with the flow of traffic. Another time, a stall happened as I turned onto a highway. I had come to a stop, waited for the traffic light, and then turned right and pressed the accelerator as I normally would to get up to 50 mph. A flashing glow plug light came on, and the car immediately had zero propulsion, and so I turned the steering wheel to roll to the side of the road and turned on my hazard lights. I was fortunate that I was not rear-ended. On another occasion, I came off of the interstate as normal, but when I tried to drive over the overpass at a slight incline, the vehicle was unable to accelerate to 20 mph, and would only go about 5 mph no matter how much the accelerator was pressed. This happened multiple times, but not all of the time, and it was unpredictable when it would happen. It was dangerous to me because I could not time traffic circles with confidence that I would be able to press the accelerator and get up to speed without being struck from the left, or turn out onto busy roads with confidence I wouldn't be t-boned, or merge with traffic on the highway. The mileage on the vehicle at the first attempt to diagnose/repair the defect was 63935 on 10/11/2019 when a VW dealership diagnosed and replaced two glow plugs under warranty. Several more times it was warr. repaired. In November 2021, after the vehicle was repaired and failed on the dealership test drive, an engineer from Volkswagen inspected the vehicle, it was further repaired and released to me. A couple of months later, the vehicle stalled on a highway and a flashing glow plug light came on.

The screen which is for the radio and back up camera has started to "flicker" This looks to be a common problem people are fixing it by having the head unit replaced but clearly it's a safety issue since the backup camera is hard to use. This is a dieselgate car so it wasn't purchased new until 2017 and it seems crazy for this to be happening when the car has only been on the road for 5 years. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MgRQp6E16Rc

The clock spring fails. Causing the airbag light to illuminate. The car is a 2015 and the first clock spring failed in January 2021, with around 155,00 miles (estimate). Second one failed this week with 162,000 miles. I know the car is old, but the part that gets power to the airbag should last more than 2 years. Volkswagen extended the warranty of the part, but we were outside for both repairs now. The dealer tells me this part is fixed on a regular basis to the point he was surprised he was able to get the part. I feel like for the part that supplies power to the airbag, an extended warranty is not sufficient. (For the information below, I was in a parking lot when the clock spring broke, so speed was irrelevant, np accident occurred)

I did a left-U turn- heard a loud sound, and then all the electrical things on my steering wheel failed, like horn, air bag, and controls. The failed airbag light is on, and it has other warning lights as well. I am now not protected in a crash, nor can I use my horn. I believe from a bit of research that my car has what I think is the same clockspring defect that VW has had in a TON of their vehicles- mine has failed- but does not seem to fall into a safety recall. Why is that? This seems to be a serious safety problem they have had- and I believe it should be covered by the manufacturer.

-the failed part is available for inspection -fire hazard, shock hazard and toxic fume hazard - Audi has issued a recall for the same part on their vehicles https://static.nhtsa.gov/odi/rcl/2017/RCONL-17V622-5223.pdf -there were no warning lamps or other symptoms Description of the Issue: The ground terminal on the Auxiliary Heater also sometimes known as the Supplmentary PTC Heater (P/N 5Q0.963.235)began to corrode which caused it to get so hot that the insulation melted, the heater housing melted and live wires became loose in the passenger compartment. The burning plastic also created terrible fumes inside of the car. Here is a picture of a live wire that has melted the housing and come loose. https://forums.tdiclub.com/index.php?media/aux-heater-1-jpg.140387/ Here is the melted housing where the terminal should normally be. https://forums.tdiclub.com/index.php?media/aux-heater-2-jpg.140386/ This seems to be a common issue in these vehicles and is well known to the car enthusiast community. Here are some links to forums posts which document this issue https://forums.tdiclub.com/index.php?threads/burning-smell-from-heat.513304/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dnNW-onPK9M&ab_channel=mr-fix https://www.seatcupra.net/forums/threads/ptc-heater-burning-smell.459372/