Tiguan-a survirvor?

[Rosey]

Hello everyone,

Hope you all had a wonderful start this year and making the most with your Tiguans.

We almost went on a roller coaster drive with our black Tig 147 when we took it for a long drive ( Mel, Merimbula , NSW) covering 1700ks. Going leg was without any issues except for the being flashed bit arrrrgghhhhh very first speeding ticket in years lol but boy felt awesome to put the foot down!. . Petrol averaged 9L/100km, Leather seats were comfortable,didn’t feel the heat too much @ 38deg. Overtaking was no issue at all in this mighty little car. We got bolder and tried out few unsealed roads leading to some beaches w/o dramas and thought it had a good firm grip. Covered with dust and mud, the car still managed to turn heads and even got a few thumbs up from fellow travelers! These were the fun part!

Now here is where the not so much exciting bit starts!

After driving all the way down on an unsealed road on the return leg, tig unexplainingly wouldn’t start! It just shut down completely..dead, kaput! without any warning signs!!! It felt like a scene straight from a horror movie, stuck in the middle of nowhere, with no phone reception (of course ), 30 kms all the way down into the forest, could it get any worse?….. NO, thankfully no, our bad luck ended here, a nice gentleman who happened to be there too offered to help. Together, we tried frantically to revive tiggy for about 30 mins –nothing, no response! Scheize! Scheize!!. Deeply frustrated we took our things out as our savior offered to take us back to “civilization” to contact VW assist. So we started manually locking the car, all the time thinking that was the end of our holiday BUT then a miracle occurred, the Tig revived!!!! not sure if it’s by manually locking the doors activated something, but it worked! And tig was all set to go as if nothing happened. Some settings changed but nothing that we couldn’t reset, however it did give us a BIG scare. After that, all the warning signs came on and stayed on for a good few mins, we decided to start by checking the tyre pressure which the car was indicating as low,and once fixed all the warning signs disappeared. Now, I don’t think that all the warning signs need to come on to indicate a low tyre pressure now does it? hmmmm some gremlins at work?? and would you believe that despite a presumably dead tiguan, the bloke who so kindly offered to help, was all drooling over it!!!!!! must be a real solid fan this mate!

Came back home without any further dramas, yet to drive the car to their service centre to have a look, will keep you guys posted!

Cheers

[Arctra]

Oh wow. yeah, that is a bit of a concern.

Regarding your lights on the dash coming on for a few minutes before resetting, I had something similar when my battery died a couple of months back. I found that once we had driven a while and the ABS etc had a chance to do all their checks and stuff it was fine and the lights went out. A dealer scan of the onboard electronics didn't pick anything of concern up, so I suspect it was just your car computers sorting themselves out.

Please keep us posted on your progress getting it diagnosed though.

[brh1978]

A very similar incident happend to my mates TSI Golf 6 about a month ago. He used his car in the morning fine, an hour later it was completely dead, couldn't unlock it with the remote at all. Luckily I knew that you could pop off the little key hole cover on the drivers door handle to manually unlock the car. Once opened there was no life, completely dead, not even an odometer.

He left it for a few hours as he was busy, later that day he thought he'd test it again before calling VW assist. Strangely everything was back to normal, it unlocked and started with no probs and to date it hasn't had any issues.

He's not a car person and didn't bother getting it checked out by VW...strange.

[Maverick]

After driving all the way down on an unsealed road on the return leg, tig unexplainingly wouldn’t start! It just shut down completely..dead, kaput! without any warning signs!!! It felt like a scene straight from a horror movie, stuck in the middle of nowhere, with no phone reception (of course ), 30 kms all the way down into the forest, could it get any worse?….. NO, thankfully no, our bad luck ended here, a nice gentleman who happened to be there too offered to help. Together, we tried frantically to revive tiggy for about 30 mins –nothing, no response! Scheize! Scheize!!. Deeply frustrated we took our things out as our savior offered to take us back to “civilization” to contact VW assist. So we started manually locking the car, all the time thinking that was the end of our holiday BUT then a miracle occurred, the Tig revived!!!! not sure if it’s by manually locking the doors activated something, but it worked! And tig was all set to go as if nothing happened. Some settings changed but nothing that we couldn’t reset, however it did give us a BIG scare. After that, all the warning signs came on and stayed on for a good few mins, we decided to start by checking the tyre pressure which the car was indicating as low,and once fixed all the warning signs disappeared. Now, I don’t think that all the warning signs need to come on to indicate a low tyre pressure now does it? hmmmm some gremlins at work?? and would you believe that despite a presumably dead tiguan, the bloke who so kindly offered to help, was all drooling over it!!!!!! must be a real solid fan this mate!

The logical place to look is the battery terminals, one is probably loose and this is what caused the problem. All you need is a 10mm spanner to tighten them up but wiggle them first to see if they're loose. I'd be doing this asap because if your battery dies or the terminal comes loose whilst the car is locked you will have to smash a window to get in just to open the bonnet.

BTW you can't actually lock the car if the battery is dead as the locks require power to operate so it was probably slamming the door that got the car going again.

[clip]

Your warning lights will also come on after restarting if your battery has been disconnected (consistent with what you reported). They stay on for a few minutes or until you start driving (at least mine do anyway).

[Tedhaggie]

THats definitely consisted with a battery disconnect. as I had reason to disnnect battery -suspect a compter glitch!!
The story
When I started the tig after work had buzz/ rattle from rear left door speaker. user faders and volume cotroll on RNS510 had no effect on noise, Nor did Turning off and removing key - buzz was on even after locking vehicle,

In desperation disconnected battery. Noise stopped , reconnected all OK,
restarted all normal but had to drive about 50m to clear all warning .

[Rosey]

Thanks for your inputs guys, will ask Mr Rosey to check when he arrives home. So you guys think I should still go ahead with vw service centre if found that a loose battery was infact the reason?

If the battery was loose how come it started again w/o any further probs? we made a few more stops on the way, and it never collapsed on us again

Ironically , the way we saw it, the key to the problem appeared to have been the key itself as it seemed to have triggered something when we manually started locking the doors!!:

Anyhow, I will keep you all posted.

Thanks again

Cheers

[Rosey]

Update

Whoever pointed to the battery being the cause of the problem ..well guys.............you were so spot on!

pretty impressive.....

Cheers