2011 sportwagen intermittent no start cold weather

Well this is my first post since I purchased my recalled 2011 Jetta sportwagen with manual transmission 3 weeks ago. My issue is this, I live in Minnesota and work in northern Minnesota where it gets cold (-40 two weeks ago without windchill) and for some reason when my car sits outside and I go to start it I get nothing. All the lights come on like they are supposed to but it doesn’t crank over. I bought a frost heater and if it’s plugged in it seems to not have a issue or if it sits at home in the heated garage it doesn’t do it but if it sits outside unplugged like yesterday it fails to turn over. BTW it was 16 degrees Fahrenheit yesterday when I went to leave work so it wasn’t cold by any means. The few times I have had this Issue I have fiddled with the key and kept turning the ignition on and off and it seemed to work. The car only has 32000 miles on it and the battery is brand new from VW. Does anyone have any info that can guide somewhere. I see they have issues with ignition switches but why would the cold effect that?

Kimper: You may want to read the hard start/ no start sticky (first thread in this forum) as it may possibly be the problem.
ytjetta

Kimper said:

Well this is my first post since I purchased my recalled 2011 Jetta sportwagen with manual transmission 3 weeks ago. My issue is this, I live in Minnesota and work in northern Minnesota where it gets cold (-40 two weeks ago without windchill) and for some reason when my car sits outside and I go to start it I get nothing. All the lights come on like they are supposed to but it doesn’t crank over. I bought a frost heater and if it’s plugged in it seems to not have a issue or if it sits at home in the heated garage it doesn’t do it but if it sits outside unplugged like yesterday it fails to turn over. BTW it was 16 degrees Fahrenheit yesterday when I went to leave work so it wasn’t cold by any means. The few times I have had this Issue I have fiddled with the key and kept turning the ignition on and off and it seemed to work. The car only has 32000 miles on it and the battery is brand new from VW. Does anyone have any info that can guide somewhere. I see they have issues with ignition switches but why would the cold effect that?

Click to expand...

I have a front radiator cover on it from IDparts so I don’t think it’s a radiator issue.

Had the same thing they put new battery in it ,the ground wire finger loose .

If you're not using a diesel fuel additive there's a chance your fuel has gelled at forty below.

aainds iowa said:

Had the same thing they put new battery in it ,the ground wire finger loose .

Click to expand...

Yeah, the first thing I'd do is check the battery terminals for tightness and corrosion. Also, batteries don't like -40 whether they're new or not. Did the motor spin slowly or quickly after fiddling with the key? Could also be a bad ignition switch.

The engine spun over very quickly. Kind of like it does every morning when it sits in a heated garage. Still not sure if there is a connection with the frost heater or not but I have never had it happen when it was plugged in and only twice with it not plugged in.

If it started up 'normally' after fiddling with the ignition it seems to rule out fuel or glow plugs. I would think either the starter solenoid isn't getting power (ignition switch circuit fault) or the main power to the starter has a fault. I'd tend to suspect the lower power circuit through the ignition switch first assuming you have checked the obvious problem of battery terminal corrosion and no lights dim more than normal when you try to start the car.

As a point of reference my garage, attached to the house but not heated normally sits about 30 F warmer than ambient in cold weather. ie I have 15 F in the garage when it is -22 F outside. In these conditions the car after an overnight sit of 14 hours will register a coolant temperature of 23 F without the block heater (and 122 F after 2 hours of heater), all according to my Polar reading the ecu. The coldest temperature I read is actually DFP out, which I am using to estimate the temperature in the garage. The other day I left the car parked for about 6 hours with a daytime high of about 0 F and it was -12 F when I went to start it. Coolant temperature was still reading about 20 F.

Point I am making is that after most of a day sitting it is still nowhere near as cold under the hood as it is outside the car, which is probably similar to what is at the ignition switch. Can you correlate the failure to start with the length of time the car has been sitting?

Well the two times I have had the issue it sat outside from 630am until 830pm so it had a good 14 hour cold soak.