The car has 26,000 miles on the clock, has recently been serviced at the VW dealer, has had an air conditioning service etc.
The problems were first noticed when it started to get cold last year so probably Aug/Sept 2013.
It has the dual zone climate control system.
The symptoms are:
Drive for more than an hour constantly without stopping (i.e. on the Motorway) and you start to notice that you're feeling cold. This is with the heating set to 22oC or there abouts. You turn the temp up a couple of degress, no real difference is heard but you wait. Then you put the temp up to max and the fan speed increases but the outlet from the vents is no more than before. This is as if a vent flap somewhere is stopping the air from getting out. Now you're really cold and you've switched the heated seats to try to help but it's not enough. You now press all of the vent buttons, you max out the fan speed as well as the temp. The fan can be heard to be working hard but there is still only a small amount of air coming out of the vents... and I mean all of the vents. Foot vents, windscreen vents, dash vents etc.
You pull off the motorway and come to a junction or you come into some traffic on the motorway for more than 2-3 minutes and all of a sudden you can hear the air flow change from behind the dash and all of a sudden, you've got plenty of hot air! You carry on your journey and it slowly cuts off again so that you're once again frozen and can't get the heat through.
Our Tiguan first started faulting whilst under warranty but it's just run out. Thankfully our VW dealer has had the car in 5 or 6 times now for the same problem and so because it's an ongoing issue, they're still dealing with it under the VW warranty.
So far, they have reset the ECU, then they've done an ECU software update (in fact the whole vehicle had all of the ECU's software updated at the time), then they've replaced the control unit in the dash as this houses the main temperature sensor (small round, looks like a button on the control panel) and they've had it in a few times more testing it to get it to fault but of course, they can't get it to go wrong because they're never driving it for long enough or in extreme enough weather conditions. They have driven it for 2 hours and not had it go wrong but that day was not that hot or cold.
I have plugged in (with Vag-Com) to check for faults (none found), to check various measuring blocks to see what the system is registering but can't find anything obvious.
Then around a month ago, I drove it (3-400 mile journey at varying times of the day) on a typical spring day and found that in the middle of the day when the sun was beating down, after an hour the air conditioning was not keeping me cold enough. Sure enough there wasn't enough air coming through the vents. No amount of pressing buttons etc made any difference but after coming to a stop in traffic, all of a sudden I was freezing cold with a very effective air conditioning system! Later that day on the return journey, it was 4oC outside! Yet again, I was bloody frozen and could get warm enough - same issue, not enough air coming out of the vents.
I am a VW nut through and through but this is starting to get on my wick. My wife is less than impressed to say the least, especially as we now have a 2 month old son. I suggested that we go with a VW for her as a good reliable car. Now I'm starting to regret it.
The car will go back again to VW but I know that they've been onto VW technical several times and have no idea what to do next.
I should add, the engine gets up to temp normally without issue. The heater/air conditioning work well on short journeys so the cooling system or air conditioning systems are not at fault in themselves.
Has anyone been through this already?
Thanks in advance.
MG
The problems were first noticed when it started to get cold last year so probably Aug/Sept 2013.
It has the dual zone climate control system.
The symptoms are:
Drive for more than an hour constantly without stopping (i.e. on the Motorway) and you start to notice that you're feeling cold. This is with the heating set to 22oC or there abouts. You turn the temp up a couple of degress, no real difference is heard but you wait. Then you put the temp up to max and the fan speed increases but the outlet from the vents is no more than before. This is as if a vent flap somewhere is stopping the air from getting out. Now you're really cold and you've switched the heated seats to try to help but it's not enough. You now press all of the vent buttons, you max out the fan speed as well as the temp. The fan can be heard to be working hard but there is still only a small amount of air coming out of the vents... and I mean all of the vents. Foot vents, windscreen vents, dash vents etc.
You pull off the motorway and come to a junction or you come into some traffic on the motorway for more than 2-3 minutes and all of a sudden you can hear the air flow change from behind the dash and all of a sudden, you've got plenty of hot air! You carry on your journey and it slowly cuts off again so that you're once again frozen and can't get the heat through.
Our Tiguan first started faulting whilst under warranty but it's just run out. Thankfully our VW dealer has had the car in 5 or 6 times now for the same problem and so because it's an ongoing issue, they're still dealing with it under the VW warranty.
So far, they have reset the ECU, then they've done an ECU software update (in fact the whole vehicle had all of the ECU's software updated at the time), then they've replaced the control unit in the dash as this houses the main temperature sensor (small round, looks like a button on the control panel) and they've had it in a few times more testing it to get it to fault but of course, they can't get it to go wrong because they're never driving it for long enough or in extreme enough weather conditions. They have driven it for 2 hours and not had it go wrong but that day was not that hot or cold.
I have plugged in (with Vag-Com) to check for faults (none found), to check various measuring blocks to see what the system is registering but can't find anything obvious.
Then around a month ago, I drove it (3-400 mile journey at varying times of the day) on a typical spring day and found that in the middle of the day when the sun was beating down, after an hour the air conditioning was not keeping me cold enough. Sure enough there wasn't enough air coming through the vents. No amount of pressing buttons etc made any difference but after coming to a stop in traffic, all of a sudden I was freezing cold with a very effective air conditioning system! Later that day on the return journey, it was 4oC outside! Yet again, I was bloody frozen and could get warm enough - same issue, not enough air coming out of the vents.
I am a VW nut through and through but this is starting to get on my wick. My wife is less than impressed to say the least, especially as we now have a 2 month old son. I suggested that we go with a VW for her as a good reliable car. Now I'm starting to regret it.
The car will go back again to VW but I know that they've been onto VW technical several times and have no idea what to do next.
I should add, the engine gets up to temp normally without issue. The heater/air conditioning work well on short journeys so the cooling system or air conditioning systems are not at fault in themselves.
Has anyone been through this already?
Thanks in advance.
MG
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