Cruise control problem

I have a 2004 Passat that I purchased on May 24. It now has 8100 miles on it. I consistently use the cruise control. On three occasions while pushing the resume button the cruise control became inoperable. It remained inoperable until the ignition was shut down and restarted.

The first time it happened I took it to VW. Nothing was detected on the computer and they said it was "operating according to sepcts."

After the curise control stopped operating two additional times while returning from Bloomington Ill. to Fred. Va. last week, I stopped by the the VW garage today. I was told by the service manager that until the cruise is not operating when I bring the car in, there is nothing they can do. (He is going to check to see if VW has issued a service bulltin on the problem, however.)

Has anyone had this problem, and if so, was it fixed? Any advice?

By the way, the car averaged on the round trip from Va. to IL:

- 40.0 MPG (824 miles) going out, and
- 37.4 MPG (814 miles) returing. Note: One leg of the return trip(400 miles) was in strong head winds and torrential rains. That leg averaged 35.9 MPG which brought the average down to the 37.4 MPG.)

I have had the same problem on My New Passat 3-4 times
That is a Standard VW Answer.......

Reset the emergency (parking) brake. Cures the problem every time.

Do you reset the parking brakes when the car is at rest or while at road speed?

Does this coincide with the low fuel light? I tried to make it 650 miles on a tank and when the low fuel light came on I tried to reset the cruse and the cruse would not work. I made it home refueled and like magic the cruise worked again. I thought it was a safety feature to let you know it is time to fuel up in case you forget about the light.

No. It had nearly a half tank and there were no warning lights on.

I am concern that the cause and fix for this problem will never be found.

The last time the cruise became inoperable I pulled off to the side of the interstate, and turned the passat off and started it up again and then the cruise worked fine.

Sounds like you gotta drive the sucker in to the stealership once when the cruise has aborted, leave the engine running, and INSIST they send someone out in the car with you.... that will be the only proof in their eyes!

Is the cruise control inoperative or does the RESUME button act like the SET button? This is how mine operates most of the time. Everything else works, you just have to accelerate back up to speed yourself and the SET it again. It is very annoying when traveling on side roads but then that is how Toyota cruise controls always worked, every stop or drop below 35 mph cleared your setting. Our 2001.5 has never done this, BTW.

We have also had the MFA display go blank once and then recover the next time the car was started. There be ghosts in the 2004's...

Ken

The reset button will act like the set button also. But when it is inoperative, it will not engage at all unless the ignition is turned off and restarted.

I have had the same problem and the dealership had the same response. It has been working good lately but I am just waiting for it to act up. When you say reset your parking break are you saying pull the handle and place it back?? How many gallons are you getting in your tank?

Yes, pull up the lever and make sure it's down all the way.

My wife told me our 2005 has done this a couple of times. She did say that she was able to set it again though. Our dealer also said they haven't heard of the problem (that was just two weeks ago).

The dealers will tell you they never have problems with their cars and you're the only one who complains. Standard answer ALL THE D*MN TIME.

For what its worth...

We had similar symptoms with the cruise control on our 2002 Volvo S-40 gasser...

Symptoms: You'd be traveling along on cruise, when all of a sudden, the cruise stopped working. Turning the cruise off & on would have no effect. Turning off the motor & re-starting would always reset whatever was wrong.

Took it to the Volvo stealership, and they replaced some sort of "vacuum pump" under warranty. Never had any further issues with the vehicle. We traded that vehicle last June, so I don't have the records to look at & see exactly what was replaced.

I'm not familiar with the parts of the VW cruise (on a diesel vs. a gasser), but could a similar part be the issue???

The cruise on a TDI is fully computer controlled (there is no throttle- the "go pedal" is just an input to the ECU) therefore there is no vacuum throttle control setup like on a gasser.

I was driving on the highway with cruise control on then just out of the blue the traction control light flashed twice and kicked off cruise control sounded like my engine was going too stall I gave it some gas and came back too life. Weird