HELP! 2006 New Beetle TDI won't start in park!

After a 75k basic service, my TDI wouldn't fire in park; when you turn the key, the engine turns over but there is no firing. I had it towed immediately and after a diagnostic check, this was deemed a fluke. Car started up perfectly after sitting in the shop for 3 days. Since this initial 'fluke' this has happened on 5 additional occasions. I have taken it to two additional garages (one being a VW dealer) and no one has a clue what to do. Finally, yesterday when the nonstarting occured, a stranger told me to try to start it in neutral rather than park. Lo and behold, it started! What is up with this???

Could be a bad transmission control unit?

Also could be a linkage problem, or an range switch/ Multifunction switch problem.

There is no 75K mile service....

I would suspect a bad or misadjusted neutral "safety" switch.

Service intervals on your Bug are every 10,000 miles, regardless what the dealer says.

You should start saving now, the 80,000 mile service is the timing belt change - DO NOT take it to a dealer for this (or preferably any other service), find a Guru in your area instead...you can thank me later...

The timing belt is at 100K miles. Inspection is at 80K miles.

According to my maintenance schedule, there was a general maintenance (oil change) at 75k.

Ok, thanks for your input...how does one find a Guru in my area? I am in the middle of no where!!

You're looking at the gas engine schedule I bet. Some VW gas engines have 5K mile intervals, some have 10K miles. TDIs have had 10K mile intervals for many many years.

Page 24 is the TDI schedule:
http://www.bentleypublishers.com/tech/vw/vw.2006.main.pdf

Here's the guru "list":

http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=U...697695806278756.00046bc7db18f415cf004&t=h&z=3

thank you

Thanks for the guru list...that will be helpful! We thought we had the problem solved...changed the fuel filter and got a new battery. It started perfectly for 25 tries then poof...right back to the nonstarts! ARGH

Bob_Fout said:

The timing belt is at 100K miles. Inspection is at 80K miles.

Click to expand...

Bob,
For no reason the dealer or VWOA could give me, the official replacement interval on the 2006 New Beetle is 80K (there is no inspection interval listed). In 2005 it was 80K inspection, 100K replace. Doesn't make sense to me, but that IS the schedule.

Weird, huh!!!

What does your owner's manual say about it? 80K or 100K miles? The linked document from VW shows 100K miles.

My guess is your dealer is doing like most dealers and fishes for money.

Bob_Fout said:

What does your owner's manual say about it? 80K or 100K miles? The linked document from VW shows 100K miles.

My guess is your dealer is doing like most dealers and fishes for money.

Click to expand...

Bob,
In the linked document, page 25 of 29 states 80K miles for timing belt replacement on the 1.9 liter TDI. So does the maintenance schedule on the VW web site, and the owners manual I have from my '06 says the same thing.

It is weird how just a year older car would go to 100K - maybe they were getting an unacceptable number of failures at that mileage?

Jees, I really misread the service schedule . I have no idea what I was looking at on it that I thought was the TB. Sorry!