Do I have a rain sensor?

I was looking at threads about rain sensors and still can't figure it out.

My car has a rectangular thing where the mirror contacts the windshield (guess it's glued there?) but it doesn't have the 4 diamond shapes as in the pics I have seen of the sensor; it's just plain grey. Is that a dummy piece of plastic?

The date of manufacture is 10/2012 but it is called a 2013 model.

The back of the rear view mirror shows a little rectangular port on the left side, the light sensor I guess.

Reason this came up, I'm getting the windshield replaced tomorrow and the guy wanted to know if I have a sensor or not. He got the VIN from me and called my dealer and they told him I did! Don't know why they asked about the sensor anyway; why should it affect what windshield you get?

Post a pic. According to your DOM, you should have the sensor, but you would need to enable it with a VCDS cable. The feature was never enabled on the SE's from the factory since it was part of the SEL package upgrade, but the hardware was there. The change to a housing without the sensor was toward the 13 mid model year. My 14 does not have the capability, which was a bummer...

Picture would be best, I think only the SE+Nav got the sensor in 13 and totally deleted for 14

Well, is a pic really necessary? It's a featureless grey rectangle with rounded corners, within a larger black rectangle with rounded corners. No diamonds. Seems like a pic wouldn't add much information to this, heh.

I guess what I am really asking is, do all true rain sensors have the 4 diamonds, or not?

PaulB said:

Well, is a pic really necessary? It's a featureless grey rectangle with rounded corners, within a larger black rectangle with rounded corners. No diamonds. Seems like a pic wouldn't add much information to this, heh.
I guess what I am really asking is, do all true rain sensors have the 4 diamonds, or not?

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Sounds like you just have the plastic blank. no rain sensor.
Your car probably has the headlight sensor on the dash between the defroster vents since no rain/light sensor under the mirror.
Pretty sure these cars have one or the other and the ones with the rain sensor don't have any sensor on the dash.
The one on the dash is easily visible from outside the car.
Page 2 & 3 of this thread has pictures of the sensor and the blank.
http://forums.tdiclub.com/showthread.php?t=365468&highlight=rain+sensor&page=3

If it doesn't look like this, you don't have a rain light sensor (RLS)...



The 4 black diamonds and the background behind them are the rain sensor. The two white prisms (one on each side of the sensor) are the ambient light sensors that control the automatic headlights; one looks up and the other looks forward. The sensor on the driver's side of the mirror itself is the forward-looking light sensor for the auto dimming mirror.

The plain black plastic that you describe is the dummy plate that goes in place of the RLS. Your automatic headlights will use the sun sensor in the center of the dash board's defrost vent (that little black plastic thing), which is part of the climate control system but also provides feedback for the automatic headlights if the vehicle doesn't have a RLS. I believe all Passats have a sun sensor unless there is some unicorn that has neither auto headlights nor Climatronic... there is a part number for the sun sensor dummy plate in the catalog.

A close-up pic of the RLS...

OK, thanks for that pic even though I was too lazy to post one! Guess I don't have the rain sensor. I do have a little bit of black plastic between defroster vents for the headlights.

I was reading through this thread and saw the picture above. I have this RLS on my 2012 Passat TDI SEL but do not have the automatic windshield wipers! ABS responded that this model should have it, but mine does not. Why would Volkswagen deliver this car with the RLS enabled? Would it be easy to enable?

Rain sensing wipers must be enabled in VCDS. Volkswagen left it disabled because the system is occasionally buggy (as reported by a few members here, myself included). You can also enable automatic window closing when the car senses rain when it is locked. Both features are described in the VCDS tweaks thread (sticky) at the top of this forum.

Yes it's easy to activate, just find someone local with a vag-com. There is a list of members on both this site and on the vwvortex site.
You can also activate the windows/sunroof close with rain sensor and many more items, read the passat NMS VCDS sticky above....lots of good info in there.

You probably don't. Mine doesn't either. I had to replace the window when it took a rock and the glass people said their data showed I had a sensor. I didn't and I knew it. The glass tech said he'd never seen anything like it when he came to do the window. All the stuff was there but no sensor just a block of plastic.

PaulB said:

I was looking at threads about rain sensors and still can't figure it out.

My car has a rectangular thing where the mirror contacts the windshield (guess it's glued there?) but it doesn't have the 4 diamond shapes as in the pics I have seen of the sensor; it's just plain grey. Is that a dummy piece of plastic?

The date of manufacture is 10/2012 but it is called a 2013 model.

The back of the rear view mirror shows a little rectangular port on the left side, the light sensor I guess.

Reason this came up, I'm getting the windshield replaced tomorrow and the guy wanted to know if I have a sensor or not. He got the VIN from me and called my dealer and they told him I did! Don't know why they asked about the sensor anyway; why should it affect what windshield you get?

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Yes, you do; you just need to activate it.

physicshogon said:

Yes, you do; you just need to activate it.

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Over a month ago the OP responded he did not have the pictured RLS on his car. So no he doesn't and programming won't be possible without the sensor.

A simple way to find out would be to post a picture of the mirror mount from the outside.

^^^this. Sounds like he does NOT have it, based on his description.

I walked threw the local vw lot last july and noticed that the SEL and SE+nav had the sensor but the SE didn't. VW has since removed it from all trim levels

Wow, this is still being kicked around? My dealer (everyone from the salesman on down or up, to the VW techs swear up and down my car, 2013 Passat TDI SEL Prem DOES NOT have this sensor. I've yet to find someone in my area with a gizmo to see. But so far, I'm doing just fin turning them on myself.

tc1uscg said:

Wow, this is still being kicked around? My dealer (everyone from the salesman on down or up, to the VW techs swear up and down my car, 2013 Passat TDI SEL Prem DOES NOT have this sensor. I've yet to find someone in my area with a gizmo to see. But so far, I'm doing just fin turning them on myself.

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We have posted pics. Have you seen what the sensor looks like?