Don't by a VW

The Volkswagen Electric Window Problem

August 2004 update: got rid of the Golf GTI and leased a Honda Accord. Although the Honda is smooth and quiet and refined and the Golf was rather noisier, I miss it because compared with the Honda it shot up the hills effortlessly and returned 28-30MPG easily. Living in a hilly area this is a consideration. Next time I do a test drive, I'm going to insist on seeking out some hills.

Who out there owns a recent-year VW Jetta or Golf?

If so, how many times have the electric windows failed?

A quick read of the MyVWLemon.com site suggests this is an extraordinarily common problem. Some people are up to 10 or 12 window breaks. I'm on my 3rd, and this problem, plus what seems like way too many various rattles and creaks have made me start to loathe my car, a 2000 VW Golf GTI 1.8T. (24,000 miles in case someone is interested!)

I actually thought I might try to fix the problem myself, but the whole mechanism appears to be so crude, that I'd sooner let VW fix it for free (which they are doing apparently for any model past 1995.) Unfortunately it's not a recall. The way to encourage VW to make it a recall, is to get them all to break. The down side is, when a window fails, it's highly inconvenient since it renders the car insecure. My local dealer hasn't got the parts to fix mine yet, but offered to make it secure - geez - two visits to fix one problem, that sounds great service.

Below are a few pictures I took. Click on them to expand the image

VW Owners will recognize the tell-tale sign - tape on the door switch to prevent accidental operation. My driver's side has failed twice (the first time within 2 weeks of new). This was the first break on the passenger side.

Here's what it looks like once you take the internal trim off. The motor is the thing with the orange label. The white thing is a gearbox. All the action happens behind this rather flimsy aluminum panel.

Once you remove this piece, this is what it looks like on the other side. The two vertical black metal parts are the tracks on which run two plastic runners with tabs sticking out. The tabs support the window. In this picture, they are near the top. The left one broke, and I'd attempted a coathanger-wire repair! The criss-cross arrangement ensures that both move up and down together. It's the plastic parts that commonly fail due to stress. The motor is designed to "stall out" when it senses too much load, like when it reaches the top or bottom. This is a recognized way of simulating the action of physical "limit switches" without the need for having actual limit switches, as long as the parts hold up to take the strain when the end is reached and the motor stalls in time. That round black thing on the right (and there's another, harder to see, on the left) are rubber cups that open to allow access presumably for adjustment while the piece is in place. I would consider this pretty hard to do - "keyhole surgery" comes to mind.

This is the other part of the problem. This is one of the two pieces that are clamped onto the bottom of the glass. The bolt was done up super-tight and I didn't want to mess with it. When I'd stuck it all back together again, it appeared that the plastic tabs which support the window lined up with the arms sticking out to the right, rather than the bottom underneath the bolt, which I noticed was heavily greased, perhaps implying that was the part that actually should be in contact with the plastic tab. I still can't really figure out how this arrangement could be expected to reliably work, and particularly, there seems to be nothing to ensure the window goes down, apart from its own weight. To complicate things a bit more, the whole window, and the black metal tracks, are actually slightly curved along a horizontal axis.

This is a close-up of the plastic part - the common culprit. This is the one remaining good one on my passenger side. The little bit sticking out on the right has to support half the weight of the window. It would be a very involved process to ONLY swap out these two parts, since it's where the cables that drive the things up and down (like bicycle brake cables) actually finish and you'd have to mess around getting tensions just right. I'm thinking they have to swap out the whole flimsy aluminum part with motor attached.

This is a close-up of the plastic part which broke off. I understand VW is coming up with metal parts to replace these plastic parts, but it still seems to me there's more to it than just this part. It's the whole connection to the glass which should be redesigned. You'd have thought the bottom of the glass would have a couple of holes in it to pinpoint alignment, rather than just something clamped on it at some variable position. I'm tempted to look at Eve's 1999 Passat (whose windows have never failed) to see how they do it but I think I'd get into big trouble!

Back to Spannertech

VW Owners will recognize the tell-tale sign - tape on the door switch to prevent accidental operation. My driver's side has failed twice (the first time within 2 weeks of new). This was the first break on the passenger side.
Here's what it looks like once you take the internal trim off. The motor is the thing with the orange label. The white thing is a gearbox. All the action happens behind this rather flimsy aluminum panel.
Once you remove this piece, this is what it looks like on the other side. The two vertical black metal parts are the tracks on which run two plastic runners with tabs sticking out. The tabs support the window. In this picture, they are near the top. The left one broke, and I'd attempted a coathanger-wire repair! The criss-cross arrangement ensures that both move up and down together. It's the plastic parts that commonly fail due to stress. The motor is designed to "stall out" when it senses too much load, like when it reaches the top or bottom. This is a recognized way of simulating the action of physical "limit switches" without the need for having actual limit switches, as long as the parts hold up to take the strain when the end is reached and the motor stalls in time. That round black thing on the right (and there's another, harder to see, on the left) are rubber cups that open to allow access presumably for adjustment while the piece is in place. I would consider this pretty hard to do - "keyhole surgery" comes to mind.
This is the other part of the problem. This is one of the two pieces that are clamped onto the bottom of the glass. The bolt was done up super-tight and I didn't want to mess with it. When I'd stuck it all back together again, it appeared that the plastic tabs which support the window lined up with the arms sticking out to the right, rather than the bottom underneath the bolt, which I noticed was heavily greased, perhaps implying that was the part that actually should be in contact with the plastic tab. I still can't really figure out how this arrangement could be expected to reliably work, and particularly, there seems to be nothing to ensure the window goes down, apart from its own weight. To complicate things a bit more, the whole window, and the black metal tracks, are actually slightly curved along a horizontal axis.
This is a close-up of the plastic part - the common culprit. This is the one remaining good one on my passenger side. The little bit sticking out on the right has to support half the weight of the window. It would be a very involved process to ONLY swap out these two parts, since it's where the cables that drive the things up and down (like bicycle brake cables) actually finish and you'd have to mess around getting tensions just right. I'm thinking they have to swap out the whole flimsy aluminum part with motor attached.
This is a close-up of the plastic part which broke off. I understand VW is coming up with metal parts to replace these plastic parts, but it still seems to me there's more to it than just this part. It's the whole connection to the glass which should be redesigned. You'd have thought the bottom of the glass would have a couple of holes in it to pinpoint alignment, rather than just something clamped on it at some variable position. I'm tempted to look at Eve's 1999 Passat (whose windows have never failed) to see how they do it but I think I'd get into big trouble!