Hey all.

Just joined and this place looks good to answer all my VW questions so Ill start with a few.

My car is a VW Mark 4 Golf Estate TDI90 (Right hand drive) from the year 2000.

1) I noticed a few weeks ago that I was getting severe condensation in the whole car. So much show that the front demister couldn't cope and nor could the rear (Ill get to why the rear cant in a bit). The first thing that popped into my head is that I had infact transported some plastic wrapping that was very wet and silly me I left it in the car over night. So with that in mind I googled how to absorb moisture. The solution was get two small trays and but some salt in.

That really worked a treat however after some heavy rain over the past few days I noticed that the "Boot door is open" light on the dash and the boot light at the back of the car in the roof was on constantly, even if I knew it was perfectly closed.

Since then the sheet of carpet that covers the loading bay is very damp and I can see a trail of wetness from where the lock on the boot door actually locks onto the body of the car. Any part of the boot locking system that you can touch is wet.

So, that seems to be why the boot light is always on, water must be messing with the electrics. Should I take the fuse out to save electrical problems?

Are they any common problems like what I talk about? The actual lock itself seems to be a lil dodgy. Sometimes (quite rare) I can turn the key 5 or 6 times without doing anything and today I cant turn the key to put the full lock on the boot door.

2) The glow plugs never activate. Sometimes when the engine is at half of normal operating temp the glow plugs will go on when you turn the ignition and the engine will rev slightly higher then normal. But when it a cold morning the GP's never switch on.
From TDI club.com the problem has been narrowed down to a strong possibility that a coolant temp sensor at the rear passenger side of the engine is gone a little mad.
I just thought I would mention it to get some opionions.

3) The rear window demister. As mentioned earlier the rear window demister doesnt cope well to severe condensation, not surprisingly but an extra reason is that a previous owner of the car didnt clean the window very intelligently and/or loaded the car really badly. Most of the heating element lines that go across the window have either a very slight nick of a few huge chunks taken out of them totalling almost 10 centimetres when combined!

Anyway of fixing besides getting a new window?

Thanks for any help,
Regards
bbk