Well I am no mechanic by any means - so I am here to ask some opinions.

My wife's car has been having a hard time starting within the last few weeks. The temps at night have not dropped below 20 degrees, and it has had a hard time turning over in the mornings. She got in it last weekend to go somewhere without letting it warm up and it did some weird things at first - like lost power when driving, and jerked a bit, etc. Once it warmed up it was fine. So I told her to let it warm up before driving it.

Now today it is not turning over at all. I turn the key forward and all the indicator lights come on... and most of them go off. The three that stay on are the engine light, battery light and epc light. Does this mean the battery needs replaced?

When I do try to turn it on, it tries, and then the dash lights flicker extremely fast and that's it....

Any ideas? Thanks so much!

 

change the battery. You're actually suppose to let the car warm up for at least 30 seconds, well with any car, but VW really need it.

 

Well we put it on the charger and tested it with a load tester and it is all reading good.

Do you mean to let the engine warm up for 30 minutes or 30 seconds? On the real cold days I always give my vehicles 20-25 mins to warm up.

Thanks for the reply. I was just wondering what others thought about this... But with the readings I will see how well this charge holds before replacing the battery or doing further investigation.

 

i would change the battery too

 

If I'm in a hurry I at least let the car up for about a min. Usually I'll let it run for a bit, which is good to do anyways. Sounds like you have a dying cell in your battery and after awhile, the battery gives out. If this battery dies again, change it. Then keep track the first few days on how long it takes to die again. I changed mine and never had another problem.

 

All righty.... I'll keep an eye on it.