Steering wheel buttons not working

[Murdoch]

Earlier this year I found I was unable to use the controls on the steering wheel and the airbag / engine fault light came on - so my local VW service centre replaced under warranty a part "under the steering wheel" - all good

The dam problem has come back today and the 3 year warranty ran out about 8 days ago - what do you think my chances are that VW will fix this for free?

This hasn't been the only problem and for such an expensive van the reputation is getting well and truly tinted from my experience

Thoughts?

Thanks

 

[Murdoch]

bump .............

 

[Mooncat]

This is the clock spring within the steering wheel control module and a theory of mine is that it breaks more often on vehicles where they are turned from lock to lock fairly frequently. It could be as simple as the dealer not plugging an electrical connection in properly when the replacement was fitted although this is fairly unlikely to be honest. I'd certainly try VW to see if they will do a policy claim (a fix outside of the warranty period) as these things usually live for eight years, not eight months. If you're confident enough to pop out the airbag, you can check the wire connection between the control module and the steering wheel yourself although you'll not see the connections from the vehicle to the control module until you take the steering wheel off.

In preparation for bad news from VW, get the part number from your warranty repair paperwork (or a VCDS scan) and see how much a replacement is. For reference, the one in MY16 is 6R0959654. I replaced one of these on a Yeti recently and we saved over £100 getting it shipped from China, just had to remember not to drive at 60mph into any trees whilst we waited the ten days for it to arrive!