2005 Volkswagen Jetta TDI: Fo Shizzle Ma Padiddle

VW's (among others) are known for this....tends to come from having a history of electrical problems (not commenting on current generations, just the past 2 or so).

Joe

Aha! See? I told you so!

http://blogs.edmunds.com/roadtests/2008/08/in-the-land-of-the-blind-the-one-eyed-man-is-king.html#comments

"1. The original bulbs were both pulled from the same bin, likely from the same production lot and subjected to the same vibrations, on/off cycles, electrical variations and temperature gradients. When one goes out, expect the other to go out soon thereafter.
"

Please... you're supposed to be a bunch of people who love cars. People who love cars care enough about them to do basic maitenance. Don't give us another gut-wrenching story of how a dealership charged you 60 bucks for a six dollar headlight. Empower those who are capable but uneducated by replacing this light yourselves!

"you're supposed to be a bunch of people who love cars."

There's no love there. No more than the kid whos parents buy them a car to abuse and then buy them another when that one breaks. The connection doesn't seem to go any farther than that.

Electrical issues on a European branded Mexican car? Why am I not surprised?

@bepperb: Replacing the headlight is not the easiest thing in the world. Do it wrong you can break the bulb or pull it out of the socket.

didn't you ever notice that the right side of the road was brighter than the other?

"Electrical issues on a European branded Mexican car? Why am I not surprised?"

mikeolan, toyota builds the Camrys in the US. Chevy builds the Caravan in the US too. Their reliability is different not because Toyota gets the smart US workers while Chevy the less briliant.

It is because reliability is desinged in the car just like assembly simplicity and no matter how builds it, it has the same reliabilty due to the process used.

In the same way, VW reliability sucks the same whether it is made in Mexico or Germany :p

@ Mikeolan,
It has a headlight out...that does not mean the car has electrical problems it means the other just went out so this one was bound to also. Also VW's have the headlights on all the time because they use them as DRL's so they go out more often.

Haha, I love the part "I let Mike, our vehicle testing coordinatior, know about it..."

@hotfrips - Well VW should license whatever technology everyone else has that makes headlights last longer than 4 months.

VW's always have a light out. Seems to happen more to them than to any other brand.

One time I drove past my friends as they were out for a run one evening. The next day I told them I saw them out running, and they said "Oh yeah, we saw a Cutlass with one burned out tail-light so we thought that was you". I had no idea my tail-light was burned out, but apparently it had been for quite some time and they used it to identify my car. Of course they never bothered to tell me about it. Ah such dear friends.

banhugh writes: "mikeolan, toyota builds the Camrys in the US. Chevy builds the Caravan in the US too. Their reliability is different not because Toyota gets the smart US workers while Chevy the less briliant."

Chevy builds the Caravan?

I'm not sure if you're misrepresenting GM or Chrysler.

Slightly off topic, but as we're talking about VWs with lights out, I saw a new Audi A4 the other day with one set of LED DRLs out. My thought was, "Already??"

My family has 2 2004 VW golfs and we've only ever had one headlight and one tail light out. The taillights are easily changed, I'm not sure about the headlights though. Its not a sign of an electrical issue, if anything it just means VW potentially had a poor bulb design/supplier.

And no, its surprisingly hard to notice a headlight out especially in city driving. I only noticed mine because I pulled up in front of a store and could see myself reflecting back.

Headlights go out. It happens, and a bulb failure isn't the fault of the car.

@Actualsize : that's true with most manufacturers. Not VW.

See the follow-up blog entry. The bulb filament was simply burnt out; the wiring, switches and relays were fine. Not a cause for alarm at 62k miles, I think.

Update: While it isn't universal for vehicles to use their primary headlight bulbs as daytime running lights (DRLs), it is quite common. But many that do this send a reduced voltage through the bulbs in DRL mode to prevent bulb life from being cut short due to the more severe duty cycle.

It appears the VW didn't do that here--the lights are just as bright when off or on, indicating they probably use full voltage in DRL mode. That's bad on two levels: 1) the bulbs won't last as long and; 2) the bright DRLs might lead you to drive around later into the evening before you finally switch on your headlights (triggered by inability to see the dash, not the road), leaving no taillights or side markers for others to see for a longer time in twilight.

It isn't a wiring problem, it's an indication that the engineers either decided on a cheaper/simpler DRL headlight wiring design or forgot to consider bulb life in the equation.

Bottom line: VW owners of this vintage should check their headlights once in awhile and know how to change them.

I had a 2000 VW Jetta, and the thing was constantly blowing bulbs. It only did the headlight once in the year that I owned it. I replaced it myself, but it isn't a job I would recommend unless you have a lot of patience. It took me about 45 minutes to replace the stupid thing.

There's a better solution. Disable the silly DRLs. I did this on my 2002 Jetta shortly after I got it (it's all in the switch and is very easy to do). I never liked how I couldn't turn the headlights off when approaching a place or area that requests dimming of the headlights. That's just lame. I I don't need the car's engineers and marketers to think they're smarter than me in every driving situation.

Now, I have control If I want them on, I'll turn them on myself.