park
VW Stuck in Park
I see from my server logs; I am starting to get hits on people searching for help with the same VW stuck in park problem I had. In hopes that this helps others out, I'm posting the steps I got from VW's roadside assistance below. These instructions worked on my 2002 VW Golf GLS with an automatic transmission, but may or may not work on any other vehicle. And I make no claim that they are safe to use on any vehicle. So if you follow these instructions, you do so at your own risk!
- Press down on the break pedal 5 times.
- On the 5 time, hold down the break pedal and start the car.
- Let the car run for 5 seconds, while still holding down the break pedal, and then turn it off.
- Again while still holding down the break pedal, give the key a one quarter turn in the ignition.
- Still holding down the break pedal, move the gear shift so that it is between Neutral and Drive.
- Finally, with your foot holding down the break pedal, start the car. Hopefully, you can now shift your into whatever gear you need and drive it to the nearest VW service center to get it fixed.
Trying to lose my business?
Back in April, we bought a new car from Carousel Motors. And until yesterday, it's been great. I let me explain...
Yesterday, I went home for my lunch hour. When my time was up, I went down to the car to get back to work. The car unlocked and started up without any problems. What was a problem is the ASL light turned on and stayed on. Normally, this light turns off once you press down on the brake pedal. It's there to prevent you from shifting into gear without having the brake pressed to avoid accidents. Except now, my foot was on the brake and I was still stuck in park. I fiddled around with it for a bit, but couldn't get aything to happen1. I rushed back inside, called by boss and worked the rest of the from home via the corporate VPN.
After work, I called the dealership but found out the service department closed an hour before I called. I talked to the salesman who sold us the car and he suggested calling the VW roadside assistance 800# to have them tow the car out. I called them up, waiting on hold for several minutes and then got to talk to *mumble, mumble #1*. He had me go out ot my car and try several things to get the car out of park. I was just nearing the end of his instructions when the battery in my phone died. *grumpf*
I tromped back up into the apartment and called back on a wired phone. Again I had to wait several minutes and then I got to talk to *mumble, mumble #2*. I explained what was wrong and what I'd done so far. He gave me the complete instructions and I wrote them down. Then I set down my phone and ran outside to try them. Success! I could now get my car out of park! Before I ran back inside to relate my success, I turned off the car and tried starting/shifting normally. No luck, that was still screwy. I went back inside, picked up the phone and... And nothing, all I got was dead air. *double grumf*
I called the roadside assistance a third time and once again had to wait several minutes for the privilege of talking to *unidentified pissy man*. This guy never gave me his name. I told him everything that I'd been through and the resuylts of their procedure for getting the car out of park. I asked if I was supposed to be ok now, or if I still needed to get it to the dealership? He grumpily answered that "of course I needed to get it to the dealership." All this around, though not entirely their fault, was not exactly making my evening any better.
Today, I called the dealership and their receptionist was waaaaaaay to gorram happy for 7:45 AM. Fortunately, she quickly transfered me to their service department. And they answered the phone with a "Good Afternoon". While time is relative and there was a period in my youth where I always used "Good Morning" as a greeting that was high school for crying out loud. Still, she could have just been tired by the early hour of the day, so I didn't go off on her. I explained my problem and that the roadside assistance people had given me a procedure to get the car out of park. She said since I could technically drive it; their first opening to have somebody look at the car is next Monday. I made the appointment, but it left me feeling very disappointed. I think if this is the average level of customer service I get from them then when we replace our other car, it's not going to be another Volkswagen. As much as I like driving the car and as good as their sales department is; if the rest of their team is lacking in customer service then it's not worth it.
Or I could just be grumpy from having to handle all this so flippin' early in the morning.
1 Actually, that's not entirely accurate. All I did appeared to make things worse. After my fiddling with it, the EPC light came on. Though after following the instructions from roadside assistance that light went back out.
Daaaaang, that’s loaded!
Today, I have to travel to my company's home office to teach a class. The day before I'm supposed to drive over I find I've got a voice mail. As I do 99.9999% of my job either via emails, IMs or F2F, this in itself was extremely odd. Then I listened to the message and found out it was a sales manager from dealership where we bought the new car.
It turns out that they want to borrow the car for a bit to have to their insurance people look it over (since it was on the lot at the time of the tornados hitting Iowa City). I thought this more than a little odd. As I was busy getting ready for my trip to the home office, I kind of blew off the message. Then this morning, I got another call from the dealership asking for the car again. I called the guy back and explained that I'm driving out of town today. He said it should really only take about 20 minutes and they'd give the car a wash while they had it. He also said they'd bring a loaner by for me, just in case.
I agreed to let him do it and then immediately got a tad nervous about it. I checked their website and found him on it. A little bit later our receptionist called and said a guy from the dealership was here. I went up to the front desk and the only person around was a scrawny looking kid. But he was wearing a sweatshirt with the dealership's name & logo on it. Then he held out a key to him and we walked to the parking lot. The key was to a 2005 Volkswagen Passat. The stationwagon version. With a dealer's plate in the back window, a sales sticker on the same. I felt a lot better about giving him my key and took him to my car. He drove off, and I hopped into the Passat for a quick peek.
Oh my God! The wagon is fully loaded with all the goodies Volkswagen has to offer. Now I feel slightly cheated in that I won't get to drive this puppy for my trip. Don't get me wrong, I love our new car and our new car does have more gadgets in it than any car I've ever owned. But still, that Passat sitting outside if so dang plush and luxurious. I could definitely enjoy driving that card. 
Oh well, at least I'm getting a free car wash. Though, now that I think about it; I'm wondering if I should have asked them to top off the gas tank. With gas at $2.84/gallon, that would have been a nice bit of savings for me. *shrug* That's probably being a little greedy and they've been good to me already.
Real Life Recap
I've not been posting anything for a while because... Well, I just have not felt like it which is not to say I haven't had anything to talk about. Today, I decided to update the world at large about what I have been upto in my little slice of it.
- We survived the tornados and hail that hit our area a week ago. Our apartment and cars were not even get damaged by the storm. Below are a few links to some of the stores online about what happened.
- Last weekend, we replaced Ariesna's car (1992 Ford Escort, aka Ghost) with a 2002 Volkswagen Golf (aka Grace, aka Gracie). The really odd part about getting the new car? Even though it's a replacement for Ghost; Ariesna has been letting me drive it the most. Apparently, this is at least partly due to the amount door dings her old car suffered through in her office's parking lot but it still seems strange to me. Then today, the dealership called me back asking me to come in and sign a new finance contract on the car. Why? Because they found me another offer which would drop the interest rate by 1.25 points! Now that's what I call service. So a big thanks goes out to Carousel Motors for the excellent service.
- Last weekend, Ariesna and I looked at a house. But it was too expensive for the amount of work required to make it a home we'd want to live (namely a musty basement and some bad remodeling in the family room, dining room and kitchen). We showed up about 15 minutes early for the showing and the realtor showed up just short of 15 minutes late. He did eventually call to let us know he was running late... 5 minutes after he was supposed to be there. I was initially a bit underwhelmed by the guy. But when he finally got there and let us into the house; he let us do our own looking around without trying to pressure us and listened to the comments we had about the house to get a better idea of what we were interested in.
Ain’t Dead Yet
Today marks the completion of my third decade on this planet and I am quite pleased to be able to announce that I ain't dead yet. But worry not gentle reader, I'll not be subjecting you to some passé retrospective about my life. Instead, I'll just recap today and today alone.
I was up playing Wild Arms 3 till about 3 am as I just couldn't sleep. Most likely due to an excessive amount of munching on holiday goodies while downing glass, after glass of soda1. I found one monster to fight that took around an hour to defeat but it jumped my characters up 4-7 levels! *grin* Then when I eventually got to bed; I slept poorly. Our apartment is just too dry this time of year and our little humidifier stopped working. This causes me to keep waking up with sinus headaches and a terrible thrist. I got out of bed about 8:30 - 9 and went back to playing the video game a bit more. Shortly there after, Michelle got up and gave me my birthday present.
What'd she get me? A case of blue balls Bawls. Then after lazing around most of the day; we headed out to the local mall to meet some friends.
I'd foolishly asked a bunch of friends to join us in watching the Narina movie with a follow-up plan to eat dinner together. There was one point that I'd not factored in these plans. This year, my birthday fell on a Saturday. Just about the last Saturday before Christmas. Traffic was insane and people all around were grouchy, though we did run across some nice people that helped us get around the parking lot2. We went over to the mall a little early and bought a new humidifer and then headed down to the theater. We got tickets, met up with our friends and went in to watch the The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.
*whew* What a movie! While not perfect, it was probably as good as we could hope for from a Hollywood production.
High points:
- The actress playing Lucy was spot on. Most of the other actors cast in the movie were also quite good
- The backgrounds were gorgeous.
- The addition of the Nazi bombing run at the beginning of the movie really helped to give context to the time of the story.
Low points:
- The costuming on the witch. Her outfits were ugly and just didn't work with the imagery I have in my head for the character. Though I do have to admit the black , soulless eyes did work for me.
- The witch was not nearly as afraid of Aslan as she should have been. In my memories of the book, the witch was terrified of Aslan but the movie seemed to put them on a more even footing.
- Maugrim's voice. The actor doing the voice did a fine job, but being the only character without a british accent really stuck out and annoyed me.
Overall, I'd say it was worth seeing in the theater and it is something I'll be adding to our DVD collection when it becomes available.
After the movie was over, we headed to the restaurant. Oh, I should mention we had called earlier in the day to try making reservations but were told they don't do that for parties of less than 8. And that they would have plenty of room for the 6 of us. When we got there; we were told it would be a 2 hour wait. We decided to switch to the Oyama Sushi restaurant. They seated us within minutes of our arrival (even though they were already pretty packed). Then they plied us with drinks until our food was ready3. We had a jolly time chatting and drinking (non-alcholic, for the most part) but all good things do come to an end and eventually we all headed home. It was a very good day and while I ain't dead yet; I am a bit tired so good night, sleep tight and don't let the space bugs bite!
1 a.k.a. pop to you heathens.
2 A few people threw their cars into reverse to open up bigger areas for us to drive through and things of that nature.
3 It turns out this weekend contains not only my birthday and practically the last weekend before Christmas but it's also graduation weekend for the University! No wonder everything was so packed today! This also explains why it took so long for our food to arrive.
Search
Recent Comments
- FineTexan: I love Dannon coffee yogurt! My favorite way to eat it is...
- Laura: I absolutely love coffee yogurt. I am addicted, I have been...
- Rachel: Doris, I had the same problem! I absolutely loved the Dannon...
- ouini: The youth co-star was a better character / actor than I was...
- Dolores Beck: Coffee Yogurt from Dannon is something special. I also...
Sponsored By
Referrals
