I own a 2006 VW Jetta 2.5 (Automatic transmission) with 68k miles. I purchased the car new in Nov '06. Beginning in August '10, the car began stalling while in motion. As a result, I lose power brakes & power steering. The car has been in for repairs on 4 separate occasions. Currently, they have had the car for 3 consecutive weeks. They claim they cannot find a problem and have advised me to return to the dealership to pick up my car. I am terrified to drive this car. A VW mechanic has advised me that should the car stall on the highway again (as it has in the past) I may not be so lucky as I was previously (I was going uphill) and likely lack the body weight to apply enough pressure to the brakes to stop the vehicle while maintaining control. Have you ever heard of this occurring? What can I do? VW Corporate is unwilling to help and I feel I will likely be stuck with a car that will ultimately cause a major wreck.
At this point, I strongly suggest that you seek an independent VW specialist.
Most areas of the country have this sort of shop, simply because VWs tend to need a lot of repairs as they age and VW dealers consistently get the lowest marks in the industry for customer service and for pricing.
An indy VW specialist may have seen this exact problem previously, but even if he hasn’t, he will definitely charge you much less for properly diagnosing and fixing the problem than a VW dealer would.
I would trade this car in on something else. The intermittent stalling problem shouldn’t hurt the trade-in value unless it stalls while they examine it.
As always the resolution of this problem should start with duplication of of sympton. Has anyone (besides yourself) been able to duplicate the problem?
I wouldn’t be too harsh on the dealer. In spite of the perception, there are many things on modern cars that can be erratic in nature, can cause all types of problems, and yet there will be no codes or anything else present to point the mechanic even in the general direction of the problem.
If for the sake of argument I assume there are no codes present a wild guess might be an erratically failing fuel pump. This would be especially true if the fuel filter has not been changed on a regular basis.
It is quite possible and often happens that a fuel pump may work fine for weeks or months, quit suddenly, and the start working again for the next undetermined amount of time.
When the car quit did it just shut off instantly with no sputtering or bogging or was there a quick gradual loss of power, hiccups, etc, etc?