VW Passat-2000:

Maintenance/Repairs
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1

I like to drive this car but it has been plagued with problems. The most serious is a recurrent one with a serious water leak into the cabin under the driver’s seat and into the back passenger compartment. My floor rugs are soaked. It all started with the current heavy rains over the past 1-3wks. This problem is not new for me. In 2007, the car would not start after a similar heavy rain with similar cabin flooding. At that time, my car’s main computer was ruined. Volkwagen refused to accept any responsibility, despite this problem being all over the web at that time.
I have since heard of an action (“P9- recall”) that covers Passats with this or similar problems, but I think my cover is not included in the year range for this recall.
This is all very frustrating. My questions:
-any suggestions on the best way to address the leak? (I have already opened up the drain from the sunroof into the front door access point by cutting it open, but this doesn’t deal with any problem in the drain channel itself)
-I’m manually soaking up all the water by hand. It seems to keep coming up from under the rug. Taking the rug up looks like a big job that I have not started yet.
-any suggestions on how to get VW to respond?

Mike in Brooklyn

2

Check the drain under the hood, by the battery. That was the source of the water that destroyed the comfort control module in our Passat. The class action suit deadline was more than a year ago, so we’re out of luck on that.

3

There’s another drain under the master cylinder reservoir , there might be a rubber plug in it which you can leave out . The drain under the battery is harder to access in that you have to move the battery .