Thank you VW... For nothing.

Whilst the whole vin thing is annoying at times its there to protect both the parts supplier and the end user from time consuming and costly berkeley ups.

I was at the dealer the other day and the 2 customers ahead of me both had pretty much no clue as to what they were driving. Lady asks parts guy for a set of wiper blades for a vw.... What model ma'am?, a vw, she replies.... What kind of vw asks parts guy, a silver hatch back was her reply.

Next guy asks for brake pads for a Mercedes amg... Again, could offer no additional details... Its people like this that are the reason we all get asked for a vin.

I ordered an oil pump gasket using a vin, it turned out to be wrong. We rechecked the vin, no problem there. Ran my engine number and bingo, someone had fitted an earlier engine without the revised oil pump design.

With the level of brain deadness amongst car owners these days, its hardly surprising manufactures don't want you pissing about with fuses. Im sure you can imagine what happens when average joe puts a 30amp fuse into a 10amp circuit with a fault in it... Ripping apart most of a car to replace burnt out wiring seems kinda unnecessary.

I understand needing a vin to order parts. What I don't understand is why someone would willingly buy an expensive pile of electrical faults.

Wally wrote: I understand needing a vin to order parts. What I don't understand is why someone would willingly buy an expensive pile of electrical faults.

You realize that "expensive pile of electrical faults" describes every car ever made ever, right?

Knurled wrote:

Wally wrote: I understand needing a vin to order parts. What I don't understand is why someone would willingly buy an expensive pile of electrical faults.

You realize that "expensive pile of electrical faults" describes every car ever made ever, right?

Or at least any car made in the last 30 or so years.

In reply to daeman:

I recall reading about Ford in the 1950s, and they deliberately used sub-spec parts in the radio because it saved money and it would get the car past the 12/12 warranty period. After that, the radio would be fixed with the proper components and it would work as intended, so everything is okay, right?

Stories like that make me laugh at the old-timers who reminisce about the good old days. They weren't all that good. Hell, I remember having to reset the points every morning so my car would start because of Ford's ultra-crappy idea for putting the advance plate on a separate nylon pivot so dwell would shift depending on the advance. What it really resulted in was a distributor that needed to be rebuilt twice as frequently as the points needed replacement.

That's weird, no diagram in the owners manual?
When I was in China I could have bought plans to build every piece of the car.

I have not blown a fuse in a car in probably 20 years. My mother in law has had serious electrical issues in all five of the VWs she's had since I met her. One of them caught fire. There is a lesson in there someplace.