Interior Light Issues (Odd one)

[webdevl]

So I have a 2004 allroad that has some kind of gemlin. Here are the symptoms

1. Interior dome and map lights will not turn on while the car started and running
2. Interior dome and map light turn on when doors are openned/closed
3. With car on, but engine not running the map lights will turn on, but they are really really dim

I also have an issue where
1. The drivers side locks will not unlock/lock the door with the door closed, but they work fine with the doors open
2 The drivers side alarm red light blinks at all times

I am starting to think I have a broken wire or something within the drivers door, but before tearing everything apart I thought I would ask to see if anyone has any ideas.

[ShelbyM3]

Oh boy, welcome to the C5 platform my friend. I think most of us have experienced some of this in one way or another. I’ll give you a briefing as I understand it and hopefully it can point you in the correct direction.
1.) The driver’s door mechanism is known to cause all sorts of whacky issues. Some people have had success replacing it and others have not. VCDS may help you determine this. I wouldn’t go as far as to call it the “master switch”, but I do believe it can impact the whole system.
2.)The door mechanisms have micro switches in them and the contact surfaces will wear out and they will no longer click off and on. Check your dash display. Open each door and see if the display recognizes it as open. This may help you determine if other door switches are bad. If I’m not mistaken, there is a separate switch for the dome light so when the dome light flips on, but the car doesn’t recognize the door as open it does odd things. (My interior lights would strobe when my driver’s door was open)
3.) Water damage. Oddly enough, important computers and harnesses are under the front carpet floor area and if you’ve had any water intrusion you can develop corrosion on the connectors and get intermittent results. This often happens from a clogged drain in the cowl area.
Hope this helps! You’ve probably got some good investigating to do if you want to sort it out. Best of luck!


Sent from my iPhone using Audizine Forum

[webdevl]

Appreciate the information. When I first got the car a couple months ago there was a fault code in Vagcom around the drivers side door. I will need to re-scan to pull it. The micro switch thing is a helpful lead as I had not dug into how these work yet. I had some other things I need to do to the car first (control arms, new headliner, sport seats, etc) and this is next on the list