Battery Cable Problems of Volkswagen Passat

Battery cables are reversed so the red positive and black negative cables are not accurate. Battery hooked up wrong and sparked, smoked, horn blasts. Now no ac doesnt work and battery light stays light. Happened when battery was changed.

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This car is built with reversed color coded battery cables without proper, easily identifiable polarity identification. The factory battery has conventional markings, red +, black -, however the black cable is designed to go on the "+" terminal and the red cable is designed to go on the "-" terminal on this model. There are no obvious polarity markings on the cables. If one looks very carefully you can find a tiny - stamp on the red cable terminal and the tiny + stamp is half covered by insulation and hidden on the black cable terminal.

See all problems of the 2012 Volkswagen Passat 🔎.

This car is built with reversed color coded battery cables without proper, easily identifiable polarity identification. The factory battery has conventional markings, red +, black -, however the black cable is designed to go on the "+" terminal and the red cable is designed to go on the "-" terminal on this model. There are no obvious polarity markings on the cables. If one looks very carefully you can find a tiny - stamp on the red cable terminal and the tiny + stamp is half covered by insulation and hidden on the black cable terminal. The battery terminals are of slightly different diameters to guide you to the proper installation but the diameter difference is not large and is easily adjusted with a screwdriver which I have had to adjust to fit on cables that were not improperly reversed in the past. Not noticing the reversed color coded cables prior to replacing the battery I hooked up a new vw oem replacement battery with reversed polarity as a result of the improper/reversed battery cable color codes. The cables were not tightend, just placed on the terminals at which point the horn sounded and would not go off at which point I removed the cables and looked very closely for markings indicating that I might have hooked them up improperly and noticed the aforementioned very hard to find tiny hidden stampings on the terminals revealing that I had hooked up the battery with reverse polarity. This resulted in $3000 of electrical damage to the car - and almost caused a fire, melting some of the harness and electronic control modules. Additionally 2 of the 3 protective fusible links designed to protect this circuitry melted together short circuit (instead of fusing open circuit) not protecting anything. This is a very dangerous multiple defect design that has the potential to cause injury and fire in addition to extensive damage and costly repairs.

The contact owns a 2006 Volkswagen Passat. The contact attempted to start the ignition and the steering wheel began to lock up. There were two warning indicators illuminated on the instrument panel. The messages displayed were "embolizater activated move steering wheel" and "steering lock defective". In addition, the ignition key was stuck and failed to release. The failures occured without warning. The driver disconnected and reconnected the battery cable to start the vehicle. The vehicle stalled between six to ten times while in operation. The failure occurred intermittently. The vehicle was towed from her residence to an independent mechanic. The VIN was unknown. The failure and current mileages were 69,000.

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I started my vehicle, and within 30 seconds I smelled burning. I shut down engine and noticed smoke bellowing out from under hood. I lifted hood and found an electrical harness on top of engine was on fire and melting. I was able to borrow pliers from someone and disconnected battery cable. I had vehicle towed to dealership, and they called me this morning stating that the coil had an internal short. I asked them how I can be assured that this wouldn't happen again when parts are replaced and there reply was " this is very rare". I have a baby less than 2 years old and it scares me to death to think what may of happened if my wife was driving with my child.

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