pt-auto

My brake light switch has gone bad. My car has Automatic gearbox and thus I can not get it out of P with this switch broken. Unfortunately I can not get a new switch until Wednesday but I need the car before that. Has anyone tried to fix the broken switch? The length of the switch is correctly adjusted and it looks OK from the outside. I have also tested with a jump wire that the switch is indeed broken as with the wire in place the green park light in the dash goes away. I also checked the switch with a multimeter and there was no way to make a connection and thus to show any resistance between the 2 connectors. I seem to have another slightly different looking 2-pin switch above this broken one. I guess it is for cruise control? How about linking the wires coming to the broken switch to the other one, would that work? Would there be too much current so that it would blow a fuse? I can of course see that, if it happens immediately, but if it happens while driving I just loose the brake lights and the next time I start and try to move from P to D I just can't again. Does anyone know what I should do? The switch is a 2-pin model and the car is a mkII -01 2.3 automatic.

OK, the original problem is solved and the original cluster is now working fine. It was just the vehicle speed sensors "axle" that was broken. It is a bit surprising why this also effects the fuel gauge so that it continuously swings along with the fuel level in the tank and warns about too low fuel level. But fixing the sensor fixed the speedo AND the fuel gauge. It was also confusing that VCDS was able to show the speed correctly and the alhambra 1.9tdi cluster was also able to show speed (although way too much). The reason for this must be that the 1.9tdi cluster and VCDS use ABS sensors to measure speed, not the vehicle speed sensor in the auto gearbox that the original cluster was using. I wrote this post, because there seemed to be many questions about this speedo/fuel gauge problem but at least I was not able to find a solution for it. Hope it helps someone else to save some effort!

30 quid is cheap! Unfortunately I am in Finland and they only deliver to UK. I could live with the speedo showing miles/hour while km/h is also there with a small print but actually we use metric meters here. For some reason the metric clusters in Germany seem to cost much more. I just wish I didn't have to spend 150 euros on this since it SHOULD be possible to get it done with the stuff I already have.

Nobody has had problems with vcds/vag-com coding not being saved?

Also, is there any other alternative software than VAG Tacho that I could use with the VAG Tacho cable?

Here is the story: In my mkII galaxy 2.3 automatic speedo stopped working and fuel gauge started beeping. Fault code said it was vehicle speed sensor but vcds was able to show the correct speed so decided to try another cluster. That cluster was from an Alhambra 1.9 tdi, so only parts of it worked straight away. Speedo did work but showed way too much speed. I tried to recode the distance impulse number with vcds. I did not get any error messages, but the new values did not get saved either. This I tried with my own vcds lite and friends vcds full version but with similar results. What could cause this problem? How could I get it to work? Since that did not work, I decided to use VAG Tacho to save the eeprom of the original cluster and import that to the new cluster. No success here either. Vag tacho says there is a short circuit to ground in the k-line and it does not find the ecu. I wonder why so? VCDS does connect without any problems and works well apart from not being able to save the coding I mentioned before. Any advice is appreciated here!

OK, here are some more questions. Please answer, if you have any knowledge at all on this topic. Has anyone had any problems with the four speed tiptronic? Is it common for the solenoid valves or the valve body to cause trouble? Or is it common that the tcu is faulty? Is there any way of troubleshooting/fixing the tcu if the easy bits (solderings and capacitor) are ok? Is there an easy way of diagnosing a torque converter lock that won't lock?

Hello! This is my first post to this forum and I could really use some help with my '01 Galaxy 2.3 4-speed tiptronic. I am trying to fix the gearbox problems with a budget that stills allows my family to eat some cheese on our daily bread.. Ford TIS says in the AG4 gearbox solenoid test table that solenoid 4 (Torque lock-up solenoid) should have a resistance of 55-65 ohms. My galaxy has solenoid 4 with only ~5 ohms. The solenoid is ok, I removed it and checked the operation with a jumper wire (it did pull). But should there really be a solenoid with a resistance of 55-65 ohms or is this just an error in the TIS documentation? The symptoms in my galaxy are: 1. When shifting up it like changes to neutral and revs for a moment. Sometimes it also makes a noise that is a bit hard to describe, but resembles the sounds of a slightly slipping rubber belt. 2. Fourth gear slips very easily. I think it is really slipping, unless, due to some error state, the box changes very quickly between neutral and fourth gear when accelerating/releasing throttle. 3. Check engine light comes back on soon after clearing the codes. The code is (if I remember the exact phrase): P0700 Transmission control system fault (Mil request). There are no other codes. What I have done so far: 1. I soldered a new capacitor to the TCU, beacause at one point the box went into emergency mode with only gears 2,3 and R available. It was just a wild quess, but it seemed to work, I got all the gears and tiptronic back to operation. This did not help with the other problems though. 2. I changed the gearbox oils twice in one week. Both times the oil was black but smelled roughly the same as new dexron III oil. I changed the filter also and cleaned the sump magnet that had maybe 2 millimeters thick layer of gray soft metallic substance over it (friction material?) 3. I removed all the solenoids, checked their resistances and cleaned them with brake cleaner. None of them was broken and they all rattled nicely when shaken. As mentioned earlier, solenoid 4 was however not the kind of solenoid that TIS documentation says it should be?? I would really appreciate it, if someone could give me some good advice!