This month, the Angry Man has been getting mostly pissed off about… that stupid VAG engine light. Grrr!
Ever owned a VAG car? You’ll be familiar with the ‘£60-light’, then.
Stupid bloody thing, the engine warning light on the dash pops up all the time for all sorts of rubbish reasons; there’s never any logic to it. If you’re going to daily a Golf, Octavia, Leon, Passat, Polo, TT, A3, or anything else in the group, you’re going to have to invest in a code-reader of your own, because otherwise you’ll get to know your local garage really well. “Hello, me again, there’s something wrong with my car.” “Engine warning light again?” “Yep.” [wait five minutes while they plug it into the machine.] “Yeah, it’s just phantom codes, we’ve cleared them. That’ll be £60 please.” For fuck’s sake, c’mon.
But that’s not the end of it! No, if something like a momentary emissions blip triggers your EML, and you clear the code with your handset, you can be damn sure it’ll pop back again in a couple of weeks’ time. Or sometimes your reader will tell you that there is no fault, despite the light glaring out at you like some malicious gleaming bastard, so you’ll have to take it back to the garage and find that actually VAG have a whole load of secret codes that are hidden in the background and you need a new bastard charcoal filter or something.
You know what’s most annoying? The warning light can signify about five-hundred different things. It’s not like having a gauge that says, ‘This part’s getting a bit hot’, or a warning light with a symbol that tells you roughly what’s wrong. No, the EML is a cop-out, a stupid little wishy-washy tosser that just whinges all the time, ‘Ooh, something hurts, but I’m not telling you what it is’.
I’ve worked out a solution. Just put a bit of electrical tape over the light. If something’s wrong with the car, you’ll probably know about it sooner or later; you don’t need a small illuminated picture of an engine to tell you. That bulb is a little piss-taker.
Disclaimer: The opinions expressed herein are not necessarily those of Fast Car or the publisher. If this has caused offence. Please go fu… (oi stop that! – Glenn)
