My daughter was driving home from work when she noticed the abs light flashing on the dash board. After that she started to smell something burning and pulled over and shut down the engine. Next she called me and I hurried to her location to check out the problem. After I lifted the hood I to could smell the burning and noticed the cover to the fuse box on top of the battery was melted on the left side. I opened the fuse box and observed the black ground wire was burnt and the fuse was completely melted away.

We got the car home and I called my local Volkswagen dealer and they had the parts in stock. The cost was $150.00 for the fuse box and $90.00 for the ground wire to the alternator and $ 7.00 for a new fuse for the ground wire. Amazingly they had these parts in stock and that made me wonder why they would stock parts for such a older vehicle. There was no labor involved since I am mechanically inclined.

Okay, so first issue presented as stalling, loss of power, complete engine failure. An odor of burning plastic was heavy, further investigation found that there is a battery compartment above the battery where the Primary Fuse box is located.

The top of the box had completely melted away exposing the terminals inside the fuse tray.

The primary cable supplying voltage from the alternator was charred and wire insulation was melted away and showed signs of severe damage.... There are 5 wires that are joined in this box... all wires showed over loaded damage..

Called VW, they explained that parts + labor was estimated at $1200.00. They advised that VW has no known documented cases of this issue.

I ordered the parts from a OEM vehicle supply house.. Parts list: (1) Primary Fuse box -$100.00 (1) Alternator replacement harness-$150.00

This fixed the issues for about 2 months......

SAME EXACT ISSUES STARTED AGAIN

Called VW again, they at this point suggested that they pull codes from the vehicle

DEALER charged $250.00 to have a technician look over vehicle and pull any available codes

Tech found that there was a electrical fire started in the Primary fuse box, and effected the alternator wire loom/ harness, and in total 5 wires were damaged. They found no error codes!

They quoted $1200.00 to repair damages.

....

I asked if they cover this damage since the vehicle was completely stock and ASE certified mechanic did the work using OEM certified parts.

VW said that these issues have been occurring on the late model Jetta, Beetles and Golf, but at this time VW official stance is/ was not to extend any assistance other than dealership level repair and replacement parts!

-------

After doing some basic research I found that there are 3 primary issues that have occurred in the VW late models. Issue 1: Overloaded electrical current coming from the Voltage regulator feeding the primary fuse box Issue 2: Poor quality components used in the wire looms issue 3: Over rated fuse units

I ordered: (1) replacement primary fuse box (1) 15' length of 4ga stranded copper wire (4) 25' length of 10ga stranded copper wire

I modified the fuse box to have (5) additional fuse -(1) 110amp fuse -(1) 50amp fuse -(1) 50amp fuse -(1) 50amp fuse -(1) 50amp fuse

That has eliminated issues for the last year to date.