Dale McMurry
Active Member
In April of 2001 I bought my wife a new VW Beetle Turbo for her birthday. After a period of
time there developed an odor that smelled like crayons and it progressively got worse over
a long period. Last year it started to cause headaches, sore throat, and allergys to the point
she didn't want to drive the car. (45,000 miles). The dealer said he had never heard of this
but would check TSB for information. The typical response was that he could not find
anything on the subject.
I did a search on the internet for information and found other owners had complained about
this problem and VW admitted a problem, they got a bad batch of contaminated insulating
material (glue) installed in some cars (New Beetle and Jetta). The fix is to remove carpeting, seats, dashboard and then replace all of the insulation from firewall to rear trunk.
When my wife showed the service writer this information he went and called a factory
rep and was told to fix the problem even though it was way out of warranty. VW probably
does not want a class action suite. Car will be ready Monday, we shall see.
time there developed an odor that smelled like crayons and it progressively got worse over
a long period. Last year it started to cause headaches, sore throat, and allergys to the point
she didn't want to drive the car. (45,000 miles). The dealer said he had never heard of this
but would check TSB for information. The typical response was that he could not find
anything on the subject.
I did a search on the internet for information and found other owners had complained about
this problem and VW admitted a problem, they got a bad batch of contaminated insulating
material (glue) installed in some cars (New Beetle and Jetta). The fix is to remove carpeting, seats, dashboard and then replace all of the insulation from firewall to rear trunk.
When my wife showed the service writer this information he went and called a factory
rep and was told to fix the problem even though it was way out of warranty. VW probably
does not want a class action suite. Car will be ready Monday, we shall see.