VW Phaeton Tips and Tricks

By: PanEuropean

I've read two existing threads on this forum that discuss difficulties encountered when tinting windows on Volkswagen Phaetons. I want to provide you folks with some information that will make your job easier when you do these cars.

1) Maintaining External Power while you do the work.

This is CRITICAL. If you are going to leave the ignition turned on for more than 20 minutes (cumulative total), you have to either start the car, or hook up auxiliary power to it. I won't get into all the reasons why, but suffice to say that if you allow the vehicle power supply battery - the battery on the left side of the trunk - to discharge, you and the owner will run into all sorts of grief, such as spurious system failure warning messages on the instrument cluster, random shutdowns of vehicle systems as the car tries to conserve power, things like that.

In North America, all Phaetons have two batteries. They are located on either side of the trunk. The one on the left - the bigger of the two - is called the 'vehicle power supply battery', and it supplies all the comfort systems. The one on the right is called the 'starter battery', and as its name suggests, it is only used to start the car.

The easiest way to provide an external power supply to the car is to hook up a standard 12 volt trickle charger to the terminals of the left hand battery. The cover over that battery comes off very easily without the use of tools - you can easily see the two twist fasteners that hold the cover on. Just remove the cover, and hook up the trickle charger. Leave it on for the entire duration of the time the car is in your shop.

There are all sorts of great pictures about how to do this, and more background information (if you want it) at this post on our Phaeton owner bulletin board: VW Vortex - Phaeton Forum - Phaeton Battery Monitoring Controller The pictures showing how to hook up the external power are about 5 posts down on that thread.

Do not connect the charger to the terminals under the hood. Those go to the starter battery and starter motor only - no power ever makes it from those terminals to anywhere else on the car.

Where to connect the external power:



2) Pull the fuse for the rear seat headrests before you start work.

The rear seat headrests automatically rise up when the door on the affected side is opened. This is to make it easier to hook the tether strap of a child seat up to the retaining hook on the parcel shelf. The headrests will stay up after the door is closed if weight is detected on the seat.

So, step one is to leave the rear doors closed, open the fuse panel under the steering wheel (the whole panel under the wheel opens up), and pull fuse number 89. See this post on our Phaeton owner bulletin board for more information, and pictures: VW Vortex - Phaeton Forum - How the rear seat headrests work

3) Protect the seat bases with towels and heavy cardboard.

Every seat in a Phaeton is heated, including the rear seats. If you kneel on the seat without taking some precautions to spread the weight around, there is a darn good chance that you will damage the heating mat. So, protect the leather itself with a whole bunch of bath towels, then put a few layers of cardboard over top of that, so that when you kneel on the seat, you are not putting all your weight in one place. VW clearly warns the owners about this in the owner manual, which means they won't pay for broken (torn) heating mats under warranty if they have been ripped by someone's knee. Especially if the warranty rep sees that the back window has been tinted...

There are two kinds of leather used in Phaetons: 'Sensitive' leather, which is the top end stuff, and 'Vienna' leather, which is the mid-grade leather. Vienna has a grain to it, like any other VW. Sensitive is like deerskin, it is very smooth. You can 'dent' the Sensitive leather easily if you put pressure on a certain spot for a long time (like an hour or so). The places you have the greatest risk of this problem are the non-perforated parts of the leather, like in the middle of the two rear seats. So, try hard not to leave a heavy object on these surfaces for more than a minute or two.

If you do 'dent' the leather, the dent will disappear after a few days, as long as it was not a sharp object that did the damage. You can accelerate this process by leaving the car parked in the hot sun with the windows closed, so the interior heats up. But, it's less stressful all around if you just avoid denting it in the first place.

If you happen to get the 'Sensitive' leather dirty, use warm water and Woolite detergent to wash the dirt off. The Vienna leather is tougher and can be cleaned like any other VW car leather.

4) Understanding Phaeton Power Management

The car ain't dumb, if the ignition is left on for a long time, and the engine is off, the car figures out that it has been abandoned, and it shuts off power to certain power consumers, so as not to drain the battery. If you try to operate something (e.g. a window) and it doesn't work, just turn off the ignition, remove the key, then put the key back in and turn the ignition back on.

5) Know how the rear window child lockout switches work

There are two switches on the driver door that disable the rear power window switches and also disable the inside door handles for the rear doors. These are child lockout switches. You will find on the driver door power window control panel, between the front window switches and the rear window switches. If you cannot operate the rear windows using the rear window switches, go and change the state of these lockout switches. You will see an icon in the small screen between the speedometer and the tachometer that shows the status of these switches - it looks like a drawing of a stick figure.

6) Don't even dream about takeing the hatshelf out.

If you want to remove the hatshelf, you need to first remove (in this order) the trim on the outboard sides of the rear seat backrest, then the rear seat base, then the rear seat backrest. Then you can get the hatshelf out. It is a pain in the butt, and it takes a long time. If you want to tint the area right behind the CHMSL (center high mount stoplight), just gently depress the hatshelf using a piece of wood to spread the load evenly across the whole hatshelf. That will give you about a quarter to a half an inch of access to work with.

7) Be aware that all the electronic controllers in the car are stored right underneath the hatshelf.

There is a panel underneath the hatshelf that drops down. You can see it if you look in the trunk, under the hatshelf. Have a close look at it, and you will see that there is about 6 inches of unaccounted for space between the hatshelf and that panel. That's where all the electronic boxes are kept - the 270 watt stereo, the phone system, the OnStar system, the TV tuner, the works. So, for Pete's sake, don't spill any water on the hatshelf or around the rear window area when you are working on it!

8) Don't tint the rear window above the level of the headliner.

The rear window glass continues up the car about 4 inches beyond where the interior headliner ends where it meets the back window. You can see this if you stand beside the car with one of the rear doors open, and you look first at the top outside of the rear window, and then at the top inside of the window. Stay away from that area, all the antennas on the car - GPS, phone, radio, television, keyless access, parking heater - between 12 and 18 antennas in all, depending on options fitted - are stored up there. Just tint as high as you can see (to the base of the interior headliner) and no further.

9) Be aware that 12 cylinder and 8 cylinder Phaetons have different glass on them.

The 12 cylinder cars have infra-red reflective glass, the 8 cylinder ones don't (this applies to North America). In Europe, infra-red reflective glass is standard on the 12 cylinder, and optional on the others. Look for the 'IR' marking on the glass brand if you are not sure. This may affect your choice of what tinting product to use.

10) Don't tint the front windshield directly ahead of the humidity sensor.

I don't know whether people tint the front windshield or not, but if you do plan to tint the front window, stay away from the infrared transmitter halfway down the bracket that the interior rear view mirror is mounted on. That sends a beam of IR light at the windshield glass - if the beam is not reflected back, the car presumes there is condensation (moisture) on the inside window glass, and turns the defrost on. I'm NOT talking about the light sensor at one end of the rear view mirror itself (that's for a different purpose), I'm talking about the sensor on the stalk that the inside rear view mirror hangs from.

Equally, don't tint over the sunlight sensor, which is at the very front middle of the dashboard. It's a little bump, about the size of half a cigarette. There are two sunlight sensors in there, with an opaque divider between them, so the car can determine which side the sunshine is coming from. If you tint over that, you'll screw up the climate control system bigtime. The car has 4 zone climate control - it really depends a lot on input from this sunlight sensor.

11) Still more light sensors to worry about...

Make sure that you client knows that if they tint the back window, the light sensor on the mirror side (driver-facing side) of the inside rear view mirror will not get so much light on it from the headlights of cars behind when driving at night. This means that they will no longer get automatic dimming (darkening) of the OUTSIDE mirrors - both right and left side - when there is a car behind them with high beams on. All three rear view mirrors on Phaetons dim automatically when exposed to bright light from behind at night - not just the inside mirror. If the customer wants heavy tint on the rear window, they are going to have to be prepared to give up this function.

I hope this information helps you folks. If you have any questions, just post them on our forum. Everyone who owns a Phaeton seems to be very happy with it, and we really enjoy having technical specialists such as you folks participate in our forum. So, don't be shy to ask if you have a problem.

Question: What if you have to put a charge in through the cigarette lighter though would that work the same as puttin a trickle charge straight to the battery?

Answer: No, it won't work. The Phaeton has a very sophisticated electrical system in it. The general strategy is to protect all the car electronics from surges or corrupt power sources. To support this strategy, the comfort battery (Vehicle Power Supply Battery, the one on the left side) will NOT accept a charge from the two posts under the hood, or backwards from any one of the 12 volt (cigarette lighter) outlets. I mean, for Pete's sake, this car has 45+ controllers in it, and 4 different data networks, including an optical databus. It's not a '64 Beetle. Do exactly what I said (and what the picture shows) and you won't have any trouble. Cut corners and skip reading directions will give you the mother of all headaches, as others have noted in previous posts here.

All you need to keep the vehicle power supply battery topped up is a simple 12 volt trickle charger that you can buy at any Pep Boys, Auto Zone, or similar outlet. Just be sure that you get one that is suitable for AGM (Absorbed Glass Mat) batteries, and one that provides sufficient amps to power all the different systems that will be active on the car if you are working on it with the ignition turned on. Any charger that puts out 10 amps and has a switch to support AGM batteries will be sufficient. If you want to buy the exact same one that VW supplies to their dealers, go to NAPA and ask for one, it will cost you about $50. There is more information about the VW spec maintainer, including pictures and where to buy it, here: NAPA Battery Maintainer for a Phaeton.

For what it's worth - the new Mercedes S series that has just been released in Europe (and will be coming to America in early 2006) requires exactly the same considerations as the Phaeton so far as maintaining battery voltage is concerned, so it makes sense to go get yourself a battery maintainer that supports the AGM batteries that are now being installed in the higher end cars.

Lastly, here's a big piece of bonus information for you: The Bentley Continental and the new Bentley Flying Spur are nothing more than Phaetons with a different skin on them. The electrical system design, the controller part numbers, the buttons and switches, and in most cases, even the fuse numbers and locations on either of these two 'baby Bentleys' are EXACTLY the same as on a Phaeton. That's because these two Bentleys are Phaeton derivitives - heck, the Flying Spur is even made on the same production line as the Phaeton. The Phaeton and Bentley have more parts in common with each other than the Golf and the Jetta do. This means that pretty much everything I said above carries over to the Bentleys. So, have no fear if someone shows up at your shop with a new Bentley - you can tell them that you have lots of experience working on other Volkswagens, and theirs won't be anything new to you.

Antennas:

The Phaeton has a whole whack of antennas on the rear window glass (telephone, GPS, AM, FM, Radio, Remote Heater, Central Locking, Anti-Theft, etc., and if you shove a spatula up above the point where the rear edge of the roof headliner meets the top of the rear window glass, you will scrape these antenna components right off the glass, just like you would scrape ice of the front windshield in the wintertime.

So - whatever you do, don't shove any spatulas, smoothing tools, screwdrivers, etc. up into the headliner at the top of the rear window of a Phaeton (or a Bentley Continental / Flying Spur, which is the same thing as a Phaeton) unless you know exactly what is there.

Also, be aware that application of any kind of metallic film to the rear window of a Phaeton / Bentley Continental GT / Bentley Continental Flying Spur will degrade the performance of the AM, FM, and television system antennas.



Here is an actual photograph of the antenna module that is mounted on the rear window of a Phaeton, in the upper left (driver side in North America) corner. This is the same antenna module that is shown in the illustration about two posts higher up.

The headliner was removed from this car when the picture was taken. As you can see, the rear window glass continues on upwards beyond the back edge of the headliner, and that is where the antenna module is located. So, be very, very careful to not stuff any kind of spatula, scraper, whatever more than perhaps half an inch up behind the headliner.

There is another similar antenna module on the opposite side of the car, also just above where the headliner is. That module controls the telephone and GPS antennas.