2010 MkII 1.6 Tdi CR, 96k

 

Whilst driving in very heavy rain today, the glowplug light came on and stayed on. This was at night with me using full beam, full wipers, full blower on the windscreen. I'd driven about five miles at this point, a bit slower than normal due to the conditions/vis.

 

I started backing ofd on some of the electrical stuff at this point, in case maybe I was overloading something, but the light remained on. So I pulled ove, turned off, and when I started up again a warning came up- 'engine fault- workshop'. But the glowplug light didn't come on, and the car behaved fine. Carried on the remaining ten miles, and did the return journey later, no problems.

 

I'm kind of hoping that someone can reassure me that this was probably just a splash of water getting in somewhere (it was crazy wet) rather than a sign of something serious?

Are your brake lights coming on? I think the glow plug light can show a fault if the switch fails on the brake lights. Otherwise, regen needed, blocked EGR valve, faulty sensors etc. Any of these and/or all. Might be water ingress too, causing a failure of some description but if it does, it might keep doing it until you stop the water from penetrating the area thats being affected! Check the light first, all bulbs should work. If none do, its most likely the switch and they are around £20 and should be relatively simple to replace. Worth investing in a Haynes manual here. Fix it yourself, save the price of five Haynes manuals and be able to perform more simple tasks yourself to boot!

I didn't notice any other lights come on at the same time (apart from obviously the ones for the headlights).

It was exceptionally heavy rain, so if it's water ingress that would make sense.

 

Unfortunately there is no crystal ball you can look into to find out what is wrong with your car. You will need some sort of scan tool to diagnose the problem, anything else is just guesswork.

A wee bump.

The glowplug light came on again the other day- we'd had some snow and I'd had the car sitting for a few minutes warming up while I had the scraper out.

I reckon it must just be water getting in somewhere, as the snow would have been melting on the bonnet and finding its way into some unusual places.

So not going to worry about it... but I will be avoiding deep puddles