How much will it cost to get a Passat's climatronic climate control system repaired or replaced?

It looks as if my climatronic control is not working properly on my Passat 2001. It does not display the temperature outside. It just comes up as -- C (celcious) It usually reads in F (Fahrenheit).





Sometimes, very unusually now, the air kicks in and blows out really cool air. That is why I think there is some sort of sensor problem. Otherwise right now it blows out mostly hot air since it is summer.





Does anyone know how much something like this would cost to get fixed at the dealership or elsewhere? I kind of want to know how much I should be spending.





Any feedback or experiences would be great! Thanks!

How much will it cost to get a Passat's climatronic climate control system repaired or replaced?
I've worked in Volkswagen dealership service departments on and off over a 25 year period, so perhaps I can offer some insight into the situation.





Normally, the language change (metric - celcious; english farhenheit) is set thru the digital computer display on the instrument cluster using the control buttons for the menu. (use the owners manual to understand how to set the display, if I try to explain it, you'd probably be more confused).





It is possible that the temp sensors that sense the interior temperature aren't working properly. You can override the system some what by selecting maximum cold and have the selector display blowing air out of the dash vents (with the arrow pointing towards the face on the digital display) to circumvent the automatic control. I'm sorry to say that sometimes the system when set on automatic will blow hardly any cold air or sometimes just blow at maximum speed with no ryhme or reason. Its the reason that I prefer the manual control set up on GLS or GL models verses the GLX.





Try the above and see if it starts to blow cold air; by setting the fan speed at maximum blow and temperature at the minimum, it should blow cold air fairly quickly; if it doesn't blow cold air, then you'll need to take the vehicle into a dealership to have someone scan the system and run self tests to see what is the issue. Expect to spend at least 1 hour's labour at what the labour rate is to help determine what the fault might be. I just hope its not the electronic control unit as they are somewhat expensive to replace (there are not servicable parts in the electronic control head; you can only exchange it for a rebuilt one-- its one place where the US car companies are far superior to all vehicles-- in the climate control area).





Hope this helps, a car nut.
Reply:if the temp display keeps changing as you said, may merely be the ambient temp sensor located behind the left front grill mounted in front of the radiator. They sometimes get covered with debris and have an occasional fault. Try cleaning it first then see what happens