lightning strike???

so far the dealer has told us that the insturment panel is fried and that has engaged the anti-theft device in the car. the dealer has the panel on order and will install it tomorrow...on the VW vortex site there like 5 threads of VW's all being struck and all were eventually totaled by the insurance companies and one described his strike symptoms as the same as ours to the letter!
meanwhile here a couple of pics of the tree.... the close up is where we figure it jumped to the antenna of the car
 

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my new question is why are all these VW's being fried? we looked at some toyota, honda, and other mazda forums and nobody posted lightning strikes yet there 5 on the vortex!!! hmmmmmm....
 
Yep could damage it, also any man made lightning is nowhere even close to that of mother nature, we could never hope to produce that much in a single strike.
 
VW has finally said that every electrical circuit, every sensor, and every CPU(apparentely there are more than one in the TDI) in the car is fried. VW wants to total it, but it's up to the insurance agency
 
vw doesn't either!!! the kicker is we were about to sell the thing had a buyer lined up and everythingand.....BAM. now if it is totaled we will prob get about 8500 maybe but the buyer had agreed on 10500. so we stand to lose 2000
 
cilyjr said:
VW has finally said that every electrical circuit, every sensor, and every CPU(apparentely there are more than one in the TDI) in the car is fried.
Click to expand...

You can blow up most CPUs by shuffling your feet across the carpet and discharging the built up static electricity as a spark from your finger onto one of the pins. Multiply that by a million for current and that's what hit your car. Little wonder the electronics were fried.

Did they find the discharge point from the wiring to the frame, or from the frame/body to the ground? There would likely have been visible scorch marks at those points.
 
throught the tires i think ( steel belt) tires usually need to be replaced after a strike. if all four don't go flat, they usually buldge out or warp.....

the insurance company has decided to try and fix it.... VW says 5000 in damage so far. i guess we'll see what else they find
 
Johnny 5 is ALIVE!!!

johnny5x.jpg
 
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would yall buy a car knowing it has been struck by lightning? consider that every piece of electronics is brand new (that means a warranty) on a deisel car that only has 100 thousand miles ( a baby for a cool burning diesel that gets 60 mpg) most people ask about accidents because they are afraid of hidden structual damage that "bob" the auto body repair man missed right? but structurally this car is sound also it looks really good ( better than my p5 ((which looks real good)) i mean if it works than it works right?
 
cilyjr said:
would yall buy a car knowing it has been struck by lightning?
Click to expand...

On the body maybe, but in your case, where the electronics were fried, probably not.

To buy it I'd have to trust that the people who fixed it actually replaced all of the electronics and didn't leave in some piece that "seemed to
be ok". Trust must be earned in car repair so if I didn't know the repair folks personally there'd just be no way. I'd also want to know that the entire wiring harness had been replaced since who knows what bits of insulation would have melted off in some inaccessible point, just waiting to short out when it rains, or on a hard left turn, or the bump going into a driveway.

On the other hand, if they provided a full 3 year warranty on all things electrical in the car, with a buyback provision for say the 2nd failure, then
I'd consider it. Don't know about you folks, but I've never encountered a dealer that would offer those sorts of terms.
 
AbsoluteSwed said:
Correct, rubber doesn't do anything. It is the metal exterior of the car that keeps you safe if you are in it. Good luck with the insurance agency if that path is needed.
Click to expand...


Thats true and since Top Gear only hit the car on the external metal panels and not the antenna, there goes the "tires insulate" point.
 
pasadena_commut said:
On the body maybe, but in your case, where the electronics were fried, probably not.
Click to expand...

all the electronics ARE gone
things to be replaced...
instrument panel
cpu
every sensor in the engine
radio
cd changer in trunk
power locks
alarm
 
FunkyBuddha said:
Thats true and since Top Gear only hit the car on the external metal panels and not the antenna, there goes the "tires insulate" point.
Click to expand...

top gear only hit that car with 800 thousand volts
A typical lightning bolt contains 1 billion volts and contains between 10000 to 200000 amperes
so they were a little lacking in their test
 
To answer your question about buying; would you buy a car that has had flood damage even if it was all fixed. Same type of failures can happen with cars in floods, aka all the electronics are fried.

Think most would not consider or think twice about a flood damaged car.....lightning...mmm you could lie and not mention it :)
 
i think most people are skeptical about buying cars that could have some sort of structural damage (an accident) that a body shop guy might have missed or worse saw but covered up. In a flood there is a lot that could be hiding too such as bearings that might have been exposed and have started rusting and a mech might not think to open every little casing. with electrical if it's fried to the point of not working it needs to be replaced and there is an entriely new module now. the electricty is not going to do structural damage. all mechinacal elements of the car will still work and all crumple zones ect are all still intact...
my chriscraft sank in 15 feet of ocean water once but after a few repairs to the outboard it was up and running again for years with no problems
 
I would be wary about buying a car with that electrical damage only because the installation work done by a dealership is not as good as that done in the factory.
 
If you had a choice between a Lightning'd car vs a regular car

same make/model/price/options regular for me... it doesn't matter how good the repairs were completed, I would see this as a potential for something to go wrong in the future. I'm not saying that I would never buy it, but it would have to be better than my other choices and it's already got one strike against it.

(no pun intended)
 
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