Fallchild000

My girlfriend drives a 99 Jetta, and she is having a terrible problem with it. For the last month the car refuses to go into gear, the brake light wont turn off, and then out of no it'll just work. She just got stranded because she cant get her car into gear, no matter how much or how hard she pushes the brake, it wont budge. Its like the little safety sensor that stops the car from going out of Park or Neutral w/o the brake isnt being tripped. Is there a sensor anywhere I can check? Or a connection?

Thanks for any Help,
Nathan

BigA

Are those the only symptoms? What about the Radio, the wipers and the heater/AC blower? If any or all of those things are also not working at the same time, then Check the ignition switch. Sometimes the key will get stuck in the "START" position instead of automatically springing back to the "RUN" position.

HeirMuench

I assume it is an automatic your talking about. More than likely the problem is the brake light switch that is on the brake pedal. Check and see when the problem is occuring, look at your brake lights, they usually will not come on and the veh will not come out of park.

txiong

My buddies also have the same problem on her automatic Jetta. The brake lights work fine when depressing the brakes. When the brake pedal is depressed you can hear a kinda clicking noise where the shifter is. You have to keep on pressing the brake pedal until the light (picture of foot I think it was) by the gear shifter goes off. Once it goes off it'll shift fine. This leads me to think that there's a switch that's bad. I haven't really had the chance to look at it yet cause she's a state away and I just wanted to know if this switch is located by the brake pedal or the gear shifter.

txiong

If anyone has the solution to the problem, can you email me at hmonglonertim@yahoo.com. Thanks in advance.

christy59

My girlfriend has a Jetta with this same problem. Follow the brake pedal on the front side and you will see a small knob pushing against the brake pedal. That's the brake switch, she actually had it replaced a year ago with the same issue and it's happening again almost a year later. A quick fix is just to turn in counter clock wise and pop it off, the snap it back in. It resets something on there and you'll be able to get out of park.

According to another thread, the cause is the contacts...

http://www.geocities.com/jason_ettorre/VWBLS/BLS.htm