2002 GTI VR6 Electrial Failures!

[2002GITVR6]

I'm going nuts!
I've been having intermittent electrical failures. I believe I have a MK IV. I could be wrong. I have an after market stereo, but the failures happened while I still had the stock monsoon stereo. It's usually when I have high power demands on the car (air conditioning while going up hill or accelerating) but it's also happend while simply driving on a flat road with no unusual power demands.
I lose all electrial power for a moment, maybe 2-3 seconds.
The trip resets to 0. The clock resets to 12:00.
In my opinion it's sparked other power issues like the ECU light came on and the rear brake light wouldn't shut off even when the car was shut down completely. I had to remove the fuse so I would'nt kill the battery.
Now my rear brake light is out. Hopefully just a bulb, but I wouldn't be surprised if it's merely another symptom of a deeper problem VW is reluctant to admit..
VW says they need to see it do it, and of course it never does. They say the computer is not telling them anything and the computer reports no power failures. My guess is that this is becuase the power failures wipe the memory of the computer. I can't believe they have never seen this before.


There seem to be some pretty knowledgeable V-Dubbers on this site. Any suggestions?
Any other sites I might try?

[veedubmechanic]

as related to the brake light problem, your brake light switch is bad (common failure)

as of the cluster resetting, i would check your battery (might be low amps and need to be replaced) also check the ground cables under the battery tray which commonly have gfs buildup (green fuzzy stuff aka corrosion)

also instrument clusters are a common failure also, they just go bad and reset themselves when they want to. also check the fuse for the cluster (i think its fuse 14 or 12 i forget its a small one 7.5 i think) if its blown the cluster will reset like that