Rear A/C control Panel sticky buttons fix.

[brcas64]

T6.1 A/C rear control panel buttons sticky causing the A/C to do its own thing.

The cover of the control can be easily removed with a trim tool and the unit unplugged by pushing a small screwdriver or key into the fitting holding the control cables. The unit can then be removed. There are 4 hex screw on the back of the unit and the unit can be taken apart easily. The buttons are a tight fit but can be popped with a trim tool. The bottom of the top button and the bottom of the button below run against a small metal strip. File the top the edges of the buttons and the buttons will run freely. Quite easy to do and took about 10 minutes in all.sorry should have taken more pics. A/C unit controls now working correctly

 

[PJT1966]

Thank you @brcas64 I just had this issue last weekend: the rear A/C went into full blast fan mode: a finger nail in the button helped stop it.

 

[Kemper-van]

A tiny bit of contact spray ariund the sticky button solved the issue with me, until VW could finally source a replacement under warranty back in 2021.

 

[dspuk]

Just to add some detail to this thread as I did this today having had 4 buttons on the unit that stick to varying degrees.

Once you have the electronics out with the front of the unit facing down, and the buttons still in, you can feel which ones stick by just gently tapping the front of them, watching them in the housing. If they are sticky they don't “jiggle”. For the first one I thought it was the housing sticking and took the button out filing all over. No luck. Basically as per OP. It’s the outer edge of the button.

With a small file you can see a ridge on it as you are filing it flat, the part catching. Some buttons you can do one edge. Others need all 4. I just filed, popped in, repeat until not catching. If you don’t have a file a stanley knife and scraping works as well.

Just bear in mind the hot and cold buttons are red and blue as their base colour. When you scrape the edge it exposes that base colour on the edge. You can’t see it when it is in.