I hate to post this to the list, but I don’t have the owners manual, and
can’t find anything in the car to indicate how to unlock the fuel door.
When I got it (at auction) the door was on, but I had to remove it on the
way home and am now getting tired of the cosmetics of the missing door 
Anyway, how do I unlock it, and if there is something wrong with the
unlock mechanism how does it work (ie electrical, mechanical- cable etc)
Thanks in advance
Mike Thebo
mth…@indiana.edu
Who, although he has done a clutch job on a VW in a hotel parking lot,
now feels like an idiot…
Open the trunk, open the tool box on the right side, pull the manual release tab.
The fuel door is locked/unlocked by an electric solenoid actuator. It runs off
the door locks, there is no separate switch for it. If all the other door
locks work, or some of them, you probably have a bad actuator motor. Listen in
the trunk and see if you can hear the motor working when someone locks and
unlocks the drivers door with the key in the door lock, with the door closed.
If you hear noise, the linkage may just be off. No noise = motor not working,
either because it is bad or not receiving a signal.
Comment by admin — November 30, 2009 @ 6:30 pm
In article <6citg1$qg…@flotsam.uits.indiana.edu>, mth…@indiana.edu
(Michael Alan Thebo) wrote:
> I hate to post this to the list, but I don’t have the owners manual, and
> can’t find anything in the car to indicate how to unlock the fuel door.
> When I got it (at auction) the door was on, but I had to remove it on the
> way home and am now getting tired of the cosmetics of the missing door
> Anyway, how do I unlock it, and if there is something wrong with the
> unlock mechanism how does it work (ie electrical, mechanical- cable etc)
The fuel door has an electrical lock that should only lock when the car is
locked. I have never had any trouble with it but under the plastic cover
on the wall of the trunk which houses a toolkit there is a plastic arrow
shaped tag on the end of a string that that says "pull this" to manually
unlock the fuel door.
Good luck.
Comment by admin — November 30, 2009 @ 6:30 pm