10 Faults in 11 Months in our new VW California Campervan T6.1 Ocean! 

Fingers crossed! We absolutely love VW and the California, and more importantly OUR T6.1 too. These issues haven’t put us off but it would have been lovely to have one that is fault free.

I have had a t6 for three years and can confirm that vw had abysmal customer service since day one. I had the chance to get an extended warranty package that included servicing and mot at a very good price. Since all visits to vw were so poor, I decided not to take up the extended warranty even though it would probably have been more cost effective to have taken it. I am content that it was the right decision as the dealerships genuinely do not care about you once they have your money and will treat you with contempt in my experience.

could be worse....could be a land rover...

Great stuff, that’s great news

Yes absolutely, but we suppose they are complicated things so difficult to really test every single thing before customer handover.

Fantastic! Great to hear it’s being converted now, so not long to wait. Thank you for your kind words too :)

You’re very welcome, glad they have been helpful.

You're welcome!

Great, glad it has helped your understanding. Short trips are a pain for modern diesels but if you know what it's doing then that's half the battle!

Brilliant stuff! Congrats on the new Cali and hope you enjoy Etties Field 👍👍👍

Glad you like them!

I hope the radio hasn't turned on randomly at night!?!

@@CampervanTime fortunately only while driving, still it make you jump!

It seems to be a little random, some people have no issues, some have some...

@@CampervanTime For sure, for reasons VW should explain it seems their QC is somewhat wanting on the T6.1 Californnia's, almost as if they're taking their customers for granted.

Sounds like you've got a pretty good one there!

Fingers crossed it stays that way for you! Glad our videos have helped 👍

😬🫣 dare we ever go in a dealership again ?!!! 🤣

Great! Glad to hear your bits and bobs are sorting themselves out. Quite how they could fit the rear AC panel upside down is still beyond my comprehension !!

Yep, it doesn't help that I have no idea what causes it. Don't think it's low voltage as when ours did it we were on hookup the night before. Unless the whole panel reset itself and we didn't notice?!

@@CampervanTime My only link was that it occurred on some of the hottest days last summer when we were touring (not the most helpful time for a fridge to turn off). It’s not really happened since and I wondered whether there may be a thermal cut off, when the van was left unattended in the sun(?) but I’m just guessing.

@@adrianinga1769 could be, but ours cut out when we were in the Outer Hebrides and it wasn’t that hot 😩. Who knows !!

Just ‘found’ you and thanks for great vid. Picked up our spanking new 6.1 one month ago and fridge has turned itself off few times already-guess should take back to dealer?

You’ll be fine I’m sure - they’re great and don’t let any of this put you off

@@CampervanTime Well, they have a year to get it right! 😀

@@colinsavidge9121 😆

Thank you ❤️

Agree! Some of the camping stuff is better in the T6.1 but the T6 seems to have been built better and has a MUCH nicer dashboard, that's very true. We miss it!

Don't let it put you off. We are picky and most of these things are easy fixes at home and just quick niggles that can happen on any vehicle. Since we posted this video we've had ZERO issues at all.

Sure - it's here: amzn.to/3NHtEFY

We’ll keep investigating !

🤣

Oh dear that doesn't sound good at all. In fairness our faults haven't been that bad really - certainly nothing like what you've experienced.

Really need to get ours booked in!

Don't let it put you off. They are complicated things and our faults were all pretty minor really.

I am sure I've seen it somewhere, will check and post back. Have you tried pressing and holding the power symbol for 10+ seconds and seeing if it resets?

@@CampervanTime oh yes, tried pressing most parts of the screen.

Steel away! Sorry to hear you’ve had issues with yours too. I think it’s just how they are. Not many cars/vans out there with no issues at all from new I think !

Just a little advice I'd stay well clear of the California, beach,ocean type of vans, The build quality of the interiors is an absolute embarrassment , I'd stick with your custom built van, I'm a big fan of the transporter scene & it still baffles me why people spend £80k on what is a poor product with a famous "California" badge 👍

Sorry to hear that, hope you manage to get things sorted out soon.

That's odd! Glad you sorted it though.

Oh dear, poor you!

Yep, agree with all of that !!

@Minimal give it a go it smells nice lol Anyway there should be a bigger wash wipe bottle by rights the Euro 6 engine is in Can’t believe the size of it you could almost pick it up and hug it

Good to know 👍

Fantastic! We had a 204 TSI T6 Ocean lent to us for about 6 weeks by VW and we loved the quiet smooth engine and DSG. 👍

Hi! No we haven't actually. We noticed it once or twice on our outer Hebrides trip but since then it has worked perfectly on and off EHU for multiple day long trips. Really not sure what would have caused it the first few times but we suspect it might just have been the voltage level in the battery dipping temporarily for something (heater kicking in maybe?) and as the batteries were new at that point they might not have had enough charge cycles to work at their optimum. Unfortunately it sounds like it might be a dealer question on yours :(

@@CampervanTime That's good to know. Thanks for the update. We'll just monitor for now and see how things go. Take care

We do love ours and the one we had before but we’re not blind to their issues too. We’ve seen some amazing conversions with fantastic quality fittings also. 👍 nice to have a choice.

Unfortunately not, no. Some other cars we've had can do this (Tesla, for example) but not the VW. Not sure if the Carista can code it to do it perhaps. Haven't had a look at that.

Has never done it again, so I can only assume it was a bit of a one off teething hiccup. Sorry I can't be of any more help 😞

Could possibly be. We really do need to get it booked in for them to take a look at it.

We’ve had the roof go down very slightly too (1cm or so) but we put that down to the big temperature changes between 30c daytime and 10c at night. We just pressed the button to put it back up again and it was fine. Happened over 48 hour period. Oil cap - YES! We did drop ours by accident in the engine bay on our old T6 California and it landed on the engine undertray while we were away. I then didnt have any tools and couldn’t see it so had to call roadside assistance to get it out for me! Thankfully no charge!!

@@CampervanTime thanks for Feedback about Roof . Forgot to say i totally agree with Sarah's experience about DISCOVER MEDIA , less friendly that "old" Colombus i had in my previous 2015 SUPERB ... Details only because Driving experience this T6.1 and average consumption ( only 7.3 per 100 kms ) are absolutely outstanding !

Yes agree - the T6.1 does drive better (somehow) than the T6 we had before. The DSG gearbox mapping is better too, much smoother now.

Pretty sure the sensor for waste water only tells you when the tank is full rather than how full it is.

@@airseen_uk ahh ok I’ve dumped a good 3/4 of the fresh water in to it to check it. Maybe I’ll do the full tank to see if it registers. Thanks for the info Nick

Nick Bennett is exactly right - it is a 'on or off' type sensor, rather than one like in the main water tank level that is a float. Try filling the waste water to the max and it should register full just before it actually is. If you look at the back wall under the sink, that's the waste water so you can probably see a physical level in it too.

Interestingly we didn't have any issues at all with ours in the Outer Hebrides, but we did also have fantastic 4G mobile data when we were up there too surprisingly. Will be an interesting test in the highlands.

@@CampervanTime So I did the NC500 and had no problems with the SOS thing and I drove across the Swiss Alps in September but now I've just been pottering around Nottinghamshire that SOS fault has reared it's ugly head. I've tried doing the thing where you press the button and cancel it and nothing, I pressed the button and didn't cancel it and the call connected but it seemed to connect the the standard 999 handling place rather than the VW 3 way call thing so I just told them my van was on the blink and it was in error and they said OK and hung up. There's no issues with signal. It being winter I've not been far from home and most of Notts is pretty well covered. I just tried pulling the fuse (number 50 from the diagram on t6 forums) and the fuse looks fine so I put it back hoping it might force a reset but no dice. I'm going to call VW tomorrow and see what they say but it's probably going to have to go in. The only other issue I had was in Switzerland and the radio started boot looping which was very annoying. I looked up the nearest dealership on my route which was in the town of Chur and with the help of google translate explained the issue to them and they got it straight in and fixed it for me that morning. The other issue was a few weeks back where a few plastic clips broke off that hold the exhaust manifold heat shield in place. Called the dealerships in Nottingham and Derby and neither would book it in within a month. The thing was banging around in the wind under the van so I took it to the VW car dealership in Mansfield and just asked if they'd have a quick look. They put a couple of self tappers in it and I was on my way but I'm not going to bother ringing to book in again I'm just going to show up. Service from main dealers in the UK has been terrible. Switzerland was a totally different experience. I'm going to call the VW support number tomorrow because I know if I call a dealer they'll just want to book me in and it'll be a month of waiting for someone to look at it then probably another month if it needs a part.

Ouch, that’s not something we’ve heard of at all I’m afraid - hope you can get it sorted!

yep!

HI - you are right, this is not how it should be. You should be able to pull the lever up and when sitting on the bed roll it forward with no noises. If you are trying to move the bed whilst standing outside and not sitting on it, the bench can sometimes be more difficult because it twists a bit and makes it harder to run in the rails. Given it's so new I'd get it back to the dealer under warranty to be checked out. I've seen inside the bench mechanisms and they are complicated with many levers and springs etc. It could be one just isn't seated right.

@@CampervanTime thanks so much!! I will do that. Best wishes Amanda

Ours was delivered with it, so no idea if they have now deleted perhaps?

The T5.1 is a lovely model, it’s a keeper!!

@@CampervanTime she's my every day electrician work van and car.....then makeshift camper on occasions. She has looked after me exceptionally well!! Only thing I hate is the cup holder 😆. 136,000 miles and only had to replace a starter motor.....some expensive bad stuff to come soon enough I'm sure! Exhaust outer case rusted off a few weeks ago but doesn't matter in told. Hacksaw sorted itv out. It's only a sacrificial outercasing aparantly..I got a bit worried when it was scraping on the road at first!!

Oh nothing quite like the metallic scraping noise of shame driving along with everyone looking at you! Great service life really from the exhaust at that mileage and age 👍

@@CampervanTime I've been using the more expensive premium diesel for last year or so and I feel it's worth it. I get roughly 50 miles extra per tank and performance is noticeably improved. Some long dual carriageway hills I would always have to change down to 5th but fly up them now in 6th...even with the van full of cable and tools. It's probably an average camper weight all the time. I changed tyres to contivan200s and they last over 3 x longer. Used to have quite wide and soft continental tyres on her which she came with but fronts wore out about 8000-10000 miles. They don't look quite as cool but it's a compromise I'm OK with during the cost of living crisis years !

Interesting tests! We’re thinking about swapping our conti-van tyres (215/60/17) tyres for some 235/55/17 tyres as we had them on the last van and felt they were a bit more comfy and less noisy.

Oh no!!! Ours was a May build and July delivery so no, not in winter. My understanding is that there was a batch of faulty Bowden cables that caused the issues.

Great info, I wonder if the low voltage might have done it then? I think we might have been using the parking heater too, which I know puts a big load on the leisure batteries also, so maybe just a bit of a power dip for a few seconds was enough to turn it off. Who knows!

Thanks, Will ask the dealer when we talk to them about the window

I have heard of this happening to people before but we haven’t had that fault. Worth a post or two on the Facebook groups or club forum for advice 👍

@@CampervanTime Thanks you for your advice, I will try that. I've also had 3 of the same problems you encountered too. I am a little disappointed, considering how much the van cost and it appears to be common problems. The dealer was not aware of any of them, which I find strange? Thanks again.

Hope you manage to get things sorted out 👍

Sounds like a pretrty poor show from VW, one should not be having problems like this given the cost of the California, VW you can and should do better.

@@stelmara111 Thank you very much. I know, I am very disappointed with VW, luckily the warranty still has another 2 years left but I am still not confident they will sort it.

Let’s hope so, it’s been working well for us for the last few months really apart from the window which we still need to get sorted out. Our T6 had a few issues too though, but VERY pleased yours is good. We’re touching wood here for you to keep it that way!

Interesting, not heard of that one before. It's obviously swapping to kmh / European driving settings for some reason. Is that a setting in the dash for continental driving or something like that?

I should have said that on an Audi S3 I had it used to switch this kind of stuff automatically when we went to Europe mainland, then back again when we came back. Is the GPS / satnav all ok ?

@@CampervanTime No EU settings, VW (Aberdeen) have plenty of explanations but no solutions apart from the mythical software update that will happen at some point

@@CampervanTime Satnav works fine, I watched your video on Carista (Door alarm settings). I purchased but haven't actually used it, however I did look and there were some settings I thought might fix it but I was too cowardly to try - lol

PS, Love the videos, keep them coming even though it costs me a fortune...

No I doubt it - the vast majority will have no faults whatsoever and I'm sure you will be fine. Hope the wait isn't too long for you.

Well it would be easy to get frustrated about it but life is too short and we want to enjoy it. Most of the niggles we sorted ourselves reasonably easily. From everything we know it’s only the older 180hp bi-turbo engine that seems to have issues, not the 204/199 engine.

Well it depends - none of the issues we had stopped us camping or driving around and the vast majority were simple to sort out. At least with a Cali you have one point of contact to work with and talk to (plus a 5yr warranty option for very little money when you buy a new van). Having had a lot of new cars over the years too, nearly all of them have had things that weren't right or needed fixing too, so these are no different. Remember that with other types of build (ie conversions) there may be other different things to consider. Have they been crash tested, how do they handle extremes of temperature (ie does stuff unstick/get brittle in hot/cold weather). The Mercedes Benz Marco Polo is converted by Westfalia for MB and Westfalia have a fantastic reputation. BUT, the Marco Polo has issues with the fibreglass roof having blisters on it, for example. These are all complex vehicles and relatively low volume, so a level of pragmatism is needed we think. Happy hunting and don't let any of this put you off as they're a great way to explore and have fun.

That’s true - those things should just work.

Have you watched our videos about that?

@@CampervanTime Hi there I did and understand your reasoning on it but was hoping VW to fix under guarantee😒 now the garantie is gone and still not fix , they have a note in their system in case some update from mother ship ever happen??? time to take matters in my own hand and watch again your video on it😄 thanks a mill

But that roof bed tent solution is soooo sexy, LoL. I just Love it. But since I don't trust the build quality I will probably step up a pay grade level to Kabe Van 690 LB, but it alsmost one meter longer, so it will be problems at parking lots. Why can't anyone just make a 6 meter one man office plus small kitchen and one bed van?

They’re a complex vehicle with so many bits that have the potential to need attention over many years of use. They have been evolving the design in some areas over the years and we loved both of ours nonetheless.

👍

Don't let our experience put you off - seriously. We wanted to give a full honest run down of our experience but these vehicles are complicated and therefore do have minor bits and bobs that may need attention. Maybe we're too forgiving or just happy to try to fix most things ourselves, but it hasn't bothered us really. You could take a look at other vans like the Westfalia Club Joker City, or if you would consider a Transit based van then the Ford Nugget or Westfalia Kelsey. Obviously there is the Mercedes Marco Polo too. All great options for mainstream conversions, but then there are so many other options too.

Oh dear!

Dunno. Are any other dealers any better? The door handle was a bit of a surprise but apart from that our issues have developed over the 11 months rather than all at the beginning.

Unfortunately I am constantly surprised how much modern manufacturing seems to be dumbed down in terms of quality, both of QC and materials. I really do think we've seen 'peak car' in terms of quality of builds and materials used. So many manufacturers I've had the pleasure of using cars and vehicles from recently feel worse than the model they were before. I think the only exception to that recently is the Kia/Hyundai group which are rapidly improving their quality.

I’m consistently disappointed with the build quality, materials and QC of many different car manufacturers these days, no-one (except maybe one or two) seem to be actually interested in improving things in that regard. I presume that the offset of the cost of tech going into vehicles (screens for everything, safety systems, mandatory EU fit items etc) must be offset in part by savings elsewhere.