00262 Solenoid Valve 3 (N90): Open Circuit or Short to Ground

Investigate soon

A wire in this circuit is touching the car's metal body, so current escapes to earth instead of reaching the part.

Can you drive it? The engine light will stay on and the car may run in a reduced-power mode. Read the freeze-frame data to see the conditions the fault was logged under.

The definition

00262: Solenoid Valve 3 (N90): Open Circuit or Short to Ground.

What to check first

Cheapest and fastest checks first:

Unplug the connector at the part and measure resistance from each signal pin to a good earth. A healthy circuit reads open, not a few ohms.
Follow the loom for chafe points - where it crosses a bracket, passes an edge, or flexes near a hinge or the engine mounts.
Look for water or corrosion in the connector. A wet plug shorts pins to each other and to the body.

What actually causes this on a VAG

This code belongs to the group covering solenoid valves 1 to 7 in a conventional automatic gearbox - N88 (00258), N89 (00260), N90 (00262), N91 (00264), N92 (00266), N93 (00268) and N94 (00270). They are small electric valves in the gearbox's hydraulic valve body that the transmission control unit uses to route fluid and change gear. 'Open circuit or short to ground' means the control unit cannot see a healthy electrical path to that valve; several of the sibling codes above also cover a short to positive. The control unit shuts that output down to protect itself, and most of these gearboxes then drop into emergency, or limp, mode: no proper gear changes, often just one forward gear plus reverse, and no kickdown. The car will usually still move, but treat that as enough to reach a garage rather than a way to carry on your week - and because a gearbox falling into limp at speed can feel like a sudden loss of drive, plan to pull off somewhere safe rather than fight it. One scoping point before you read on: this family of codes belongs to hydraulic torque-converter automatics with a conventional valve body. DSG and S tronic dual-clutch gearboxes use a mechatronic unit and report their faults in a different vocabulary, so if your car has one of those, this is not your code.

Most likely causes, in order

The gearbox's external multi-plug and the wires behind it. Gearbox fluid wicks along the inside of the wires and creeps into the connector, corroding the pins and producing open-circuit readings. Unplug it and look for oily, discoloured or spread terminals. This is checked first because it costs nothing to look at and is a genuinely common VAG failure.
Low battery voltage or a poor earth. Solenoid circuit faults can be logged simply because the control unit's supply was poor at the time. Get the battery, charging and earth connections checked and the code cleared before anything is dismantled.
Chafed or trapped wiring between the control unit and the gearbox. Chase this hardest where the code mentions a short to positive: it usually means insulation has rubbed through against a bracket, a heat shield or the bellhousing. The loom runs through a hot area that moves with the engine, so follow the whole run and flex it as you go - a wire that only touches under load makes the fault come and go.
The solenoid itself, or the harness inside the sump. Reached by dropping the gearbox pan. A specialist can compare the suspect solenoid's resistance against the identical ones in the same gearbox - a clear odd one out settles it without needing any published figure.
The control unit's output stage. The rarest of these, and only a fair conclusion once the loom, the connector and the solenoid have each been proved good. Find the short first: fitting a control unit to a circuit that is still shorted simply damages the new one too.

Worth knowing: A solenoid circuit fault is not a failed gearbox, and it should never on its own justify a rebuild quote. Have the external plug and the loom checked before anyone opens the transmission. If the pan does come off, take note of what is in it: dark, burnt-smelling fluid or friction material in the sump is a separate and far more serious conversation than a wiring fault, and it changes what the repair should be. While it is open, have the fluid and filter done at the same time - it is most of the labour already paid for.

Reading the code is the easy part

A code names the circuit that complained. What tells you why is watching the sensor behind it while the engine runs — and that is where a code reader stops and a diagnostic tool starts.

VAGPULSE reads every module in a VW, Audi, Skoda or SEAT — not just the engine — shows the live measuring blocks behind this fault, gives you the freeze-frame conditions it was logged under, and clears it once you have fixed it. It also does what a generic OBD reader cannot on a VAG: service resets, coding, adaptations, and Stage 1–3 flashing with your original file saved first.

$249 once. No subscription, unlimited cars. Windows 10/11.

See VAGPULSE — $249 Look up another code

Software downloads instantly · cable ships September 30 · cable guarantee — refund if it won't connect

Prefer to work on your phone? The VAGPULSE Android app is a free download and its demo mode runs against a sample car with no hardware at all, so you can see exactly what it reads before spending anything. Reading your car with it needs the VAGPULSE cable, which comes with the licence.

Common questions

What does 00262 mean?

00262 means Solenoid Valve 3 (N90): Open Circuit or Short to Ground. A wire in this circuit is touching the car's metal body, so current escapes to earth instead of reaching the part.

Can I drive with 00262?

The engine light will stay on and the car may run in a reduced-power mode. Read the freeze-frame data to see the conditions the fault was logged under.