unpimpWell, as much as I love my car when it’s running well, I’ve decided that once I get it back, I’m going to trade it in on something else. It’s really only had 2 major issues, but each of those issues has taken it out of commission for days and even weeks (today is the 7th day of this episode). Everything thus far has been covered under warranty. The current issue is PROBABLY going to be covered, even though my power train warranty expired at 60,000 miles and the car has 61,000 miles. But once that warranty is gone, I can’t imagine paying for these kinds of repairs.

The local “shop” just doesn’t seem to have the knowledge base to fix problems without consulting “VW Tech” on EVERYTHING. They don’t seem to be able to diagnose anything correctly on their own, and when VW Tech doesn’t get it right, well, that adds days on top of days to the duration of the issue. This current problem, for example, VW Tech (over the phone I assume) diagnosed it as an EGR valve problem. I was skeptical, co-workers were skeptical, and Trent (doing his graduate studies in automotive engineering in Germany) was skeptical. And what do you know?? It was NOT the EGR valve! Huh, go figure. Now, VW Tech thinks it’s the turbo charger. I think that’s got more potential based on the sound I heard, but I’m still not convinced it’s the answer. Guess we’ll find out. But in the mean time, the car sits, awaiting delivery of the part (day or two) and installation of the part (another day or two) and then determination on whether the part actually fixed the issue.

I just want a car that runs. And in the rare instance that it doesn’t run it isn’t a “consume your life” event. I think the Golf GLS TDI is a fantastic concept, love the size, the torque and the economy… but if it doesn’t run, what good is it to me. 🙁

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