Beware the 90,000 Mile Volkswagen

The Golf TDI just passed 90k miles. The check engine light has been on for about 2,000 miles and the airbag light has been on for many thousands more. The airbag light has been traced to a bad driver seatbelt sensor and the dealership can not guarantee the driver's side airbags will deploy in an accident. I've been putting that one off.

Monday night, my battery light came on and flickered while I was running some errands. I figured I'd go by NTB the next morning and get a new one since it was more than four years old. Unfortunately, the TDI wouldn't start yesterday morning. A friend gave me a jump but on my way to work the ABS light came on and the engine ran rough for a few hundred yards. I reluctantly took it in to Charles Maund Volkswagen and let them examine it.

The results:

1. Check engine light...1 of 4 glow plugs are dead, other three need replacing ($373)
   
2. Battery...actually a dying alternator ($814)
   
3. ABS...no idea, probably caused by funky electrical system from the above
   
4. Brakes...30% left on fronts ($489) & 10% left on rears ($332)
   
5. Diagnostics and standard 90k mile maintenance...($320)

For those not keeping score at home, that's a total of $2,328.

And some people wonder why dealership service departments are generally disliked!

I refuse to pay the dealership that much money for a freaking brake job (and I can get 4 lifetime-warranted ceramic pads for way less), so I'll get that done elsewhere. That leaves the bill to $1,507. I'm going to suck up that absurd alternator bill because I need the car back sooner rather than later and screwing around with buying the parts elsewhere and handing everything over to an independent mechanic is a load of trouble I don't want to deal with.

The assy thing about all this is I deposited a check worth $1,200 in the bank just before the ABS light flipped on and the car started to run bad. My father is pitching in some cash but that check was spent before the damn thing could even be registered in the bank's computers.

The brake pads, glow plugs, and alternator are all original parts and have never been replaced. I was under no illusions that VW uses invincible parts, but all that shit breaking down at 90,000 miles is frustrating. This is the only major problem I've had with the TDI besides the catastrophic clutch failure of 2004, a beaut of a repair that set me back more than a grand.

Posted by Drizzten at January 11, 2006 08:56 AM