Wear & Tear

Wheel Alignment, 125,000 miles, 18th March 2011

An uncharacteristic large amount of wear was spotted on the inside edge of all four tyres. The car's wheel alignment was checked and found to be out. This was corrected and so hopefully there will not be any further wear.

Oil Consumption, on-going

This is my first car where I have had to top up the engine oil level in-between services and it came as a bit of a shock initially. However, I have since learnt that oil consumption is quite common for new diesel engines. (VW say oil usage "is to be expected and can be as much as a litre per 1000 kms!") Also, as this car is going approximately 18,000 miles between services it is perhaps understandable that some topping-up is required.

Initially, when I was driving approximately 30,000 miles/year during mainly motorway cruises I achieved around 8,000 miles/litre. Since 77,000 miles I have only been driving on average 10,000 miles/year and a lesser proportion on long distance motorway cruises (Click here for more details). Oil consumption has increased to around 5,000 miles/litre.

 

Timing Belt & Tensioning Roller Replacement, 124,800 miles, 8th March 2011

My car's handbook says that, under normal usage conditions, the timing belt should be replaced every 80,000 miles. I had heard a lot of people saying it was very risky to expect the belt to last this long because of the enormous damage that would be caused by the belt breaking. Also, it was a popular opinion that the timing belt should be replaced every 4 or 5 years or so as an added precaution. Since there was no mention of an age limit on the timing belt in my car's handbook I decided to write a letter to VW UK for clarification. Their reply was that the replacement interval for the timing belt in my car had been changed in September 2005 to 80,000 miles or every 4 years. This was apparently because the timing belt is made of a rubber based compound that deteriorates over time, regardless of the distance covered. This seemed sensible enough to me and since the timing belt had last been replaced in March 2007 I decided to get it replaced.

After checking with a few local VW dealers it turned out there was a national promotional price on timing belt replacements of £316 all inclusive. My local dealer, unprompted, agreed to do it for £299 including the cost of a courtesy car. I couldn't argue with that!

 

Air Conditioning Service, 117,250 miles, 23rd June 2010

During a period of very warm weather, I thought that the cold air coming from the car's air conditioning system was not as icy cold as I thought it used to be. Since the car had never had a dedicated air conditioning service or re-gas, I booked it in. It cost £65 from my local VW dealer.

To be honest I didn't feel as big a difference afterwards as I thought I would. Perhaps it takes a while to feel the full benefit of the service or maybe I was imagining the air conditioning being more fierce in the past than it really was. Either way, the air con was certainly working and it was particularly hot weather!

 

Puncture, 113,000 miles, 6th February 2010

My third puncture in this car. My first puncture on the current set of tyres (purchased last June). The front driver's side tyre picked up a 3/4 inch long bolt head screw right in the middle of the tread. It didn't deflate but I began hearing this loud ticking noise as the bolt's head kept hitting the road as the wheel turned. Fortunately I was in York and was able to get the puncture repaired the same day. Cost £20 for repair and balancing. The garage had to use a socket set to remove the bolt!

 

2 new rear coil springs, 107,268 miles, 11th June 2009

MY CAR FAILED IT'S MOT!!!! I thought they were joking when they told me. I intentionally take my car to a local vehicle testing station (which do not do any repairs themselves) so I can be sure they are not just going to invent problems. But it failed because apparently the two rear coil springs had both broken.

Anyway, after contemplating buying and fitting new springs myself, I decided to let a local independent garage do it. It cost £140. Afterwards, they showed me the springs and sure enough, they were both missing about an inch long bit at the end. The mechanic told me they replaced a lot of springs on all makes of car and they believed this was due to the many speed bumps you see nowadays!

 

4 new tyres, 107,122 miles, 6th June 2009

The Michelin Pilot Primacy tyres I bought back in April 2006 (see here for more details) were approaching the end of their life and I decided to replace them before my car's MOT due at the end of the month. Because I do not drive so many miles any more, I was prepared to sacrifice a little durability for lower road noise so after a little research I decided on four new Goodyear Excellence tyres. I bought them from Blackcircles.com for £243 all inc and they were fitted by Nationwide Auto Centres here in York. Six weeks later and I have no complaints what so ever. They are a little quieter but not much.

 

Stone in brakes, 31,110 miles, 18th June 2005 & 103,454 miles, 13th February 2009

Suddenly one morning I started hearing this horrible grinding noise when pulling away. It was a bit like the sound you hear when you use your brakes for the first time after the car has not been used for a few days and a little rust has formed on the brake discs. At first this is what I thought it must be but it continued long into the journey when any rust would have long since been cleared. I was really worried either my brakes were about to disintegrate or a wheel fall off so I booked the car into the VW dealer for investigation. It turned out to be a stone in the ABS system. £41 for one of the brakes to be disassembled in order to remove the stone.

Update: 103,454 miles, 13th February 2009
This happened again. The noise suddenly appeared as I took a slight left hand bend after running off-line on an exit slip road. A small stone was probably thrown up and must have found it's away behind a front wheel and into the brake assembly.

This time I took the front wheels off myself and looked for the stone. I couldn't find anything but gave everything a good clean behind here. The noise never returned!

 

Intercooler Hose Replacement, 91,500 miles, 22nd November 2007

This was discovered during my car's fifth service. The garage informed me that the intercooler hose was badly squashed (Probably caused by my first accident). They said this would result in a reduction in engine power and also that there was a leakage of oil from it. I had not noticed any reduction in power but I had noticed recently that I had to top-up the oil more frequently than usual. Therefore I let them replace it. Added another £100 to the cost of the service.

 

Timing Belt Replacement, 79,000 miles, 20th March 2007

Emailed a few local VW dealers for their lowest quotes and my local York dealer offered me the best price with £250 all inclusive, including the insurance for the courtesy car. Had to be done on a weekday however as its too big a job to fit into a Saturday morning.

 

Key fob battery replacement, 2nd December 2006

Simple story. One cold day I went to unlock the car with the remote and nothing happened. Had to use the old key-in-the-door method. As the same keyfob had been used pretty much continuously for 2 years 5 months I figured it's battery probably needed replacing. Fortunately I found just the info I needed on the web. Click here for the link - excellent page with step by step instructions and photos.

 

New Lighting ECU, 59,200 miles, 22nd May 2006

A few weeks before I began noticing that the exterior light switch illumination was behaving strangely. Normally, when it is in the Auto position and the exterior lights are off, just the Auto symbol of the switch would illuminate green (to indicate that the Auto Lights system was turned on). If the exterior lights were on, the green illumation would be replaced by all positions on the light switch being illuminated red (the standard dash illumination colour). What I noticed was that after approximately 10 seconds of the exterior lights coming on, the light switch would return to just illuminating the Auto position as if the exterior lights weren't on! The switch to the left of the light switch; the headlight level adjustment and the dashboard illumination control would also loose all night-time illumination. Anyway, I left my car with my local VW dealer and they ended up having to replace the Lighting ECU in order to fix this. Everything's worked fine since.

Addition: 31st December 2006
The new Lighting ECU however did not have the same settings for the Leaving Home/Coming Home delay. I ended up buying a VAG-COM interface from Ross Tech to enable me to make this and other changes. Click here for more info.

 

Indicator repeater in nearside mirror, 55,000 miles, 8th April 2006

The day before my Mk V Golf was due to have it's third service I noticed the nearside indicator repeater housed in the passenger's door mirror wasn't working. I knew that the repeater was one or more LEDs rather than a normal bulb and so it wouldn't be simply a matter as replacing a bulb. Strangly, a little while after noticing this problem the indicator began working again and was still working the next day when I took the car in for its service. I mentioned it to them and sure enough, when I went to pick up my car I was told that the LED indicator assembly needed replacing. Maybe an intermittent fault code had been recorded by the car's on-board diagnostics. Anyway the assembly was replaced a week later under warranty.

 

First Accident, 53,900 miles, 12th March 2006

The Mk V Golf is a very safe car. The Electronic Stabalization Programme (ESP) does a lot to keep you on the road and heading in the direction of your choosing. However, it cannot do miracles and trying to turn whilst travelling a little too fast, downhill, on a snow covered road was asking a bit too much. The result, an impact at about 5-10mph into a partially submerged boulder causing damage to the lower front bumper and radiator/cooling system. Click here for more details.

 

Windscreen Replacement, 52,000 miles, 18th February 2006

A stone hit to the bottom right/driver's side of the windscreen resulted in a 4 inch crack starting to appear. I arranged for AutoGlass in York to replace the windscreen under my insurance. I took my car to their premises and they did a good job.

Addition: 13th March 2006

After having the windscreen replaced, the auto lights and wipers do not seem to be as sensitive as before. Also, the sensor looked different when viewed from the outside. I took the car back to AutoGlass and they detached the sensor, cleaned the windscreen and re-attached the sensor adding some silicon gel between the windscreen and sensor in an attempt to prevent any air bubbles affecting it. This seemed to help a little but I don't think the sensor is as sensitive as before.

Addition: 31st December 2006
I eventually purchased a VAG-COM interface from Ross Tech (click here for more info) to enable me to change the sensitivity of the Auto Wipers/Lights sensor and now everything is back to normal.

 

Inlet Manifold Flap replaced, 50,033 miles, 28th January 2006

The emissions warning light suddenly came on (didn't flash) after a short period of heavy acceleration in 2nd gear to 40mph at 48,902 miles. There didn't appear to be any change in performance. Fortunately I was only a couple of miles away from home. Once there I stopped the engine and restarted it but the warning light still remained. I checked the manual and it suggested that the car would still be safe to drive but I should get it checked out by a dealer. The next day I drove about 100 miles with the light still on. Then after being parking up for a couple of hours, the light did not return when I restarted the engine. It never returned. A couple of days later the car was checked out by the dealer and they diagnosed a faulty inlet manifold flap. This was replaced 10 days later in about 30 minutes under warranty.

 

New handbrake cables, 18,809 miles, 29th January 2005

When my car had its first interval service I was given a courtesy car and noticed that its handbrake felt a lot smoother than my own car's. Turned out my car needed two new handbrake cables. This work was carried out under warranty and the handbrake now feels much better.

 

Tandem Pump replaced, 17,902 miles, 15th January 2005

This was replaced under warranty when the car went in for its first interval service. It turned out that Volkswagen were replacing a number of cars Tandem Fuel Pump as a matter of routine following the discovery of a manufacturing defect in one of the bolts holding a cover in place. Click here for more details.