Road trip distance?

Just did a quick down and back to Niceville, FL. My wife needs a professional license for Florida, needed fingerprints to complete the application, and we could find no one in between here and there that would do them. Ugh.

Her auto NB with 17" snow tires on Audi fat five wheels went down and back, a little noisy, but no problems at all and averaged right at 40 mpg for the trip. We were actually in Niceville for only a few hours. But we did manage to visit her son and his family and stick our pale bodies in the ocean for a short period of time. Very nice. We're ready to move.

It was 2700 miles total, I think, and less than $200 for fuel. We did OK.

Cheers,

PH

Road trip with error code P0380

Hi everyone,

I have a VW Beetle 2001 TDI and my engine light turned on about couple weeks ago. Mechanic took a look at it and found error code p0380 which related to the glow plug failure. I checked the voltages on the 4 glow plugs and 3 of them read 0.0 and the last one was 1 (looked like an error reading cause the number was on the far left of the meter screen).

I am supposed to take a trip of 8 hours from California to Oregon next week. I don't wanna pay for the mechanic cause I think I can fix it if I have time.

It might be that I am not reading the glow plugs right, or that I need to replace the harness.

I was riding the car like normal around town and it didn't have a problem in the past 2 weeks although the engine light is still turned on.

Does anybody recommend/not recommend going on a road trip while the car is in this condition? I feel like since it's related to the heater and I'm not going to a cold place it should be fine. But I am scared that the faulty glow plugs or harness might cause a bigger problem after 8 hours of drive in one day.

Thoughts anyone? This is my first car and I have never needed to pull over on a road trip by myself. A little scared but still want to try.

You should be OK and changing the flow plugs is super easy; where are you located?

This time of year, you won't need the glow plugs. If that is really the cause of the mil, I would not worry about it. Changing the plugs is very easy. Probably less than 15 minutes, start to finish. Changing the harness is a little more involved.

I thought the warm weather would not cause a problem as well. I found out yesterday that my harness is damaged - the tips are separating a little. Supposedly the harness is not supposed to have air coming through it. I will change the plugs just in case but the harness won’t arrive on time nor I have the tools to reach out to it’s bottom where the 4 pin part is connected. I can’t even locate it right now.

I’m based in San Francisco. The labor here is so expensive that’s why I chose to not go to the mechanic.

gkgk said:

I thought the warm weather would not cause a problem as well. I found out yesterday that my harness is damaged - the tips are separating a little. Supposedly the harness is not supposed to have air coming through it. I will change the plugs just in case but the harness won’t arrive on time nor I have the tools to reach out to it’s bottom where the 4 pin part is connected. I can’t even locate it right now.
I’m based in San Francisco. The labor here is so expensive that’s why I chose to not go to the mechanic.

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Just north of you in San Anselmo is guru Matt Phelan who works out of Auto Haus II
Address: 640 Sir Francis Drake Blvd, San Anselmo, CA 94960
Phone: (734) 717-7527
Email: mattgtr@gmail.com

He is on this site as Matt-98AHU

I drove from Oroville and did a RON in San Rafael so I could have him do a major service on my Jetta last Fall.

gkgk said:

I thought the warm weather would not cause a problem as well. I found out yesterday that my harness is damaged - the tips are separating a little. Supposedly the harness is not supposed to have air coming through it. I will change the plugs just in case but the harness won’t arrive on time nor I have the tools to reach out to it’s bottom where the 4 pin part is connected. I can’t even locate it right now.
I’m based in San Francisco. The labor here is so expensive that’s why I chose to not go to the mechanic.

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If you have not changed the harness I think I remember how I did mine years ago. Send me a pm

I am currently traveling from NJ and have made it to RI. Now I am about to pack up and head over to OH for a few days. Afterwards we are headed to KY and TN. Then we are headed back to NJ. All this on a new to me as of 7/29/2020, 2014 Jetta TDI Sportswagen. So far it has been a blast to drive and I’m averaging about 40-42 mpg.

This past month i took a trip to the south western part of Georgia, roughly 2000miles total. The ol Jetta did great on mileage considering i had a passenger and luggage for two people in the car (47mpg average if i remember correctly.) I did notice that when i was ripping it around the one day with my cousin that it was blowing a lot more smoke than usual. I assumed it was from the fuel (filled at Shell in SC) but recently it occurred to me that it could've gotten a bit coked up from cruising at 60-80 the whole way down from Pa, not sure if that could cause it. Either way since the trip it hasn't really smoked any more than normal. Oh, and it was indeed a great road trip.

After feeding the dogs and cat, took off Thurs morning for a Vegas trip. Needed to visit hollow ground that is Alegience Stadium. Took my 2 kids. The boy has been to Vegas before the girl, this was her first time. Covid Vegas was completely different. Left the next morning as we had scored what we came for and 1,340 mile latter was back home. 47 mpg for a short time and when it was done an average of 44.3 mpg.

Good times....good times

I wanna try this Trip across Europe from Lisbon to Vladivostok

I'm thinking in the deep mud that is Siberia, a bike is easier to push than is a car.

Mike in Anchorage said:

I'm thinking in the deep mud that is Siberia, a bike is easier to push than is a car.

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I agree, but will it best to use bigger cars like truck and jeep for a muddy trail adventure.

Last month, I was on the road trip. All the way from chicago to atlanta. It was the longest road trip i cover in my life till now. It was so amazing with severals up and down. A most amazing trip is that not planned, like a adventure.

I totaly need to planned a long road trip with my hasband i wanna gos as far as we can.

About 25 hours from Fort Myer's FL to home in Eastern CT. 1,400-1,500 miles non stop (minus 1 45 min power nap and bathroom breaks/fuel stops), no CEL's!

Though I have a P00AF now... but the car runs fine so I'll leave it be.

Doing a "baby" road trip this weekend to philly. <300 miles 1 way, I expect to fill up once at home and once again when I return home!
Gotta love the TDI.

A 12 mile run down back roads is about perfect for me. Just something to break up the monotony of life. Preferably back roads with little to no traffic. Your mileage may vary!

Two trips to Alaska and back to SE Kentucky, 2014 & 16, in my VW Vanagon with an '02 ALH TDI engine... about 25k miles in 60 days total. No break downs and we were pulling a popup camper.

My last long trip:
Left upstate South Carolina.
Goal was to cover the gulf coast and western New Mexico.
Highlights: The bridge over Lake Pancatrain, Louisiana and Texas coast, Silver City,NM
and then straight north to Ship Rock NM (without entering AZ)
Some nice forest service roads.
Johnson Mesa just east of Raton. (ook up the Johnson Mesa church).
Then along the Colorado front range and the home via Iowa.
Just over a week on the road

Howard Garner

cascade7997 said:

My last long trip:
Left upstate South Carolina.
Goal was to cover the gulf coast and western New Mexico.
Highlights: The bridge over Lake Pancatrain, Louisiana and Texas coast, Silver City,NM
and then straight north to Ship Rock NM (without entering AZ)
Some nice forest service roads.
Johnson Mesa just east of Raton. (ook up the Johnson Mesa church).
Then along the Colorado front range and the home via Iowa.
Just over a week on the road

Howard Garner

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Did you try some New Orleans food?

cascade7997 said:

My last long trip:
Left upstate South Carolina.
Goal was to cover the gulf coast and western New Mexico.
Highlights: The bridge over Lake Pancatrain, Louisiana and Texas coast, Silver City,NM
and then straight north to Ship Rock NM (without entering AZ)
Some nice forest service roads.
Johnson Mesa just east of Raton. (ook up the Johnson Mesa church).
Then along the Colorado front range and the home via Iowa.
Just over a week on the road

Howard Garner

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Did you stop? Sounds like a lot of time behind the wheel. Hopefully you missed the nasty snow and cold rolling across the plains.

2 hrs 45 min in one direction is a road trip. Clearly the backroads are not as fast as the interstate so it goes by time in my world. If that is not a road trip what do you call it?

Two day 1310 mile drive AZ to WA 2 3/4 tanks, tank filled to brim each time.

Car had difficulties starting took a few cycles of the glow lights, and lots of cranking. 1/2 tank lost in 15 mins during cold start up and following HWY drive, temps were around 10 F, I am missing my lower engine cover. Car with 2 people and a 60# puppy, and easily 100# or more in truck weight,

while up in WA replaced my weak glow plugs, their harness, the coolant glow plugs and their harness were replaced with a much cheaper option, found my rear brakes to be dragging, fixed and replaced the parking brake cables.
drove about 1k miles around in just WA alone, found my headlights lacking, replaced the lenses with glass and much better.

my turbos vacuum hose started to leak and got REALLY LOUD whistle when ever it tried to spool, never went into limp mode, Replaced the hose and tested the whole system, found the brake booster line was slowly leaking and replaced it. found the nipple on the pump was wiggling...

ended up doing the vacuum pump seals and rtv the nipple in place.

Two day 1370 mile drive WA. to AZ. 2 1/2 tanks, didn't keep track of gallons used but we drove with 3 small bladders, and a full trunk + rear seat and lots of stops to stretch.

just outside of Vegas brakes start going hard when pulling into a rest stop, found my RTV fix had a crack right where i tried to seal it, pulled the pump off, some high temp instant epoxy, a bit of tape, and some good walking for the puppy, put the pump back on, we were off!


Will do 3 days next time. possibly with a trailer.

Doing this trip in a couple months with the TDI, should be fun!

Eastern CT > Kennedy Space Center > Naples > Eastern CT
Taking a vacation which is much needed... 3.2k ish miles round trip, 20 hours down into FL, 24 hours up to CT. I figure ill stop in North Carolina/Virginia somewhere to snooze at a police station for a couple hours, 1-2 hour nap + coffee gets me through these longer trips

my days of driving like that are long behind me.

Same. Just sold the 335d because I only put 2000 miles on it in 3 years. Instead of driving 7 states I’m now traveling the entire continent of North America flying about 40 weeks per year.

I did that for about 6 months before my heart surgery. My employer used that as realization that one person couldn't cover all of US (48 states) and Canada (primarily 3 provinces but from Quebec to BC).

Wow! There’s 17 direct reports under me but somehow I still end up anywhere from Mexico City to Vancouver to PEI and everywhere in between . Midair rn flying home from Toronto next trip is to Gainesville FL then on to Santa Rosa.

kjclow said:

my days of driving like that are long behind me.

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because of my implemtation of comma ai openpilot, road trips are very easy. i mainly just sit there and monitor the system to make sure i am not over running local speed limits, and that it is maintaining a safe follow distance.

of course i am also watching road conditions, and traffic further ahead which openpilot cannot do. i find that driving with a system like this is kinda like flying an airplane with autopilot. yes it is taking care of the physical controls, but i am still in command and making sure it is operating safely.

surprisingly this is less tiring than actually driving, i dont need to make sure i am centered in my lane, i dont need to make sure i am maintaining X speed, etc.

i feel that eventually my driving will shift from a long haul with a 1-2 hour nap to a long haul with a nights stay in a hotel. but i have a couple more good years left until i get to that bridge

i have had the system in place for nearly 100k miles now. zero close calls, zero mishaps that a human also wouldnt do. in fairness i do not allow the system to operate in conditions where i wouldnt even trust factory ACC, like snow storms/heavy heavy rainfall (talking about the type where you slow to >10 mph below the posted speed limit and wipers are on full blast), etc