ChinaBob
Well-known member
My 2015 A3 TDI is now about 15 months old and has a bit over 60,000 miles on it. I’ve scheduled the 55K service for Wednesday as I’ve been too busy driving the car to get it in sooner. Among other things, it’s just completed its third coast-to-coast road trip.
A rather annoying problem with the navigation system may have been finally fixed just before I left on the latest country crosser. The problem was that the system would randomly hang just after inputting an address, but it wouldn’t misbehave for the dealer’s service department. And, of course, it never threw any codes, but it was getting frequent enough and annoying enough that I didn’t want to drive across the country with it that way. I made a bit of a pest of myself by taking it to the dealer a bunch of times until they finally agreed to replace the navigation unit with one from another car on the lot. That was over 10K miles ago, and so far, so good. But, then again, the original unit didn’t start to go flakey until somewhere around 35K.
Another thing that I did in anticipation of the trip was to replace the original rubber with Conti ExtremeContact DWS 06 tires. I got them because I didn’t want to risk getting into snow with 50K on the OEMs and these Conti’s are supposed to be good in snow, among other things, for an all season tire. Fortunately, I didn’t get a chance to test that out on the trip, but then there’s a long winter still ahead here in New England. The thing about these Ultra High Performance All-Season tires (rated to 186 MPH no less!) is that Tire Rack insists on inflation to 42 PSI. That made for such a stiff and jiggly ride that I took the car back to the tire installer twice, insisting that there was a balance problem. Not so, he said, and it turned out he was right. These tires ride very smoothly and quietly on some of the highways of the West but apparently even the best Eastern roads have too many lumps.
Fuel economy tends to be in the high-30s – mid-40s range driving 80 MPH + whenever I can, which is most of the time, using what I presume is winter blend fuel. And most remarkably, the engine still seemed to be breaking in, becoming even more powerful and quieter well past the 50K mile mark.
Nice car, I think I’ll keep it.
A rather annoying problem with the navigation system may have been finally fixed just before I left on the latest country crosser. The problem was that the system would randomly hang just after inputting an address, but it wouldn’t misbehave for the dealer’s service department. And, of course, it never threw any codes, but it was getting frequent enough and annoying enough that I didn’t want to drive across the country with it that way. I made a bit of a pest of myself by taking it to the dealer a bunch of times until they finally agreed to replace the navigation unit with one from another car on the lot. That was over 10K miles ago, and so far, so good. But, then again, the original unit didn’t start to go flakey until somewhere around 35K.
Another thing that I did in anticipation of the trip was to replace the original rubber with Conti ExtremeContact DWS 06 tires. I got them because I didn’t want to risk getting into snow with 50K on the OEMs and these Conti’s are supposed to be good in snow, among other things, for an all season tire. Fortunately, I didn’t get a chance to test that out on the trip, but then there’s a long winter still ahead here in New England. The thing about these Ultra High Performance All-Season tires (rated to 186 MPH no less!) is that Tire Rack insists on inflation to 42 PSI. That made for such a stiff and jiggly ride that I took the car back to the tire installer twice, insisting that there was a balance problem. Not so, he said, and it turned out he was right. These tires ride very smoothly and quietly on some of the highways of the West but apparently even the best Eastern roads have too many lumps.
Fuel economy tends to be in the high-30s – mid-40s range driving 80 MPH + whenever I can, which is most of the time, using what I presume is winter blend fuel. And most remarkably, the engine still seemed to be breaking in, becoming even more powerful and quieter well past the 50K mile mark.
Nice car, I think I’ll keep it.
