Bought 97 passat tdi... Teach me!

I was referred here from vwvortex based on my purchase... Just bought 97 tdi passat with 200k.... Paid 1300 for it planned maintenance to be done asap wheel bearings all 4, timing belt/waterpump.... Interior needs some help but hey it's a 97... Cold starts great, motor and tranny seem strong. Underneath is practically rust free strut areas in good shape (car on lift, mechanic looking it over.) Now for the fun stuff what order of upgrades should I do? Injectors? Tune? Exhaust? Drop-in filter? Which companies are best? Techtonics makes a 2.25 exhaust for cheap enough is that large enough? My goal is to get fuel mileage, some black smoke, and make it a bit more fun to drive not looking to make it a rocket.

maintenance first and foremost.

after that, either try a stage 1 tune or upgraded injector nozzles. tunes start @ $200 and up. nozzles will start @ about the same but quickly go up in price for the latest and greatest. either may be available used in the classified section.

for parts use the recommended vendors on here such as IDparts, bora, kerma, malone tuning, rocktchip etc etc

for service, find a "guru" that is relatively local.

stay away from Prothe http://forums.tdiclub.com/showthread.php?t=320500

dont bother with cold air intake, stock airbox flows plenty

dont worry about exhaust unless there is something wrong with yours or you decide to go for much much more power

everything ive written has been hashed out a hundred times in different threads so you can search for more details and you can read for months and still not soak up all the info available on this site.

Good, I was hoping you would take my advice and join over here. There's lots of good information and a huge amount of knowledge.

Welcome!

Steve

I 2nd ketchupshirt88.

Read through the myturbodiesel site, then this forum, then poke around and read some of the threads, especially BEFORE doing anything to your car.

If you like looking at paper manuals like I do vs the pdf versions see if you can pick up a Mk3 Bentley manual that at least covers the 97-99 cars and then read through the sections on the TDI engine. The trans sections is also good for reference.

Once you get all your reading done then you'll want to take care of any engine maintenance that hasn't been done by previous owners.

If you come from a Mk2/3 background like I do you will find a lot that is very familiar.

Good luck, and as I mentioned on vortex get those foam blocks in the front fenders pulled out before they cause any more rust...like on this neglected B4V tdi.

Thank you guys for the welcome.... I have researched myself into complete confusion and managed to spend more money (not actually spent yet) and cars still stock!

87vdubgti16v said:

Thank you guys for the welcome.... I have researched myself into complete confusion and managed to spend more money (not actually spent yet) and cars still stock!

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If you take good care of it, an additional 200K is entirely possible.
One weak point to check: The turbo in/out oil feeds are prone to corrosion. Oil can literally POUR out of those lines if they are corroded.Ask me how I know. If you have any doubts, replace them. (IDI parts has these)