Troubles and more Troubles

Ya, know I like my car. I like the way it drives, I love the distance I can go on a tank of good ole' D2, and I even like the way it looks. However after this I'm wondering if I should dump it. While driving on dry paved road the other day the ESR and ABAS Lights came on, then they went off and then came back on. So I hit my ESR button to turn it back on, but it didn't work. Then I disconnected the battery to see if that would reset the light, but as I expected the computer onboard is pretty self sufficient and the lights did not reset. Now I had a "red" steering light that would not go out. I took it to the dealer yesterday and here is what is wrong.

I have a bad speed sensor, the ABS and ESR sensors were bad, the break pad indicator light is also bad, my fuel door hardward fell apart and that's why the button inside does not work, I have two screws missing from the doors and from the 1st time they seemed to say that the turbo sensor came up as well when they hooked it to the computer so they may replace that as well.

If the car was still not under warrenty I would have spent well over $1,000 to get things working as they should be. I have 10,000 miles left on the warrenty and am thinking that these "problems" will keep popping up costing me any savings I have made in gas. I was hoping I could get 250,000 miles out of the car. Right now I'm hoping I can get 50K without some major delimma. I do the maintence as I should. I always buy fuel from reputable places and used Stanadyne. I buy the "good" oil, and I'm on this forum almost once a day to see what is going on and to learn.

I've never had a vehilce that I have had to put in the shop twice within the first 50K and I'm at 26K and have been there twice already. I can't even really say I'm fustrated or pissed off. What I can honestly say is that I am concerned about what maintence issues will come up in the future. Hopefully a few of you have had similar experiance, but they have worked out and now have 200,000 miles on your car. That's what I'm hopeing for me.

Mike
Front Royal, VA

well if properly maintained these cars will last a while, I just past the 254k kms on my car nothing major really but maintinence, one thing I would say is find a local tdi trusted mechanic and go to them not the dealer as most of the time they aren't that great and like to line thier pockets for stuff that doesn;t need to be fixed and yet they do it anyways.

Unfortunately, nobody can tell you that things won't continue to break. It's just a machine, just like a Toyota.

I'm sure you can find lots of owners who had a few early problems and went on to long satisfying ownership experiences. I'm sure you can find lots of owners who had different experiences as well.

The fact that you have had a few parts go bad early on doesn't say anything about the integrity or quality of any of the other parts.

Keep in mind what Eric said about finding a mechanic you trust, and consider what your threshold is for paying for repairs. There are expensive parts on your car, like the turbo; but as you have noticed, there are few cars that deliver this caliber driving experience in this price range. If the world of car ownership and repair is a craps-shoot, perhaps we TDI owners are among the high-stakes gamblers, but I think the odds are better in TDI ownership than in Vegas.

I'm not sure exactly what you were told about the turbo, but I would be insistant on understanding what exactly was wrong with the test results and what failure or malfunction was indicated before I let anyone touch my turbo, whether I were paying them to do it or WVoA was.

Why so many bad sensors? They are supposed to be hardy (MAF's notwithstanding). I'm wondering if the dealer threw parts at it, to fix an issue?