I'm sometimes in the SF bay area and some times in the high desert at altitude, occasionally, I buy a car that's not a diesel but who cares about me, it's my cars you want to know about right?
My most recent car, new to me, is my second Passat, a 2004 TDI wagon with ~ 250K miles has been loved since new. The second owner bought it at less than 4K miles had used it mostly for very long commutes with every service done ahead of or on time. Timing belt was done less than 10K miles ago. I haven't seen mention of the balance shaft delete being done. I'm not familiar enough with these engine's sounds to really know the difference so I'll comb the receipts more carefully before embarking on the project.
The first B 5.5 Passat wagon I bought, and still have is a 2003 gasser, "bought it to learn on". Living dangerously, I bought it in limp mode, stuck in third gear from parents with a new born baby who were terrified of the car. After I looked at the car they called me back and cut their asking in half so for $500 I had a 140K mile 1.8 turbo wagon. Using VAGCOM Lite I reset the CEL after I did a transmission service, for what was probably by the look of it, the original fluid. It had been ~ 2.5 quarts to 3 qts, low on transmission fluid. I included a quart of TransX fluid which immediately slowed down the seeping of a transmission fluid leak. After 10K miles, I drained it again and again added more TransX fluid which this time stopped the leak entirely. I've now driven it another 30K miles and have had no further problems but I'll change the fluid again before too long.
There is also my much loved 1985 BMW 524TD I resurrected it from a front end crash. (OK, I was driving it in heavy SF traffic even if I wasn't at fault). A friend, who is a far better welder than I helped and did such a good job welding on the new front end that even some people who worked at body shops had trouble finding where the repair was.
Least I forget there's also a 1987 Mercedes 300TD wagon, the time MB got it right, well right, except for the engine head, modle # 14, where for decades after as they continued to failed and MB, not being a company to give up kept improving the head design. There were at least 5 or maybe 6 improved versions. The last was either a model # 21 or #22 which among the enthusiast's community is claimed not to fail. I pulled a factory new model, one design short of the newest, from a Mercedes in a Pick-n-Pull yard that was ~4K short of one million miles on the car. The car had been obviously been adored but it looked that it had been badly vandalized, the body beaten with some object with blunt force and then spray painted with what must have been multiple cans of epoxy paint. The last new stock of heads for this engine the dealers sold were ~ $3K each which was not too many years ago. I know of no other company to keep trying and fixing a design failure for more than 20 years after they stopped selling that model engine to finally again "get it right" .
I do have some more gas engine cars but since they're not Turbo Diesels, why would bring them up in this post
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