Volkswagen running for cover

[ellipsis]

...my son just bought a VW turbo diesel in the UK...got it for a song as the fairly newish, vehicle was, in the owners opinion, the worst piece of sluggish, shit he'd ever owned and was happy to pass it on cheaply, to a new mug...after removing a kink in the throttle linkage and a little lubrication, my son reckons he has one very cool and punchy little runabout and that all the previous owners mates, probably hate VW turbo diesels now...

[caspernz]

Sure, turbo diesels can offer a short, punchy powerband, but this wears a bit thin..
( & the non-linear accelerator response can catch you out too, creeping imperceptably up over the speed limit - if not using cruise-control.)


The issue VW is having - is due to the filthy diesel needing urea solution injection for emission control, ( ammonia/NOx catalyst values)
& while do-able for steady state industrial use, this is problematic for regular car-type use - frequently driven with a wide variation in power setting applications/exhaust temperature variations..
so, hence the 'cheat mode' test over-rides VW employed ( & are now busted for doing).

Diesel mills for ordinary car use are a false-economy folly..

Take a spin in a 2.0 TDi with a 6 or 7 speed DSG box and you'd be amazed

[J.A.W.]

Take a spin in a 2.0 TDi with a 6 or 7 speed DSG box and you'd be amazed

Amazed? By that awful short-shift rapid thump-thump-thump upshift sequence, followed by an equally annoying clunk-clunk-clunk back down again.. nah..

Even the smooth ( real auto) M-B diesel, while punchy, lacks the creamy, satisfying long-legged, rev-out driveability - of its proper petrol sister machine.

[Stylo]

Amazed? By that awful short-shift rapid thump-thump-thump upshift sequence, followed by an equally annoying clunk-clunk-clunk back down again.. nah..

Even the smooth ( real auto) M-B diesel, while punchy, lacks the creamy, satisfying long-legged, rev-out driveability - of its proper petrol sister machine.

Take a drive in the CX5 Diesel Mazda, alloy block and twin turbo - 420 NM of twist, more than my piece of shit BA2 Falcon XR6 had. It always squeaked or had a rattle somewhere. No fond memories.

Back to the subject ,I bet it was a little quiet at the VW dealers in NZ today too. Evidently VW vehicles in this country have been tarred by the same brush as in the US, and now the UK. The plot thickens .

I noticed in the Christchurch Press today there were no VW advertisements from the dealers hmmm. Feel sorry for them, the shit's going to be kicked around for a little while yet.

[Tazz]

Take a drive in the CX5 Diesel Mazda, alloy block and twin turbo - 420 NM of twist, more than my piece of shit BA2 Falcon XR6 had. It always squeaked or had a rattle somewhere. No fond memories.

That's an impressive amount of torque from factory for a 2.2l. The old yota 1HD-FTE's only produce a smidge more than that, and they are 4.2l.

Can't beat the coal burners for towing that's for sure.

[Swoop]

And here I was hoping that the price of a new VW would drop to affordable levels.

It will. Probably by Monday next week!

I see the head of the Beetle Empire has been appointed to sort the mess out. Presumably he will ban VW's and insist that Porsche 911's be given production precedence...

[J.A.W.]

I don't think the poor wee tyke is old enough to drive, well at least not mentally anyway.

How curious.. I replied in idiom to this off topic post yesterday..
My post was excised, & an infringement applied by Gremlin for "taking the thread off topic"!
Yet the original 'off topic' post remains in instu & apparently unsanctioned..

Anyhow, the CARB (California Air Resources Board) regulations are unlikely to be directly relevant to local VW functional characteristics.

There have been instances reported however, of diesel cars shutting down & not starting again when run out of the injected emissions control urea solution.
The VW software then requires an official code reboot by an authorised tech, which may (likely) be an expensive call out.

This event is of course flagged by dash alert warnings, which are ignored at the owner/operators risk/cost.

[Tazz]

[Banditbandit]

[TheDemonLord]

On this subject - does anyone remember when Audi won Le Mans with a Diesel powered car?

[sidecar bob]

On this subject - does anyone remember when Audi won Le Mans with a Diesel powered car?

Which time?

[vifferman]

Amazed? By that awful short-shift rapid thump-thump-thump upshift sequence, followed by an equally annoying clunk-clunk-clunk back down again.. nah..

I dunno what DSG box you've experienced, but neither of our Dubbies are like that. The shifts are almost imperceptible (understandable, given that they occur in 0.2 seconds), even when changing manually. No thumping, and in "D" the shifting's quite leisurely. Admittedly, the Golf (1.4 Turboed petrol engine) is a bit frenetic in "S", whereas the Passat TDi is the opposite: a bit sluggish in "D" and quite normal in "S". There are two (only 2) drawbacks I've found in the Passat with the DSG box: the 50,000km service costs a wee bit, because the 5litres of BabyLesbianAfghaniFurSealPenguinWhale oil is summat like $60/litre. The second I've experienced only once: backing a heavy trailer up a steep driveway. Because I'm not a hugely experienced trailer backer (and visibility was shit), the clutches slipped too much. Ended up driving up forwards and turning around at the top. However (but!) the new Passat has a feature of the AutoPark that autobacks a trailer. The AutoPark's a cracker too: the Vifferbabe can now parallel park like a pro, with or without her wand. We didn't realise till recentlyish that it also has a "Unpark" feature, but she's never needed to use that (nor the one for parking on the right-hand side of the road (like on one-way streets).
One thing that sorta bemused me was the Passat has too many gear-changing choices: "D", "S", Tiptronic, and 'flappy paddles'. I like the latter, but the tiptronic gets only occasional use and I could manage perfectly happily without it.

[J.A.W.]

I dunno what DSG box you've experienced, but neither of our Dubbies are like that. The shifts are almost imperceptible (understandable, given that they occur in 0.2 seconds), even when changing manually. No thumping, and in "D" the shifting's quite leisurely. Admittedly, the Golf (1.4 Turboed petrol engine) is a bit frenetic in "S", whereas the Passat TDi is the opposite: a bit sluggish in "D" and quite normal in "S"

It was a couple of different Audi machines including a TT & a Q-type diesel.. but both presented in the same abrupt way..

The racing Audi diesels were able to exploit the significant capacity & turbo-boost advantages allowed over the petrol opposition too..

[vifferman]

That's an impressive amount of torque from factory for a 2.2l. The old yota 1HD-FTE's only produce a smidge more than that, and they are 4.2l.

Can't beat the coal burners for towing that's for sure.

The 2015 TDi Passat has various models with various states of tune, with the most powerful of the (most common) 1968cc models turning out 176kW and 500Nm. "Chip tunes" and the like can boost the output an impressive amount, if you don't care about your warranty. It makes them a relaxed driver, with (in the model I've got) a flat torque curve (is that a misnomer?) from 1750 to 3500 RPM. Despite owning it for over three years, I still haven't got used to letting it tootle along at not much more than idle; it just seems wrong! So, I usually use "S" so it feels more like a 'normal' car, and tend to use 'D' on the highway, as in 'S' it won't shift into 6th unless it's Autobahning or over about 107km/h or so.

[Tazz]

^^ that is more torque than an LS2 (which is a 6L V8)

On this subject - does anyone remember when Audi won Le Mans with a Diesel powered car?

They've done it a bunch of times in 3 different 'models'.

Keeping in line with the extra cost of diesel maintenance compared to petrol for us in the pleb diesels, the first one was costing (well, funded) well in excess of 10 million a season. Ouch.

Anyone unsure of diesel performance could learn a bit from looking up the specs, reason for use and actual race results.

I dunno what DSG box you've experienced,

None. They either think all diesels are geared like trucks or think a 'small' rev range means more gear changes, never mind ratios.

Simply put, not worth the effort man