Joey's Totally Predictable DD V2.0

[95SVTCobra]

Most importantly, the dog situation is slowly improving. :lol: She no longer acts as if the car is a chamber of death, but is still reluctant to climb inside.This dog either has the coordination of a Raggity Ann doll, or a gymnast depending on her mood, so I can never tell if its a lack of ability or lack of will that keeps her from doing something.

:lol: :lol: :lol: Great review Joey, and she will hopefully get used to it

[Jake]

Otherwise all is hunky dory. It feels like the motor is starting to "open up" as I get some more miles on it. I'm starting to notice that classic "DSG cough" even on moderate throttle gear changes over the last 50 miles or so.

I've seen a lot of people saying that their motors felt more powerful after 1000-1500 miles, and that the exhaust "opens up" a little over the first few thousand and sounds louder, I wonder if that's what I'm starting to notice.

My FoST definitely did that. I think around 1200 miles was where it truly felt ready to party (brooo this is sick bro I brought some Red Velvet Cake Burnetts bro what do you mean there's no girls here). The motor got a bit more willing to rev and my gas mileage improved substantially.

[SlimKlim]

3000 sounds ridiculous. I remember reading an op ed that said modern cars don't need any break in period. I don't know if I would go that far though.

There's 0% chance I have the patience to not thrash the snot out of this thing at 1001miles. :lol:

Jake IIRC didn't your Focus have no recommended break-in period? There's a lot of debate on whether a modern car really needs it, and how exactly you should do it. I've heard the "it'll break in before it breaks," and "break it in fast, have a fast motor, break it in slow, have a slow one."

I've landed somewhere in the middle, I certainly am not babying it, I'm probably giving it a max of about 75% throttle, letting the motor wind out to 4k and once or twice a little bit higher, and I'm letting it rev out at various throttle points so its getting a variety of RPMs and load.

I love the oil temp monitor in this thing, I know that save for a couple of test drives before I got her, the motor has never been run hard on cold oil (Karma, I thrashed the shit out of at least 2 people's future GTIs on my test drives). It takes a solid 10-15 minutes of driving for it to hit 200* even with relatively warm ambient temperatures, even though the water gauge is "at temp" after like 4 minutes.

I've still got photos of when I first took her home sitting on my camera, hopefully this weekend I can take some nice photos of her all cleaned up and post some of the good ones. Not like it's anything different from what you'd find on VW.com, but I'm sure I'll enjoy having them in a few years when she's not so young & tight.

[WRXtranceformed]

Yeah I always kept it easy to 1500 miles on any new engine and did my best to "rock" the throttle to help seat the piston rings...especially at highway speeds. With that said, hardly anyone keeps a brand new car their entire life until it dies, so I would guess that you would probably never run into any adverse effects by thrashing on it from day one. I know a lot of motors come already with some dyno miles on them from the factory as well so you might be duplicating efforts.

[Jake]

I think Ford said that "no special break-in was necessary" but followed that sentence immediately with "vary the engine and road speed for the first 500 miles if you really really really want to." So, I did. And I tried to ramp up the party-times slowly until I got to 1k.

[SlimKlim]

Yeah I always kept it easy to 1500 miles on any new engine and did my best to "rock" the throttle to help seat the piston rings...especially at highway speeds. With that said, hardly anyone keeps a brand new car their entire life until it dies, so I would guess that you would probably never run into any adverse effects by thrashing on it from day one. I know a lot of motors come already with some dyno miles on them from the factory as well so you might be duplicating efforts.

Nah these bad boys ship to dealers with about 10 miles on them, one of the cars I test drove had like 21 miles when we started, and at 22 miles I was pegging redline. :lol: For the first ~350 I was super careful not to let the RPMs sit in one place, now I'm just driving it in "D" and winding it out occasionally, my commute is so much stop and go that it's never spending much time at one engine speed anyway.

[Evan]

IMO "break in" should be until the first oil change just to get the metal shavings out.

With a new car I do the first oil change early, about 1000 -1500 miles

[SlimKlim]

There's copious amounts of debate on the VW forums about when to do the first oil change. Some people do it at 1k, others at 7500, others at 10k. :dunno: I'm going to ask the service advisor what his personal opinion is when I bring it in tomorrow, from what I hear they're more than happy to do the free oil service whenever you want, so I could have it done early.

[.RJ]

VW (and most) put in a different break-in oil at the factory. I would leave it in.

[SlimKlim]

Sounds logical to me. :dunno:

[ScottyB]

if anything go ahead and change the filter at 1000 or 2000 miles. that's the part that's going to be doing the actual containment of any nasty stuff. otherwise i'd just leave the factory fill in for whatever they recommend.

[SlimKlim]

Yeah that's not a bad idea. The oil filter on this thing is ridiculously tiny, it looks like a motorcycle filter.

So I think I might be a victim of the Bosch Fuel Pump recall, I got a generic mailer about my vehicle being subject to a "campaign" that I need to call and ask about, it didn't even specify the car so it could be left over from the MKV since I was in their system with that car too.

EDIT: False alarm, VW Online Chat Dude ran my VIN # and said my car was in the clear, he said the mailers go out ASAP to people with cars produced around the time of the recall, then once they know the exact cars affected they do a second round of letters telling people to make appointments.

[SlimKlim]

Oh I installed my little mascot the other day. I've always been a big fan of the "Fast" marketing campaign from when the MKV came out, and noticed these little guys at the dealership for $9. I clipped the keychain part off and stuck him on top of the rear view mirror with a couple squares of 3M adhesive foam.



It's not very well made, I'd love to have one of these but they don't make them anymore so it'd have to be an ebay find.



Still haven't had a chance to actually take nice photos of the car, every time I wash it it's filthy an hour and a half later, either pollen, bird shit, tree sap or all three at once. Ugh.

[SlimKlim]

One Month Update

Current Mileage: 957mi

Mostly because I'm bored, but now that I've had the car for a month I think I've figured out all the ins and outs and what-have-yous.

"Car-Net" is mostly a big gimmick. You can unlock the doors from the app/website, but as far as I can tell you cannot re-lock them, and if someone opens the door, it will not automatically re-lock, unless I'm doing something wrong. You can make the car honk/flash the lights remotely, but it takes forever for the signal to get from your phone, to space, then into the car. Also, you can flash the lights from the key, so I don't really get the point. If you can't roll up the windows or lock the doors I'm not even sure what the point of remote vehicle control is.

The "vehicle health report" is just a quick overview of like five categories, I guess we'll see if that proves to be useful once things start to break in the future. The boundary and speed alerts are cool if you have other people driving your car. If someone drives this car I'm probably with them, so it's not super useful for me. Lastly "destinations" only applies to vehicles with Nav, but it is kinda cool that you can pre-load the car with destinations from the computer instead of pecking them in through the terrible in-car interface.

So, basically it's a bunch of useless gimmicks wrapped around one core desirable feature, which is the automatic crash response and emergency roadside service. I'll probably continue the service after the free trial just for those benefits. I really like the idea of the car automatically contacting help in an accident, not to mention if I'm unlucky enough to witness an accident or emergency situation in front of me I can hit the big red button and immediately get help.



Now for the car itself.

I have adjusted to getting out of it and it doesn't seem as cumbersome as when I first got it. I kinda swivel out and grab the left side of the steering wheel with my right arm to stand up out of the car without putting my full weight on the seat bolster. Its impossible to avoid it entirely so I guess we'll see how that foam holds up over the coming years.

The dog has also acclimated. I think she just doesn't know where her back feet are supposed to go because she's a huge clumsy brute, and the actual flat part of the rear door sill is very narrow so she ends up trying to stand on the vertical part where she has no traction. I've gotten used to letting her throw her front paws and torso on the seat, then giving her rear paws a boost.

Not quite as simple as I was hoping, but better than having to move the seat every single time. She also derives more joy from having a window to stick her head out of than I ever have or ever will from anything in my life, so that's nice.

My singular complaint isn't really the car's fault. The only feature I really coveted from the autobahn package was the power driver's seat, but I wasn't going to pay for the rest of the stuff I didn't need. I don't regret that decision, but I am really missing the ability to adjust the level of the front of the seat. I'm just ever so slightly too tall, so if my legs are comfortable I'm sitting in the back seat and my arms are overextended, if my arms are comfortable my thigh hovers about an inch off the front of the seat. One guy on VWVortex put a 1" shim under the seat rails with new grade 8 bolts and said it made all the difference in the world. I'm contemplating doing that, or possibly taking the seat out and looking at how its put together to see if it'd be possible to shim the actual seat cushion against the frame for cleaner/potentially safer result. However I decide to do it I think that'll be the magic ticket to make this car super comfy for me on long drives.

Otherwise, it's perfect. The motor is a peach. The transmission is from the future. The interior quality puts pre-2010 VWs (and most other cars) to shame. The stereo quality is phenomenal for a car at this price point. Cargo capacity is excellent, on Saturday morning we slid a mostly assembled 4-burner+sideburner propane grill in it with zero issues.

The next 43 miles are going to be killer, I just wanna sink my foot into the carpet and let it run. (Speaking of which I found some seemingly trustworthy stock dyno figures from a Mustang dyno, the non-PP cars put down 204hp/258ft-lbs. So that's closer to 230hp and a "lot of fuckin' torque" at the flywheel.)

[Ken]

One Month Update

Current Mileage: 957mi
Lastly "destinations" only applies to vehicles with Nav, but it is kinda cool that you can pre-load the car with destinations from the computer instead of pecking them in through the terrible in-car interface.

my mom's latest convertible turbo beetle has this - it is actually really useful.

[SlimKlim]

Muahahahahahaha

The noise this thing produces on a WOT redline shift should be considered indecent behavior. It's the just the naughtiest little sound. 0:55 into this video is the best example of it I can find.

[youtube]SmnTX7oNnuk[/youtube]

[SlimKlim]

Just signed up for Dub Deliverance at Summit on August 15. Had to do it.

Anyone wanna set up an over-under pool on how many laps the "e-diff" will take to boil over the brake fluid? :lol:

[ScottyB]

i lurv the DSG shift burp. oddly satisfying.

Anyone wanna set up an over-under pool on how many laps the "e-diff" will take to boil over the brake fluid? :lol:

in august? oh wow, i'll go for 6 laps and at least 1 CEL

[SlimKlim]

i lurv the DSG shift burp. oddly satisfying.

Anyone wanna set up an over-under pool on how many laps the "e-diff" will take to boil over the brake fluid? :lol:

in august? oh wow, i'll go for 6 laps and at least 1 CEL

:lol: That's optimistic. I think I'll go for 5 laps.

Ooh we should also guess what my oil temp will hit. Hooning around town can easily result in 232*. August will be hotter, but I also won't be coming to a stop so more air will be moving through it. I wouldn't be surprised to see 235* though. "Normal" operating range seems to be anything from 215-228* and then it starts to climb when you beat on it.

[Evan]

is it at shenadoah?

I drove the absolute piss out of a bone stock Mk5 GTi at shenandoah with a 350lb VW rep in the passenger seat for a very long session at the first dub deliverance, and the car held up surprisingly well. Not sure if it had an e-diff though.