Recall - stop sale order of new VW TDI engines due to fuel leak

[chittychittybangbang]

The problem with VW USA is that they don't provide good support to dealer level. This is why there's such variation amongst independently owned dealerships. Plus, it's not like you have much control over fuel quality since the pump attendants won't know either. Your mileage may vary...

This is why Lexus customers are so happy - even though their cars aren't as reliable as they were in the 90s, the dealer employees are well trained from the top and provide support to dealers.

[3waygeek]

Originally Posted by nickeasy

I asked the tech about fuel and their recommendations. I wanted to know if using cetane level of 40 fuel was good enough when the engine was designed to run on higher levels (49 I believe). I was somewhat taken aback when the tech didn't know what cetane was! He said they didn't teach them about that. I decided to forgo asking about using additives to the level 40 fuel. I find this somewhat disconcerting that a diesel tech doesn't know about cetane. I would bet that if I had a GTI and asked about regular or premium gas, he would be the first to tell me to use the premium.

It's sort of academic because very few pumps have the cetane level displayed on them, so you don't know what you're getting. I've been driving my TDI for 2 years and can count on one hand the number of cetane labels I've seen; FWIW, every label I've seen said 40, and none of them have been in the Atlanta area.

I usually fill up at QT or RaceTrac, and I use Power Service in the gray bottle -- 4 oz per fill-up. No problems so far, with 28,000 miles on the clock.

[Robert Henley]

Originally Posted by Robert Henley

See my latest post which relates to your question:

Recall and Extra Dealer "Fixes"

I, too, am interested in knowing if there is any relationship.

When I took my 2010 Golf TDI in for the fuel line recall, there were two other programming items the VW dealer said needed to be done. One was a reflash, which the service tech said was due to some complaints about fuel mileage. My fuel mileage was great--40 MPG around town--so I indicated I was not sure I wanted them to perform this reflash because "If it ain't broke don't fix it." I asked about the hesitation issue, and the service guy indicated the reflash was in fact related to that issue. I advised I didn't want to do anything that would hurt the performance of the car, as it performed great (lots of torque). I went ahead and let them do the reflash (which they were pushing for). It seemed to (1) result in slightly less performance although not really noticable in day to day driving, and (2) it does seem to have had a positive effect on the hesitation issue--it hardly does it at all now. So my conclusions are the reflash did relate to the hesitation complaints, and it does reprogram the car to have less torque (performance) although it's a very minute difference. I think it's basically a reprograming of the performance curve and detuning of performance for a smoother operating engine. I would be interested in others observations and opinions. Robert