[goatless]

A.J., can you fill us in a little on your troubles? Year, model and engine? More info would help to determine if the problems you've had are relevant to others.

[A.J.]

Originally Posted by goatless

A.J., can you fill us in a little on your troubles? Year, model and engine? More info would help to determine if the problems you've had are relevant to others.

Troubles on my car. Passat estate -07 2,0FSI 6 speed manual transmission
Parking brake button breaks due to poor quality. If your unlucky the car will sit with brakes locked (electrike parking brake) happend twice. Its not R/R but you need to recalibrate the brakesystem, costs about 300$. (you cant change brakepads without calibrating the system either)

The manual gearbox started to sound like the sync-rings were worn after 85000 km. The VW dealership told me over the phone that it was not within warranty and the VAG group Sweden told me that they do not talk directly with the customers.... VAG Germany was of no help either. A friend who runs a shop pulled the gearbox and got me another on from Germany. The old gearbox had only 1/3 of the oil quantity but no sign of leaks. The gearboxes does not ever get any oilchanges following WV: maintenace program. Lucky me I had an insurance covering this so I only had to pay 800$ and without car for 3 weeks...
(Think the used gearbox was 7700$ covered by the insurance)
Scanning the forums I'm not the only one having that problem.

The microswitch for the trunk broke, common fault due to poor quality.
The car just feels bad rattling interior etc.

A colleague had a -10 Passat DSG7. Needed to be towed to the shop 7 times in 30000 km du to malfunction of the DSG. The shop had to download data from the car and send to VW headquarters and wait for their response and new software for the gearbox.
VW has now withdrawn the DSG7 gearbox from proffesional use like taxi and claims theres no problem for the common car owners. A car with DSG is a dead fish on the market here, if you have one you wont get rid of it.....

Other faults are surging oilpumps causing severe damage to the engine. This seems to be caused by the longlifeservice oil. Do not do the longlife service, go for the regular.

The Audi 2,0T and all V6 (same engine as in many VW) also suffer from surging oilpumps and broken camchains. The problems may start as early as 30000km on the V6. As Audi is part of the VAG group is the support and warranty is just as bad. Audis tend to be dead fish on the market as well.

My insurance company made an investigation showing the most expensive car to own due to various damages. A Passat cost in average 1850$/year in machine damages, a Golf V 2150$/year and the Audi A6 4153$/year.

In Germany Dekra performed a similar investigation showing Audi A6 and A4 in top (best) followed by the other German brands.....

Heres a link to the investigation by my insurancecompany, in swedish though.
http://www.lansforsakringar.se/priva...aderapport.pdf