Golf Ownership - Pleasure or Pain???

[Perfect 8]

Hi All,

My 'Perfect 8v' is slowly undergoing a systematic failure of all parts 

I bought it for £3k from Volkswizard last year - hoping for trouble free (ish) motoring. Having now spent the best part of a grand on it over the last 11 months (it'd had 2.5k spent on it in the 2-years before i bought it)  I'm becoming slightly disheartened with Golf ownership (3rd Golf, 4th VW so far-only. I'm only 22!)

Does anyone else keep track of how much their beloved costs them - I'm beginning to think it is a bad idea keeping a record!

I did love my car, but I'm now being tempted to rectify all that is wrong and send her on her way! 

Does anybody else experience the highs and (lots of) lows with their piece of German machinery?

[moonsta]

  i bought my first Gti 4 years ago with a knocking bottom end and rebuilt the engine and put in a new clutch..........not content with that i then had to replace the following...........all shocks,front suspension bushes,ball joint,track rod ends,all the wheel bearings,2 calipers,fuel collection box etc etc,but once i had done all that and spent about £1300 on bits alone over a 6 month period it never missed a beat and only needed servicing and was still going like a train when i sold it last year..........the upshot of all this is that although i have had the best part of 300 cars over the last 25 years it's the only one that still made me grin to drive it even after all the heartache,so much so in fact that i have an atlas gey '88 parked on my drive that's gonna get 2.1ed!!!..........also have a '90 driver for everyday with girly pas!! stick with it,after all you don't really want a Sa*o do you??

[davidhawkins_78]

Owning any car will result in bills, but I'm sure that's not the point you're trying to make here; after all would u expect yourself to do the london marathon without careful preparation when you're in the latter part of your life!

My GTI has cost me about £2000 on top of the £800 I bought her for, half of that being mods though and I love every minute of owning her !

Still what else from that era has survived ??

How many 205 GTI / R5GTT / Daily Driven RST etc do you see on the road, hell even Renault 19 and Clio 16v are getting low in numbers - I share your pain in unforseen expensive in caring for your pride and joy but things could be ALOT worse !!

My previous #cough# Ford ate 3 gearboxes before I saw the light and got a GTI - now that's a proper pain !

Stick with her matey, you'll not be disappointed !

[Horney]

I agree with David,

My GTi is old and in places a bit ratty but costs nothing like the maintenance of the mini which is three years newer!

Regular preventative maintenance is the key. CHange all your fluids every 6,000 miles, grease everything that needs greasing twice as often as the haynes sugests and just generally pamer it. The initial outlay of this will be saved when it runs perfectly for years to come.

Nick

[Stu.750]

all pleasure mines a heap o` sh!t with no wheels or windows rite now, but the few days i drove it and the cost and earache its gvin me now are no-where near as much as the smile it gave me when it was running right , Roll on INTERS when shes gunna b half finished n workin again

[Dannyd]

expensive but a pleasure to drive

[jettaTx]

YEAH U TEND TO FIND YOU FIX ONE PROBLEM AND THEN ANOTHER COMES ALONG!!
Mine has not let me down mecanically yey and i dont see it doing so to be fair ive put loads of new bits on mine plus a fair few mods along the way but im a genuine nut and i wont put aftermarket stuff on my golf so it costs me alot more than it could do! look after the car and sooner than later you will have replaced everything!!! lol then it wont go wrong again!!    keep it u know u wanna

[...joe]

it can be both pleasure and pain, bit like s&m if your into all that! everytime mines gone wrong it pisses me off no end but i always try to look for a silver lining that its a good opportunity to upgrade to get the best out of my little car!! there will always be something thats not perfect on a 15+ year old car so you'll have to expect to spend money on it. the best thing i ever did was to have a go myself, i dread to think what i'd have spend in labour rates if i'd paid someone to do all the things i've done. plus you get that great sense of satisfaction when your hoofing along thinking, "i fixed/replaced/repaired that"

and at the end of the day.....mans got to have a hobby!!!

[Horney]

it can be both pleasure and pain, bit like s&m if your into all that! everytime mines gone wrong it pisses me off no end but i always try to look for a silver lining that its a good opportunity to upgrade to get the best out of my little car!! there will always be something thats not perfect on a 15+ year old car so you'll have to expect to spend money on it. the best thing i ever did was to have a go myself, i dread to think what i'd have spend in labour rates if i'd paid someone to do all the things i've done. plus you get that great sense of satisfaction when your hoofing along thinking, "i fixed/replaced/repaired that"

and at the end of the day.....mans got to have a hobby!!!

Too right! I rebuilt the mini from scratch myself with no experiance of such a project before. It took me 9 months, several pints of blood and a hell of a lot of bad words, but I did it. The total spend was somewhere in the region of £9K had I payed labour for a garage to do it all it would probably be double that!

When I ever I take her out I feel an overwhelming sense of satisfaction at knowing my hard work and effort have resulted in a blinding fast car that draws looks wherever I go. Maybe onedaythe Golf will be the same, but a new job and the possibility of a mortgage would suggest I may have to wait till the onset of old age and retirement to tackle that one!

Horney

[tinman]

They are old cars. You wont get huge reliabilty anymore.