Constant GT 170 problem - what would you do?

[GTI-Love]

OK so here's my first topic and I'm doing this as I pulling my hair out now with an ongoing problem regarding my MK5 GT 170 57 plate.

My main concern here is what do I do and if you can spare 5 minutes I'd really appreciate you're opinions & comments please.


So I bought a MK5 GT 170 almost two years ago and I've been over the moon with the car - ype - I love it.

However.... last year I had a power loss issue while driving 'take to garage' message appears. I took the car to VW who said that they didn't know what was wrong with the car, it appears to be fine but for approx £250
they would keep searching or! I could continue to drive the vehicle in hope that the problem would become more apparent etc. I continued to drive the car. Not being a cheapskate - but they stressed the £250 might not come up with the data needed.

A couple of months later - there it was again. I took it to VW and they said it was one of the various sensors around the diesel particle filter system that needed changing along with some other doo- dah (yep I'm not that technical when it comes to cars)
I did it for a cost of around £180 if memory serves correctly and the car worked fine. 3 weeks later the Diesel Particle Filter management light came on. Maintained 50MPH and no joy...£350 - £380 ish to sort out the problem and again ouch!.

I left the garage and guess what! 'take to garage' within 2 miles. upon return the next day (they were closing) my glow plugs needed changing. I questioned this after 4 weeks of a financial kicking and VW reset the light and I was off to 'see what happens'

Again my Diesel Particle Light came on however this time I did manage to get it to turn off after the 50 MPH maintained speed exercise.

Here's the good bit! 4 weeks later my car dies while driving - An AA call out gets me towed to the dealership and after a very very very long wait I'm told this was the fuel injector #4. This was a little over £1000 and I managed to get good will and only paid £260 ish.
Happy days I thought although they wouldn't give full 'good will' as my car didn't have a full history with them. Now I had to argue that they sold me the car with a FSH and I've always returned there with the car. Turned out it didn't have a FSH before the sale which is now a
technicality as they say it did but it wasn't on time? I know WTF right!

So... present day: my GT is back in VW with a management light on and some power loss  .

They've plugged the car in and have said "we really don't know what's wrong with it?" "We keep getting different outputs / readouts and we really don't know what to do?, We can keep the vehicle another day to try and find out but it could be electrical or glow plugs or fule injectors etc"
I battled not paying for this as in my opinion VW built the product therefore it's their responsibility to tell me how to fix it, which I don't think is unfair.

I'm now arguing that this car has a manufactures fault since build time, what you might class as a 'Friday Afternoon Car'. I'm pretty understanding with them there, not losing it as so many people recommend I do but I'd really like to share this with you guys.
Do you think this ongoing run of problems justifies me arguing that they pay the full cost to fix it? In my defense I've taken 8 days off work and gone without a car for 3 weeks during the fuel injector replacement. I still love my GT but honestly I'm starting to feel like I want them to really stand up in this and make me a serious offer here. I'm starting to feel like it's cursed or as I say 'faulty' in some manufacturing kind of way.

So here I go again... really not sure how much more of this I can take!

I'm off to read some other posts - please comment if you can

Cheers

Current state of mind = 
 

[nr123]

Sounds like the 'VW' garage are absolutely useless (nothing new there). Find another one ASAP. I don't think they got to the route of the problem the first time around. What you should do:

Contact VW customer services, explain everything to them and the lie about the service history - they clearly did not do the proper checks on the car

Find somebody near you with VCDS and see what fault codes are there

Find another, competent, VW dealer and tell the other one to fu*k off (name and shame BTW). How can you say we don't know what's wrong, idiots!

[_Adam_]

as above - get someone local to get some fault codes from VCDS. where are you located?

as i'm told, the DPF is a nasty thing to have on a 170, and you dont even need it on there! Delete pipe and a remap will get rid of that sh!te for you. but as for the rest of the issues, i'm out of ideas

[Rhyso]

Sounds like you've got a Friday afternoon car 

Glow plugs?  Only used for starting the engine and not used during its running

With regards to the injector it shouldn't need FSH, as long as its serviced by a VAT registered garage then they should have honoured the full amount.  In fact there's now a campaign to replace the injectors on the 170 as its deemed a safety issue.

This link might help
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Fix-the-VW-AUDI-Skoda-Seat-Pd170-TDI-Injector-Failure/156033921135623

Also the fact that they sold you the car with FSH!!  Drop Trading Standards into your next conversation, that should put the wind up them 

If you're anywhere near Merthyr Tydfil give me a shout as I have full VAGCOM 

[Jimp]

Where possible I'd go for an independant VW specialist over a dealship garage any time. Prices and service will generally be much better. Afrai I can't help with the technical stuff though 

[irmscher]

We tune a lot of 170's and they are known for weak injectors.. however I would concur with the advice regarding a faulty DPF.  It sounds like it isn't regenerating efficiently.

Sorry I haven't read your thread properly and you may have mentioned already but what mileage is it on and what sort of driving do you do?  i.e. a lot of short stop starts or some constant motorway runs?

DPF's have a limited life anyway.  Ideally if you are keeping the car, I would also suggest a DPF bypass pipe, and DPF Delete in the software (and a decent remap to boot).