2011 VW 125TDI Build & Maintenance Thread

[drjekl]

Hey guys

I decided to start a build and maintenance thread for my Passat (Well it’s my wife’s but technically its mine!) I’ve done a build thread for my other car in an attempt to help others and as an enthusiast share ideas, products etc etc

I’m only somewhat new to VW’s, but I had a 2009 VW Jetta TDI for 12 months back in 2010 but hated that thing as the DSG gearbox was very unresponsive, clunky rolled back on hills and had a heap of electrical issues (ABS sensor faults, airbag lights, electric window issues, central locking system)

My daily use to be an old 2000 magna wagon for my ‘parts hauler’ and general runabout and it was a bloody reliable old workhorse but the 4 spd tranny was woefully slow, and she had a massive drinking problem (14.0L per 100/km around town or 10L on the hwy) and my weekend toy a bmw 335i which is extensively modified, and the wife had a 2004 Corolla.

The corolla is a great car, cheap to run reliable and zippy around town. But as the old adage goes babies change your lives forever and the corolla boot was a tad small and in terms of safety being a 12 y.o car no doubt a larger more modern vehicle would score much higher in the NCAP ratings.. My wife is a typical female driver (to nicely put it there is room for improvement in her driving skills) and funnily enough her small corolla has a series of carpark battle scars on the front bumper and rear bumper… So she would have next to no hope of parking the fagna (extremely poor turning circle on those things) so I needed a wagon that was good on fuel, easy to park, reasonable large cargo area and cabin as I’m 6’7 and and the large cargo area to fit all the crap that babies need when mum is going to her baby n mum yoga classes and future family holidays. The VW Passat was the obvious choice for me in the price range the mazda 6 has a small cargo area, the liberty is ugly as sin, VE commy too big for the wife to park and a bit of a guzzler. The VW offered park assist as an option which would be perfect as unfortunately my dear wife cannot reverse park!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9rfMnRN_H-k

So I decided to sell my gas guzzling fagna and search for a B7 TDI Passat. Since I’m pedantic with servicing maintaining and detailing all my cars, the fagna sold within 2 days and I had my eye on a 2012 TDI wagon in Sydney with 50k kays for a few months. The car had been on carsales for a few months and had the park assist 2.0 optional feature, and looked extremely neat and tidy and the wife was happy as it was black (her favourite colour, but she doesn’t have to detail the bloody thing I was keen on candy white or Icelandic grey) I phoned the owner to arrange to view the car but alas it had sold only a few hours earlier… Damn the bmw was having a ‘xmas vacation’ in the workshop (its turned out to be a summer vacation so far as sadly I still don’t have the car back and it was dropped off in early Dec) which left us with only one car..
I smashed all the obvious methods of media available to acquire the right car (carsales, gumtree, carsguide, Mannheim, pickles etc etc) for a few weeks with no luck.. I was contemplating dusting off my motorbike and getting it regoed to get to work each day (massive hassle with a newborn baby) or crumbling and buying a V6 highline.

The V6’s at the time were selling for the same $ as the TDI’s albeit with a few more features. I’ve heard they’re kinda thirsty and use around 11-12.0L per 100km around town which wasn’t much better than my magna, so I decided to stick it out for a TDI when a tidy 2011 icelandic grey wagon popped up in QLD.

It had the optional park assist 2.0 feature and child booster seat option (which will come in handy when our new born gets older) with 79k kays. Ideally I would have preferred a car with less kays, but it was the right spec and I liked this colour more so than candy white (to me the golfs look great in candy white, but the Passat’s body shape doesn’t suit it as well) It was also extremely cheap and looked quite tidy. I mulled it over for a few days initially thinking there must be something wrong with it, if it’s $5k below the market price but it had the right specs and in the few months I had been looking at the TDI wagons it was extremely well priced and rare to have the options I wanted. I had purchased a few cars interstate before for similar reasons (couldn’t find the right spec/colour locally and found a cheaper alternative interstate) I decided to shoot the owner an email to see if he would drop the car off for a pre purchase vehicle inspection. He was located in Eumundi QLD which was by memory an hour or so nth of Brisbane so would have been a PITA for me to get to if I was to purchase flying in to Brisbane. I asked the owner if the car checked out could I collect from Brisbane airport. Turns out the car was regularly driven from Eumundi to Brisbane as he worked in the city hence the high kays. The owner had the vehicle serviced at ultratune, as it was convenient for him being next door to his workplace, I wanted a euro specialist to conduct the pre purchase vehicle inspection, so I tried to get mike weber prestige (a few bmw guys I know love this guy) but alas they were booked out, so I tried phoenix engineering. They could do it and they seemed very friendly and willing to help out. The seller was a bigwig ceo type and wasn’t too keen as it would take time out of his busy schedule (he wanted it to be done at ultratune) but he eventually agreed and the inspection was done. There were no error codes stored, the car was due for a service at 80k kays (so it would be due practically on the drive home from Brisbane to Newcastle) the rims were mainly all gutter rashed and shod with cheap chinese boto tyres (I never skimp on tyres and always fit continentals, Michelins, goodyears etc) the rear bumper was scuffed from wear and tear (removing items from the boot and dragging on the paint work – decided to buy a scuff plate to cover these defects up) the car had missed its 60k kay DSG tranny fluid and filter service (had a full service history from ultratune using the correct Castrol professional 5W30 VW 504/507 fluid though) and the brakes had plenty of life left in them and the car drive fine, idled fine etc etc

So I decided to book a flight and collect the car in 2 days time. The car was at a great price, but I’ve never paid the asking price for a car before, I attempted to negotiate $500 off the price to cover my flight, vehicle inspection, fuel etc etc. The seller was non negotiable apparently he had 2 other interested parties (which I didn’t doubt) and I was happy to pay the full asking price.

On the day of collection it was a bloody big day as the night before I was busy getting everything ready and I had to be up at 4am to catch the 6am flight from Newcastle to Brisbane. The flight was great and on time getting me to Brisbane around 6:10am by memory. I told the seller to meet me at 7am to give me time to have some brekky etc in the airport and an extra 30 mins or so in case of a flight delay. Like clockwork he arrived and we done the deal in a local burger king shell servo carpark. It was in good condition (the carsales pics were bloody terrible as the car was parked in his underground carpark with low lighting) with no major panel/paint defects the leather interior had never been cleaned/conditioned and had small particles entrapped in the seams and the leather had a chalky/glossy appearance to it instead of a matte deep black hue that a clean leather should have and whilst he obviously had the car recently detailed the wheel wells were full of red dust and the engine bay was putrid covered in dust and general grime that a car accumulates during 80k kays use with no cleaning.

Carsales pics:

[drjekl]

He had pulled over at the shell servo carpark as he was getting his father in law to drop in the cargo area blind (which I had meant to ask as I had purchased a Calais wagon a few years ago and the seller lost it and that annoyed me no end as they come in handy to keep the hot sun off items such as pram, or an esky in the boot) turns out his father in law brought the wrong cargo blind he brought the one from his new car the land rover (hmm why do people remove them?) So the deal was done and I dropped him off at his workplace in the city which was practically on the way anyway, and by the time I was in the CBD it was close to 8am and the traffic was extremely good. I was expecting Sydney type crawling traffic, but fortunately it was flowing freely and since I had 700 odd kays to drive with a google estimate of 8hr 46 mins I needed to hit the hwy!

The drive from Brisbane to the GC on the pacific hwy was quite busy with 3 lanes full albeit fortunately everyone was sticking to the speed limit and the right lane was mostly +10 km/h which was good ☺

I was really blown away with how well the car drove, the torque of the diesel, the rapid DSG gear changes and the smooth ride, great stereo and refined cabin and the cabin was extremely comfortable and accommodating for my 6’7 120 kg frame. I believe in the ethos that for a good car design one should be able to jump in the car and drive it without consulting the manual. I must admit the electric handbrake caught me out on the 1st use, and the cruise control was extremely counter intuitive! If you push the stalk up it was racing way over what I had intended (in my bmw you push and hold the stalk fwd to speed up and let go once you reach the desired speed or push in increments for 1km/h +/-) but this turned the cruise off and pushing it up set the cruise in 10km/h increments. After an hour or so of buggering around I eventually had it nutted out and whilst I initially cursed the flick stalk for 10 km/h increments by the end of the trip I was loving it going from say 70km/h to 100 km/h only required a flick of the stalk 3 x times.

Since the intended use of the car was for my wife, she only mainly does short intercity trips I decided to look for a SCA to buy some diesel injector cleaner. Ideally I would have bought this beforehand alas with the flight safety regulations these days no doubt it would be forbidden. I had scoped out a SCA just off the hwy prior to the trip, but had forgotten to punch in the address in the GPS and before I knew it I had driven straight past it. I attempted to take the next exit off the hwy so I could backtrack back there, but on the way seen a repco and thought that’ll do.

The particular Repco had no liquid moly products at all, but they had penrite diesel injector system cleaner. Since I had a big day of driving ahead of me, and I was literally 30 mins into a 9 hr drive, I was amped up for a F1 style pit change transaction. This Repco unfortunately doesn’t believe in speedy transactions and the staff continued to walk around the store busy doing their mundane tasks totally ignoring my existence at the cashier… I was on the verge of doing the hot shoe shuffle outta there when eventually the employee who walked past me 3 x times previously decided to serve me.



I got outta there ASAP and got back on the hwy. Since it was 9am and I was somewhere near the gold coast and fully recharged after a 45 min brekky at the airport I decided that stopping again to get fuel and adding the injector cleaner would be utilised to more effect in a few hours time and since the car had just over a half a tank I should be right for a whole longer. Turns out that the Passat was returning 4.6L per 100 kays and that half a tank was going to last a long time! I ended up driving until Yamba in nsw (approx 285 kms from brissy) and decided to check that place out as it was one area I had never been to and thought it would be good to stop at a nice fish and chip shop on the river for lunch.

Driving into Yamba there was a fish n chip shop just a sI had envisioned on the water so I stopped off there for a break and lunch. The lunch was OK (sadly I’ve had much better) and in hindsight a macca’s or subway meal would have been more enjoyable but it’s always good to try the local cuisine when travelling.



After a brief stop I quick cruise through yamba I decided to fill up at the local Caltex. The diesel prices were slightly higher compared to QLD prices but figured with it being so good on fuel I will only need half a tank or so and that will easily get me home, plus the less weight added = less weight and a higher concentration for the diesel cleaner additive.

I added $50 to the tank, and this had brought it up from approx. ¼ to ¾ or so. The trip from here on was quite frustrating with lots of roadworks 40 km/h up to 70 km/h 90 km/h 100 km/h all over the shop and slowed the trip up considerably…

Since I was expecting to get home after 6pm all the roadworks had pushed this out to 7:30-8pm… So my next pitstop was at maccas coffs harbour for a quick toilet break and a sundae. I drove non stop to Newcastle and got in just after 7:30pm.

I was extremely happy with how the car drove on the trip home, but being somewhat OCD with detailing and maintenance of the car I couldn’t wait to get the thing detailed and serviced.

[drjekl]

I had checked the vw manual for DIY oil change details but sadly there wa snext to no info.. So I went to left the car but couldn’t find a central lift point. My bmw has a great central lift point and it’s blatantly obvious where it is, and even after googling it seems the VW doesn’t come with one and obviously they expect owner to get a dealer service where a hoist uses the side jacking points. So I used my floor trolley to lift from the jack points and on a TDI forum a golf owner had created a thread after finding a similar issue to me. Turns out you can use jack points to lift and jack stands under the front control arms. When lowering the car on the jack stand the V in the stand didn’t neatly fit into the radius of the control arm… It looked totally unsafe so I decided to also place timber under the sills of the car so in the event the jack stand failed I wouldn’t be crushed..

The car looked awkwardly unstable like the image below:



For my next oil change I’m going to consider either buying a oil extraction pump (save jacking the car up and no safety concerns with the car slipping off the jack stand) but they are quite expensive with SCA selling the Toledo brand for $250 or so and unfortunately my other car the BMW 335i doesn’t have a dipstick (it has an electronic dipstick… which I hate) so I wouldn’t be able to use it on that car..

Toledo Pneumatic Fluid Extractor - 305380 - Supercheap Auto Australia



The next day I had the car booked in at my local euro specialist and he quoted $225 to do a DSG service. He ensured me he used genuine fluids filter etc. I had noticed after the trip home from QLD at the end of the trip I went to take off quickly at the lights to see how it went but on takeoff the tranny was bunnyhopping.. Doing some research online this indicated a DSG serviced was required.. When collecting the car after the service he told me the fluid was quite good, and he showed me the filter. He had expected the filter to be black, especially given how the car had missed its 60k kay fluid change (no mention of it on the 60k or 70k kay ultratune invoices) it was a light grey colour. When I got home to file away the servicing receipt I noticed he had used a vaico filter and Fuchs DCTF fluid… Doing a quick google search I couldn’t find much info on the fluid albeit it does seem to be formulated for the DSG (back when I had my jetta, VW branded fluid was the only fluid available AFAIK)

After the tranny service I spent the next 1.5 days remaining of my weekend to detail the car. Whilst the car had been detailed prior to collection a deep cleanse was required rather then a quick wash n vac that the owner had got. I spent a few hours with the karcher on the wheel wells and chassis getting all the red dust mud and crap off the guard liners, wheels and vacuumed for a few hrs cleaning under the seats, under the mats, in all the nooks and crannies which collect coins, peanuts, parking station tickets etc and it seemed as though the boot had never been vacuumed. The boot took me around an hour as it was full of sand particles embedded into the carpet pile. The next step was to start the leather cleaning process by steam cleaning the seats to open the pores up in the leather and liberally spraying the leather using zymol cleaner and agitating the solution with a soft horse hair swissvax leather brush to bring the grime to the surface.



This took around 3-4 hrs and by the time the seats were conditioned with zymol conditioner they were a lot softer and the majority of the grime removed with the remnants in the cleaning cloths becoming brown.

Then the next step was to clean all the interior plastic using einzett plastic cleaner, followed up with their cockpit detailer to produce a new car like matte finish.





Then it was time to wash the paintwork. Since the car had been washed prior to the sale the paint was reasonably clean, surprisingly with next to no bug guts on the car during the interstate trip but behind the doors and around the door sills under the number plate etc was full of dust and grime. After washing the paint and drying the car and applying some wolfs chemicals quicky detailer spray the paint came up quite good. There is some defects on some panels which need rectifying at a later date which will be corrected with wet n dry and a heavy cut mezerna compound with a wool pad, I was happy with the paint at this stage alas I would need more time in future to do this work.

I spent quite some time washing the engine bay down (put a plastic bag over alternator battery fuse box etc and hosed down the engine bay and use an assortment of brushes to clean the dust from the engine bay and then used einzett plastic cleaner to clean all the plastics and finished off with the wolfs chemicals blacked out detailer to give the plastics a new fresh look.



Over the ensuing weeks the paint must have been waxed at some stage as the water was beading really well on the car, and in the rain I noticed the boto branded chinese tyres were awful in the wet… Driving to work I hit a corner at low speeds (approx. 30 km/h as its in a 50 km/h zone) and the corner cambers down to the kerb on this particular corner… The car aquaplaned and understeered something shocking, I was heading for the kerb and jumped on the anchors and eventually it regained gripped.. It reinforced why I never buy cheap tyres, as imagine if I had to stop from a high speed in the wet in an emergency situation… Obviously I don’t want my wife and bub in that type of scenario! I started to research tyre prices in various sizes 17, 18 & 19” and the 17’s were by far the cheapest… I had contemplated swapping the gutter rashed oem 17’s for 18’s or 19’s (I liked the golf R 5 spoke rims) and a set popped up in 19” in my area for $700 ono…



The car is purely for my wife, and 19’s would provide a rougher ride and increase the chance of her gutter rashing the rims but damn they look good on the Passat wagon… Then a like new set of 17” rims from an EOS popped up for sale. They looked exactly the same as my oem rims but being a smaller car I had assumed they would have a higher offset. Out of curiosity (and the low price!) I decided to contact the seller. He confirmed the size and offset and I ended up walking away with them for $165

[drjekl]

I started researching the market for a decent high quality tyre and tempe tyres were selling Michelin PS3’s for $139 fitted in oem 235/45 17” size. Certainly a great BFYB option! I had heard Bob Jane were price matching Tempe (in Sydney at least) and whilst I have a trip planned to Sydney soon it would save me the hassle of heading to Tempe (I was intending to collect my BMW soon from Advan performance @ Auburn) So I called my local bob jane and they got extremely shirty but price matched Tempe tyres price of $139 each fitted.

So I collected the 17" EOS rims and spent practically sat night and all day Sunday detailing them to like new condition. The original rims had 80k kays use and the original owner had kerbed 3 out of the 4 rims:









They had been used for a month or so according to the owner, and were pretty grubby but no major rashing. Surprisingly the specs matched the passat rims which was unexpected. The seller had $200 ono on them I had $165 in my wallet so offered him $165 and he said yeah ok no worries. Talk about a bargain!



So I spent about 12 hours getting them up to scratch by doing a deep cleanse, clay bar, polish and wax.

Started by high pressure cleaning:



This removed most of the muck:



Then scrubbing and use of sonax wheel cleaner:



The next step was to use an old piece of claybar to remove any surface contaminants:



Then a rinse before moving onto paint prep:



Annoyingly I couldnt find my nanolex wheel sealent... Decided to seal the wheels with zymol titanium wax (a durable wax, but not exactly suitable for wheels)



Start by applying it with my hands, the friction by the rubbing motion melts the wax and a small amount goes a long way:





The paint looks crystal clear and had added depth after buffing by hand when removing the wax







Why are the VW caps on these rims and teh rims on the car all scuffed/scratched?!?!



EOS rim specs:





Passat Rim Specs:

[drjekl]

I had the tyres fitted a few days later, and as expected the Michelins are smoother riding, quieter, steering feels more direct, and a lot more responsive giving the car a steering feel of a much lighter car. (as the old adage goes you get what you pay for!) I haven’t driven in the rain yet on the Michelins but I don’t expect any issues like the hard as a rock Boto’s!



Since I had purchased the car I had 30 days to get a blue slip inspection done in NSW and to get the car reregistered in nsw. I wanted black euro plates on the car and ordered a set the day after buying the car. I brainstormed for a few hrs for a clever plate content, obviously all the good ones were taken ended up with N PA54T…



I’ve heard about the Lakin plate covers and had a quick look but I’m sure like most people I wasn’t prepared to pay $400+ on a set of mounts and covers (on a lambo or something exotic I understand but a Passat pfft!)

Researching covers kingpin had a euro plate style covers and backing plate. So basically you mount the backing plate to the car with screws and then rest the plate on the backing plate and clip on the cover. This means no drilling holes in the plate to mount it, but also means it’s a very easy target for plate thieves (not really ever a concern but my old man and a few of his mates had their number plates stolen from an rsl club recently apparently thieves use them to mount on their cars when they fill up with fuel and do a runner with the stolen plates mounted to the car) The only retailer in my area selling kingpin plates was autobarn, so I checked out their stock and they had a few sets of kingpin plate covers alas they were covered in dust and had sat on the shelves for years.. Looking at the euro plate covers they come in the same size F&R, whereas for the NSW plates they have a smaller front plate (same size as the slimline front plates AFAIK) and a large euro style rear they didn’t sell or stock covers to suit the odd nsw euro plate sizing (only the boring ‘white’ NSW plates have large plates F&R) so since autobarn had a sale on that day 20% off I decided to buy one pair of euro covers and one pair of nsw slimline covers, and use one from each pack. Obviously this cost me a bit but I preferred the look of the kingpin covers compared to the altrex covers or other ebay offerings.

Upon collecting the plates the rear plate with the kingpin backing plate fitted easily, just screw the backing plate on and clip in the new plate and voila!


The front plate however required some customisation…

To mount the cover it had no clip attachment it had four holes in each corner. Therefore I had to drill four holes in the euro plate (the euro plate has no holes drilled in it) that was easy enough but it seems the packet of slimline plates I purchased were incorrect… Instead of there being one small and large NSW slimline covers I had two large slimline covers in the packet.. This meant the cover was slightly too high for my front euro plate.. I knew that’s all my autobarn had in stock so I couldn’t exchange it so I decided to improvise and mount the plate and fill the gap with black silicon. The gap was only visible at extreme angles, but I’m a tad pedantic (it annoyed me that I had to do this though) so I ran a bead of black silastic around the plate and let it set.





This should seal the plate quite well, and when washing the car yesterday I noticed the rear cover fogged up but the front remained condensation free. So if anyone wants a set of kingpin plate covers for a decent price of $40 let me know as I have a ‘set’ left over!





The car is almost at the stage where I’m reasonably happy with it… Some further tidying up, painting of the brakes, a full paint correction and a tint and I'll be happier..

I need a weekend that I can dedicate to correcting the paint defects and to give it a decent buff and wax. I have a scuff plate on order which should arrive this week to help cover the existing scuff marks and prevent any further scratches in future (no use getting it repainted as the wife will scratch it again no doubt when removing the pram from the cargo area.

scuff plate from aliexpress:


I’m also sussing out whether or not to get window tint (I’ve noticed in wagons I’ve had its inevitable the rear tint gets scratched and damaged when removing things like timber when doing a bunnings run and annoys me or some clip on covers such as these (I love the window shade option found on some BMW options which have an electric rear window blind or retractable manual blinds for the kids in the backseat.

[img]http://i.ebayimg.com/00/s/NDk5WDQ5OQ==/$(KGrHqUOKjsE6Rhsh1hzBOsklmNQRQ~~60_35.JPG[/img]



http://www.windesa.com/shop/en/windesa-comfortdrive/sunshade-blinds/volkswagen-vw/vw-passat-estate-b7-3c-2010-/

At this stage the power/torque of the car is impressive but no doubt I’ll be keen to try a tune in future (maybe a DTUK) and would love a DSG tune..

We've only had the car for just over 3 weeks, but enjoying it so far!

[drjekl]

Things to rectify:

Spare key doesn't unlock/lock the doors. I've placed a new battery in it with no luck, albeit it starts the car...

Paint correction - Overall its not too bad a few blemishes here and there will come up great with a decent rectification and wax

The stainless steel trim around the windows has water etch marks. Doing some quick research it seems its a common theme to VAG trims and cannot be polished out by conventional methods (metal polish/cutting compound) I've tried a few products with no luck so far...

Paint brake calipers and rotor hubs (either silver or gloss black)

Wheel alignment - When I had the tyres fitted the rear passenger side had -1.5 Deg camber (the other wheels were -0.3/-0.5...

I purchased a cheap media cable - micro usb from ebay to play music from my android phone alas it doesn't work?

Sort out a boot liner...

Source a cargo area blind (does anyone have one spare?)

Sort out window tint or mesh inserts

The car is nearing 5 years old, most batteries only last 4-6 years. Perhaps its time to source a new battery since the varta item would most likely be difficult to source off the shelf in an emergency in my area..

Research to see if the auto stop/start system can be coded to remain off.. So annoying that system a sit turns off but then restarts seconds later to keep the A/C running etc...

[drjekl]

reserved 5

[drjekl]

reserved 6