10 months thoughts and niggles

[Garjen]

It's been quite interesting keeping an eye on the forums a problem shared and all that.

I've almost had my polo beats 18 for 10 months and here's a snapshot of my experience so far.

Cosmetic damage on pick up. This was to the dashboard and passenger B Piller. Taken to dealer to come up with a plan to sort.
2 weeks later return to sort dash. 4 weeks later return to sort B piller.
Recall on seatbelt sorted at this point.
Total vehicle trips to garrage 3..

Around 2 months in front Breaks go clonk when changing direct and breaking. Phone stops connecting weird pink and green screen on the composition media.
Trip to garrage. No fault found. Break clonking is normal on this model. Told phone at fault for screen problems. No change in cable or phone. Weirdly screen issue has not come back
Total trips to garage 4

Now Clutch is burning on hill reverses. Breaks still clonking, front right fog light refused to light message on dash restart car lights are fine. No reoccurance. Screen has now gone faulty. 1 vertical row of dead pixels that look like a crack in glass. Booked in.
Told breaks still normal. Clutch is normal to burn on this model. Screen faulty and on back order. Oh and my oil was down to 50% and needed a top up.
Trips to garage 5. Will be 6 when screen is in

Now back driver side door speaker is sounding a bit iffy.

Doing a bit of digging it seems I'm not alone with screen issue.

Buy a VW I said to myself. I like a new polo they seem amazing I said to the better half. Kind of wish I kept the fiesta now.

[Andy Beats]

Brakes....
Sorry, you've set my OCD off....

With regard to wishing you'd kept your Fiesta, we had a Fiesta recently and swore we'll never have another Ford.

1. The alternator died at only 6000 miles and while Ford agreed to replace the alternator under warranty, we had to pay £76 for belts - I saw this as petty
2. The door seals kept falling off - fixed that myself.
3. Driving along the road, a big chunk of plastic heater ducting fell out from under the glovebox somewhere and onto a passenger's feet.

Aside from that, the 1.6tdci engine was awful - always felt like it was strangled and not breathing properly.
Terrible car, never again.

[albob]

Oil down 50% doesn't sound good....

[Andy Beats]

Oil down 50% doesn't sound good....

Need miles to judge, really.
Then again, I've had cars that have done tens of thousands of miles and barely used any oil.
My Audi A3 2.0tdi used to use a litre of their expensive long-life oil every 1500 miles, and they considered that 'within tolerances'
Only car I've had where it was essential I carried a litre of oil in the boot, and I've been driving since 1983....

[monkeyhanger]

Oil down 50% doesn't sound good....

Need miles to judge, really.
Then again, I've had cars that have done tens of thousands of miles and barely used any oil.
My Audi A3 2.0tdi used to use a litre of their expensive long-life oil every 1500 miles, and they considered that 'within tolerances'
Only car I've had where it was essential I carried a litre of oil in the boot, and I've been driving since 1983....

Agree - there's about a litre of oil between min/max on dipstick for a 2.0 TDI or TSI unit with around 4.6l oil capacity. Would assume difference between min and max on a 1.0TSI unit to be for a smaller amount - perhaps 0.7L. So to have used half that (0.35l) in 10 months of driving would not concern me. Well within the realms of normality. Most of my Bed have never used a drop of oil between services, my Golf R uses about 0.5l per 10k miles.

[Andy Beats]

Agree - there's about a litre of oil between min/max on dipstick for a 2.0 TDI or TSI unit with around 4.6l oil capacity. Would assume difference between min and max on a 1.0TSI unit to be for a smaller amount - perhaps 0.7L. So to have used half that (0.35l) in 10 months of driving would not concern me. Well within the realms of normality. Most of my Bed have never used a drop of oil between services, my Golf R uses about 0.5l per 10k miles.

You're spot on, a litre of oil used to take me from the oil warning light to close to full in the 2.0tdi.
In the end I gave up checking the oil, I just waited for the oil warning light and slammed in a litre bottle.
We had a few 2.0tdi cars on the fleet then, oil got so expensive we bought a 220L drum of Miller Oil to the right spec for everyone to use and saved money.

[silverhairs]

Why do VW engines use oil??? The wife's had a Nissan Note for 7 years now, and I've never had to top up the oil between services

[stevereeves]

Why do VW engines use oil??? The wife's had a Nissan Note for 7 years now, and I've never had to top up the oil between services

"They just do", seems to be the less than ideal answer. VWs the only new cars I've bought / leased where a litre of oil is provided and gets used. Same with SEAT (VWs in slightly different clothes). 15,000ish miles and 2 1/4 years in my Golf has used most of the oil kindly provided, doesn't seem to use any now I've also owned cars, old & new, which used nary a drop 'tween changes....

[Andy Beats]

Why do VW engines use oil??? The wife's had a Nissan Note for 7 years now, and I've never had to top up the oil between services

There's only two ways oil can go, leak or burned.
Clearly they're burning it, although not in a 'blue smoke screen behind you' kind of way.
I've not had a VAG car since I fell out with the local Audi dealer in 2008 and switched to BMW, so I'm not looking forward to having to check oil levels regularly again.
Perhaps naively, I thought it was the tdi models that had the issue, not the petrols as well.

[Garjen]

Thanks all. Just a note to say cars 1.00 TSI and has 5800 on the clock. I'll keep an eye on the oil but it seems I'm not alone as a recent long-term car review has had similar Oil use issue.

[RUM4MO]

Brakes....
Sorry, you've set my OCD off....

With regard to wishing you'd kept your Fiesta, we had a Fiesta recently and swore we'll never have another Ford.

1. The alternator died at only 6000 miles and while Ford agreed to replace the alternator under warranty, we had to pay £76 for belts - I saw this as petty
2. The door seals kept falling off - fixed that myself.
3. Driving along the road, a big chunk of plastic heater ducting fell out from under the glovebox somewhere and onto a passenger's feet.

Aside from that, the 1.6tdci engine was awful - always felt like it was strangled and not breathing properly.
Terrible car, never again.

Only trouble we had with Fiestas, had a MK2 1.1L, MK3 1.1Ghia and a MK4 1.6SI with the Zetec engine, that last one, driving around one day and a bolt fell down between my feet, as it was a bolt with a waisted head that had not been snapped off, I knew it must be from the ignition/steering lock assembly, and it was - and the other bolt was also loose, sortedd that out at home but these bolt heads should have been snapped off during initial assembly!

[RUM4MO]

Why do VW engines use oil??? The wife's had a Nissan Note for 7 years now, and I've never had to top up the oil between services

My first experience of needing to add engine oil between services was when I bought a brand new 2000 VW Passat 4Motion with the Audi 2.8V6 30V petrol engine, but I put that down to incorrect driving during the initial miles, I drove it back from the area of Holland that is surrounded by Germany, so the drive home was 1000miles roughly. I then went on to convince myself and anyone else listening that it was probably an okay thing, better using a bit of oil than wearing out rings and bores. Then, my wife's new 2002 Polo 9N with the 1.4 16V 75PS engine began its desire to sip oil too much, that was due to a bad air/oil separator design in the crankcase ventilation so I fixed that eventually. My daughter bought a used early 2002 SEAT Ibiza 1.4 8V 65PS used and ran it for 7 years and it never ever needed oil adding between services. My daughter bought a brand new late 2009 SEAT Ibiza 1.4 16V 85PS and it still does not need any oil adding between services. I bought a used Audi 2011 Audi S4 and it does not ever need any oil adding between services. My wife bought a brand new VW Polo 1.2TSI in August 2015 and it is now at over 24K miles and it never ever needs any oil adding between services.

Really there is no good excuse for a modern petrol engine burning enough oil to need topping up between services, and its not a good plan as engine oil getting into the cylinders lowers the overall RON rating so can cause pinking.

[RUM4MO]

Need miles to judge, really.
Then again, I've had cars that have done tens of thousands of miles and barely used any oil.
My Audi A3 2.0tdi used to use a litre of their expensive long-life oil every 1500 miles, and they considered that 'within tolerances'
Only car I've had where it was essential I carried a litre of oil in the boot, and I've been driving since 1983....

An unrelated and maybe an unecessary tale, but anyway, I also carried a spare litre of oil in the boot of my old VW Passat 4Motion, and always used that car for long journeys, one time when stopping to refuel on the M6 toll road service area, I opened the boot, in hot weather only to be confronted with the smell of engine oil - but it smelt like new engine oil! The plastic cap had been forced off the container of oil duw to the change in temperature and as the litre container was tipped over a bit oil had escaped! It could have been worse I suppose, it could have been oil coming out of the engine, bit of a mess though as it sort off started melting the tarry stick on anti drumming pads on the boot floor!

[monkeyhanger]

My niggles with the car are there by design:

1. Park assist kicking in while crawling along in heavy traffic. You can switch off park assist and rely on the button by the gearstick to engage the front parking sensors if you haven't engaged reverse first as part of a manoeuvre. Switching it off through the menus would be ideal if VW hadn't given the car ignition cycle amnesia for making you set it every trip. On my Golf R, I set it once and the car remembers.

2. Stop start firing up the the car when stopping in traffic, because the car in front has bunched up 2 feet. Let me decide when to have the car fire up by letting go of the brake pedal - the car is trying too hard to be clever.

3. Brainless DSG decisions during a bout of acceleration. If you're doing 45mph in 6th and floor it, I'd expect the car to knock down to 3rd and zoom away. Instead it kicks down to second at 5500rpm for all of 500rpm's worth of acceleration. It goes down to 2nd for a fraction of a second to then change up to 3rd. The car does pretty much nothing in acceleration terms until it's back in 3rd.

[Muldoon]

Design problems :

1.0 95PS engine seem to lack power to set off initially from standstill on any incline -e.g. below 2k revs. Especially noticeable on hill starts and traffic - overall difficult to drive smoothly by feeding in power or feathering the clutch.

Some driveline shunt / gearbox clonk when changing from 1st to 2nd and 2nd to 3rd - I have had this before on other cars, likely a bit of free play in the differential, not super and the sort of thing you notice now and again in slow traffic. Likely to run fine for 100k miles but annoying.

Engine noise when revved is very coarse - sounds like it's low on oil or rough running but it's fine. Just need to get used to it from having a 4 cylinder engine. No real benefit to thrashing it beyond 4k better just change up and use the engine torque.

Headlamps very poor on standard bulbs.

Still feel it has a hard ride on 16 inch alloys and reacts to any road imperfection - suspect the springs are set up stiffly although 15 inch wheels would help slightly.