Alco if you tell a salesperson you won't buy one with start stop I'm sure he will find out how to cancel that thing permanently. ;-)

Took a quick 250 mile trip in the GTI yesterday. Man such a fast comfortable cruiser. If you buy one Alco you will be happy.

 

We often keep our vehicles for 12 to 15 years and even longer. Considering that, this might be the last vehicle I buy and it's so STUPID for me to think that way. I need to turn away on the analytical traditions that have governed our vehicle purchases in the past and accept that a GTI would be a fun reward to enjoy until that time increasing age points to a change. At that time, I'd make a decision on a GTI replacement.

I wish I could keep my Frontier, but there's no place to park it and insuring and maintaining four vehicles (including my daughter's Fit), would be ridiculous. What they say about having a truck is true -- it's nice to have haul capability when you need it.

 

With my Frontier's soft tonneau cover having finally failed after 12+ years in the weather, we took Rolf The Golf to visit family over Christmas. We used the floor lowering feature to gain 4-1/2" inches of height and lowered the rear seat behind the passenger to somehow fit all of our family gifts, luggage and winterwear in there. Pretty amazing that it all fit. Yay Golf!

Despite our success, I told my wife and daughter that I'd had enough and that I'd join the rest of America and buy a 4x4 Chevy Suburban Premier 6.2L V-8 before year's end. <g>

 

Canyonaro!!!

CAYONARO!!!

 

sounds great! GL with your purchase alco.

 

I'd not see the Canyonero segment ash -- funny! Ken, I'll bet I can drive away in my new 'burb for no money down with a $5K rebate and 72 Months to pay. My wife added that we can also star in a Chevy "Real People, Not Actors" ad where she can be astonished at power windows and folding seats.

 

Bought four new tires for Felix The Fit today, 185/55R/16, Sumitomo HTR A/S P02 at $427.31 plus an Alignment at $79.99. These are 65,000 Mile tires and rated pretty well on Tire Rack (4 of 5 Stars). I bought them at a local tire shop where I always go for tires. I always get three bids and they are always the best. They're not performance tires by any means, but the car isn't driven hard, we rarely see snow and they should do okay. We could have eeked out a few more miles on the old tires (Dunlops), but the shoulders were bald on three of the four and I worried about my daughter's safety with them in the rain.

 

sounds good alco. haha, i guess we'll be seeing you on TV! lol

ive had good experience with HTR's a while back on my dd. considering sumitomo rubber is dunlop in japan, good year in the USA, those are quality tires for daily use.

 

Those adds are truly a failure. Have you seen the spoof Chevy adds by Zebra Corner on YouTube? They are great!!

 

Alco those are a pretty decent tire. I bought a set of those same tires from Discount Tire for my son's fit before he headed out to LA last January. The ones I bought are branded Falken, but are the same exact tire. He says they worked well in the rain & OK in the snow he encountered on his drive west. Like you we could have eeked out a few thousand more miles on the oem tires, but heck he's kid so safety won the day.

Falken Pro G4 A/S

 

I'm happy to read from y'all that these tires are a good choice. I was admiring them in the sun today and I now see that the tread on the old tires was worn much further than I thought. Extra glad that I replaced them.

 

<Maybe I'll stop by the VW Dealer and ask a salesperson about the procedure to cancel the auto start/stop with each start cycle.>

I asked today at the Dealership and they said after pressing the Start button, there's a small button marked with an 'A' that you then press to defeat the auto start/stop. And yes, the process must be repeated each start cycle. That's not too awful bad I guess.

Rolf goes in for his 20K Mile oil change on Wednesday, 01/02.

 

Nice it can be turned off, but the real fix would be to kill it unless you decide to turn it on. I'm sure somewhere there is a how to on that although I've yet to find it.

While Rolf is there take a new GTI for a spin. Well don't spin it, but do drive it. ;-)

 

Guys, its been fun. GL to all of you and hope we meet again somewhere! Have a great life. I'm wrapping things up here. I'm on many other car forums so see you around.

 

Whoa Ken, did you sell the VW or Fit or both? I'll really miss having you around our little Wolfsburg corner of FitFreak. :-(

 

hi alco! i still have my cars. the next to go is my house. lol im going to move to a bigger house hopefully in 2019 and will add a few more cars. i need more parking space.

 

I later spoke to a young used car salesguy at the Dealership and he suggested cutting the wire to the 'A' button. Hmmm. I'll let someone else pioneer that workaround.

The Dealer has only one GTI on the lot -- a nice 2018 Autobahn 6-Speed …. with a giveaway price of $36,400. Right. Neither of our VWs was bought there and it's obvious why. They have two 2019 GTI SEs inbound. Interestingly, the 6-Speed manual is rated at 33/25 MPG and the new 7-Speed DSG is 32/24. I'd have thought the 7-Speed would be better.

 

I'd have thought the extra cog in the DSG would have upped the mileage numbers. Cut the wire, LOL. I'd guess the car would have a conniption fit if that wire was snipped. I'm sure there will be a why to code it off.

 

Just read through and catching back up! Sounds like everyone had a great Christmas!

I can't imagine that a VW would live with cutting a wire. The whole car is ridiculously over complicated.

We took ours to FL and back over the Holiday's. It's now over 41k miles and still doing great. While in FL I changed the spark plugs, air filter, cabin filter, and installed the Phillips RacingVision headlight bulbs.

Fantastic results with the RacingVision's! I highly recommend them. They are a true, nice white (not blue or yellow) and definitely project light further on the road. Not up to OEM LED or HID standards, but a substantial improvement over the stock halogen bulbs.

HOWEVER, changing the headlight bulbs in a Mk7 Golf is an asinine procedure. VW needs to fire about half of their engineers and replace them with American or Japanese workers. Replacement required removing the grille, supports behind the headlights, pulling back the inner fenders, pulling the front bumper away from the car and then removing the entire headlight assembly.

Our Golf continues to amaze me with, what I consider to be, poor engineering.

 

Oh...spark plugs showed some signs of detonation, but nothing out of the ordinary with a modern car. I suspect they could have gone another 20k, but VW maintenance schedule calls for replacement at 40k. They were about $10/plug from DAP, so not a big deal to just go ahead and change them.

Air filter wasn't bad for 40k miles either. It has a ridiculous amount of pleats. Definitely a quality piece.

I went OEM with plugs and filters. Figure they are a safe bet.

We are getting a noise from the front suspension on bumps. Honestly sounds like a strut is failing, but it seems way, way too early to have a strut failure. Our Fit's are still fine, but weak at almost 200k miles.

Anyone know if the OEM struts on VW's are known for premature failure?