Discussion
So, we recently bought the missus an Alfa Giulietta QV and have been on the look out for a while for something for me. Given that I live in Norway and buying anything PH like is 1) Very difficult because the country is so big with a population of 5m so the cars a spread very thinly anyway and anything with a bit of ompphh even more so. 2) Anything car related is extremely expensive, so I've just bided my time. I've looked at Juke Nismo Rs's, Scirocco 2.0 TSi's, E92 3 series coupe's and pretty much anything that will drive well with around 200bhp. I've obsessed over so many different motors like never before for around 6 months, which led me to the Golf.
I've only ever had one Golf before and that was a mk3 GTI 16v and loved it. So one day checking the Norwegian equivelant of Gumtree for the umpteenth time that week This Golf popped up, I fell in love at first sight, I'd not even seen it in the flesh yet but I knew I wanted it, only issue was it was two hours south of Oslo, I'm in Bergen and Oslo is a good 7 hour drive and that's during the summer when there is no snow over the Hardangervidda mountain pass. So I agreed with the seller to meet, did what research I could over the internet the night before and printed off a checklist then I arranged a hire car for the day and set out at 0530am. The hire car I had was a 1.2TSI Polo which to my surprise I expected to be bigger than it was, performance was ok. As mentioned before I had to drive over the Hardangervidda mountain pass which at this time of the year is a nightmare as they can just close it all of a sudden because of the extreme weather and poor visibility anyway after 75km of this road and crawling it at 30kmh because the weather was crap I managed to arrive in Holmestrand at 1340. I saw the car and tried not to get over excited it looked as good in the flesh as it did in the pictures, so anyway I got my checklist out and started going around it and checking stuff off one by one, the owner got it up on some ramps for me so I could look underneath and it all seemed to be tip top, no rust, perfect. Took it for a test drive and again it felt good, boosted well, no untoward noises or pulling in any direction. It had a full service history and came with some good options. So an hour and a half spent looking around the car I agreed a price with the seller and headed off back to Bergen. It's pretty much impossible to do a deal there and then as the seller for any car in Norway has to physically go down to the driving agency building and register the new owner in person and pay £350 for the privilidge which then gets added to the final cost of the car, I arrived back in Bergen around 2330, so a long day but one hell of a drive.
Fast forward to today, me and the missus flew to Oslo this morning and hired a car to drive the two hour drive to the place we're buying from and have arrived home a couple of hours ago after the long drive back in the Golf, the drive was pretty nice and good to get straight into a long drive with the new car, it's always a bit squeeky bum time when you've bought a new motor and the slightest untoward sound that might be nothing just mind f
ks you into thinking you've just bought a lemon at the back of your mind.
Also the car came with summer wheels, so a set of 19's with some decent tyres and the winter wheels come with a nearly brand new set of Nokians which I rate very highly for the sort of weather we get here. It's been lowered on H&R coilovers and I'm pretty sure the exhaust is not standard as the system is quite big. It's also only got 66,000km on it to so fairly low.
Anyway enough rambling here's some shots I took before we put the plates on and headed home.....
I've only ever had one Golf before and that was a mk3 GTI 16v and loved it. So one day checking the Norwegian equivelant of Gumtree for the umpteenth time that week This Golf popped up, I fell in love at first sight, I'd not even seen it in the flesh yet but I knew I wanted it, only issue was it was two hours south of Oslo, I'm in Bergen and Oslo is a good 7 hour drive and that's during the summer when there is no snow over the Hardangervidda mountain pass. So I agreed with the seller to meet, did what research I could over the internet the night before and printed off a checklist then I arranged a hire car for the day and set out at 0530am. The hire car I had was a 1.2TSI Polo which to my surprise I expected to be bigger than it was, performance was ok. As mentioned before I had to drive over the Hardangervidda mountain pass which at this time of the year is a nightmare as they can just close it all of a sudden because of the extreme weather and poor visibility anyway after 75km of this road and crawling it at 30kmh because the weather was crap I managed to arrive in Holmestrand at 1340. I saw the car and tried not to get over excited it looked as good in the flesh as it did in the pictures, so anyway I got my checklist out and started going around it and checking stuff off one by one, the owner got it up on some ramps for me so I could look underneath and it all seemed to be tip top, no rust, perfect. Took it for a test drive and again it felt good, boosted well, no untoward noises or pulling in any direction. It had a full service history and came with some good options. So an hour and a half spent looking around the car I agreed a price with the seller and headed off back to Bergen. It's pretty much impossible to do a deal there and then as the seller for any car in Norway has to physically go down to the driving agency building and register the new owner in person and pay £350 for the privilidge which then gets added to the final cost of the car, I arrived back in Bergen around 2330, so a long day but one hell of a drive.
Fast forward to today, me and the missus flew to Oslo this morning and hired a car to drive the two hour drive to the place we're buying from and have arrived home a couple of hours ago after the long drive back in the Golf, the drive was pretty nice and good to get straight into a long drive with the new car, it's always a bit squeeky bum time when you've bought a new motor and the slightest untoward sound that might be nothing just mind f
ks you into thinking you've just bought a lemon at the back of your mind. Also the car came with summer wheels, so a set of 19's with some decent tyres and the winter wheels come with a nearly brand new set of Nokians which I rate very highly for the sort of weather we get here. It's been lowered on H&R coilovers and I'm pretty sure the exhaust is not standard as the system is quite big. It's also only got 66,000km on it to so fairly low.
Anyway enough rambling here's some shots I took before we put the plates on and headed home.....
Edited by NordicCrankShaft on Friday 24th February 15:14
Don't get me wrong the GTD is a capable machine (I can imagine after a remap also it would haul ass) and the DSG was quite appealing after having years of manual cars that wanted to be driven I did quite fancy a diesel with an auto box of some kind for a bit of a lazier driving experience, but I just don't cover the mileage needed in order for the diesel to be beneficial.
Plans over the coming months will definitely be to buy some smallers new wheels for the summer as the ones that came with the car are 19's and I'm not really keen on them. It's already got coil overs,I'm guessing the exhaust isn't standard and has a K&N induction kit, so also a remap along with some better spark plugs and R8 coil packs.
Also have a bit of a roadtrip planned for our summer holiday into Sweden.
Plans over the coming months will definitely be to buy some smallers new wheels for the summer as the ones that came with the car are 19's and I'm not really keen on them. It's already got coil overs,I'm guessing the exhaust isn't standard and has a K&N induction kit, so also a remap along with some better spark plugs and R8 coil packs.
Also have a bit of a roadtrip planned for our summer holiday into Sweden.
V nice, esp colour and seats, though also biased...
Ours is on the standard 17" rims, and for general use, they're fine with an acceptable trade off between ride, grip and handling for me. Only downside is wet weather grip, but that might be a factor of this being the first fwd car for 15 years.
Currently quite impressed with the package overall, and yours will be a good read for me as a comparison - snow and ice your end, 40C heat and tropical rain this end!
Ours is on the standard 17" rims, and for general use, they're fine with an acceptable trade off between ride, grip and handling for me. Only downside is wet weather grip, but that might be a factor of this being the first fwd car for 15 years.Currently quite impressed with the package overall, and yours will be a good read for me as a comparison - snow and ice your end, 40C heat and tropical rain this end!
Thanks, yeah it all seems to fit together nicely. One of the reasons I'm keen on getting rid of the 19s before I've tried them is that I want to keep some practical drivability, especially here with a lot of the roads not being in that great a condition.
One thing I did struggle with driving back from picking it up was keeping the engine temperature up, the temperature gauge dropped down to 65/70 the entire time I drove over the part where it was -17ºc
One thing I did struggle with driving back from picking it up was keeping the engine temperature up, the temperature gauge dropped down to 65/70 the entire time I drove over the part where it was -17ºc
Not a huge update but a few things have been done over the last couple of weeks.
There was some cheap Chinese exhaust on there that started blowing about a week after we'd bought it, so it had to go. Replaced it with a turbo back Miltek system. Also managed to add a K&N typhoon induction kit and with these two combined the car really feel eager to pull and sounds fantastic.
On another slightly crappy note, I was parked up yesterday at work and I purposely park out of the way to avoid thes that can neither drive properly or care about their cars. Still somehow some wet bint managed to park directly behind me, nudge my bumper and break my number plate holder. So the rear bumper was left with remnants of her cars paint and some scratches. She was good enough to leave a note and her contact details and for that I'm happy and have my faith stored in humanity a little, either way it's still st. This happened yesterday so we booked it in last night into one of the detailers that are quite popular here in Bergen and perfectly time they had a half price offer on for members of the Norwegian equivalent of the RAC so we had the car fully detailed and picked it up today. The scratches/marks are mostly gone there is one however still there and whilst not super visible I know is it's there and it's bugging me.
Anyway, the car is now nicely setup for a stage 1 Remap. Next job up at some point will be the timing chain tensioner as these are a real weakspot on these engines if it's not been replaced with the revised part and potentially an engine killer also a service.
There was some cheap Chinese exhaust on there that started blowing about a week after we'd bought it, so it had to go. Replaced it with a turbo back Miltek system. Also managed to add a K&N typhoon induction kit and with these two combined the car really feel eager to pull and sounds fantastic.
On another slightly crappy note, I was parked up yesterday at work and I purposely park out of the way to avoid the
s that can neither drive properly or care about their cars. Still somehow some wet bint managed to park directly behind me, nudge my bumper and break my number plate holder. So the rear bumper was left with remnants of her cars paint and some scratches. She was good enough to leave a note and her contact details and for that I'm happy and have my faith stored in humanity a little, either way it's still st. This happened yesterday so we booked it in last night into one of the detailers that are quite popular here in Bergen and perfectly time they had a half price offer on for members of the Norwegian equivalent of the RAC so we had the car fully detailed and picked it up today. The scratches/marks are mostly gone there is one however still there and whilst not super visible I know is it's there and it's bugging me.Anyway, the car is now nicely setup for a stage 1 Remap. Next job up at some point will be the timing chain tensioner as these are a real weakspot on these engines if it's not been replaced with the revised part and potentially an engine killer also a service.
Edited by NordicCrankShaft on Tuesday 28th March 17:27
OP, the timing chain tensioner first revision was added to cars built after May 1st 2010. i have a 2011 MY MK6 GTi registered on 31 December 2010 which has a revised tensioner on it. I actually checked this with my local (in the UK) VW dealer who confirmed that I did have a revised tensioner fitted to my car. I believe it was 2009 and early 2010 cars that suffered the tensioner failure. You can check with VW by giving them your chassis number to determine when your car was built which will tell you if you have a revised tensioner fitted.
Edited by Andy OH on Tuesday 28th March 20:48
Andy OH said:
OP, the timing chain tensioner first revision was added to cars built after May 1st 2010. i have a 2011 MY MK6 GTi registered on 31 December 2010 which has a revised tensioner on it. I actually checked this with my local (in the UK) VW dealer who confirmed that I did have a revised tensioner fitted to my car. I believe it was 2009 and early 2010 cars that suffered the tensioner failure. You can check with VW by giving them your chassis number to determine when your car was built which will tell you if you have a revised tensioner fitted.
My build date is a late 2009 but not registered until 2010. So I'm guessing it has the crappy tensioner. I think I'll take it to service before i change it and check with VW whilst I'm there.Edited by Andy OH on Tuesday 28th March 20:48
Little update....
First major road trip in the Golf since the 8 hour drive back from Oslo to buy it. A trek a little North from Bergen to Trollstigen (The Trolls Ladder). It's an 8 hour drive normally but the mountain pass which makes it a quicker journey had suffered severe flooding a day before and the bridge collapsed, having just returned from 2 weeks in Cuba and having amazing weather I'd forgotten how crap Norwegian weather was so didn't check. Anyway after having to take the long route round and having to wait until 6am for the ferry across the fjord I finally arrived 24 hours later than planned but it was well worth it. The sun is still at the point where it still doesn't really go down, so getting there nice and early when there was zero traffic was fantastic, it gave me the opportunity to blast up and down around 5/6 times, any more than that I think the brakes would have died as they were extremely hot after each run down to the point they were smoking
Such a fantastic drive and the scenery even up was breathtaking and just cemented for me why I love living in this country so much.
I still can't believe how well it does on fuel, managed an average reading of 6.1ltr/100km, although being right out in the sticks I had to put in a tank of crappy 95ron stuff. I've only used Shell Vpower so far and in all fairness to the crappy stuff I didn't notice and change in the car and ow it drove.
First major road trip in the Golf since the 8 hour drive back from Oslo to buy it. A trek a little North from Bergen to Trollstigen (The Trolls Ladder). It's an 8 hour drive normally but the mountain pass which makes it a quicker journey had suffered severe flooding a day before and the bridge collapsed, having just returned from 2 weeks in Cuba and having amazing weather I'd forgotten how crap Norwegian weather was so didn't check. Anyway after having to take the long route round and having to wait until 6am for the ferry across the fjord I finally arrived 24 hours later than planned but it was well worth it. The sun is still at the point where it still doesn't really go down, so getting there nice and early when there was zero traffic was fantastic, it gave me the opportunity to blast up and down around 5/6 times, any more than that I think the brakes would have died as they were extremely hot after each run down to the point they were smoking
Such a fantastic drive and the scenery even up was breathtaking and just cemented for me why I love living in this country so much.
I still can't believe how well it does on fuel, managed an average reading of 6.1ltr/100km, although being right out in the sticks I had to put in a tank of crappy 95ron stuff. I've only used Shell Vpower so far and in all fairness to the crappy stuff I didn't notice and change in the car and ow it drove.
Edited by NordicCrankShaft on Thursday 27th July 00:20
Edited by NordicCrankShaft on Thursday 27th July 00:24
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