shadow wrote:Congrats on the new car. You made a good choice (no, I'm not biased, LOL) considering that you went a decade without having a manual transmission car.
Much thanks, Shadow. And no worries on the bias... I'm almost to the point of adding four rings to the family crest.
What I can't believe is that the voice command button accepts English, Spanish, and French... but not German! I mean, c'mon... have some pride...
theholycow wrote:I went to the VW dealership on a lark, expecting to dislike what I found...ended up signing on the line.
I have never driven a car in this price range before, so I couldn't understand what another $15k would buy me above my beloved Accord with the pedal-ectomy besides toys. But, yes, I am a very happy VW-AG product owner (the Farvergnugen plate frames should be in any day, now.
theholycow wrote:
Upkeep shouldn't be too bad. Oil changes are 10,000 miles, right? IIRC the rest shouldn't be much different than any other late model car.
They do say 10k miles on the oil changes... but I might want to cut that in half. I would like the car to last to 200k miles if at all possible. Mostly because I don't know if I'll have the cash to replace it!
There is an issue of some of the 2009-2011 models drinking oil... but I'm in the middle of Stage One test (I'm still under warranty so... why not?) and... the oil level seems to have stayed right at the top.
Did you know there's no dipstick on these cars? I gotta ask the computer for that, too. Sheesh.
shadow wrote:The majority of drive-by-wire manual transmission cars are quite annoying in the way they operate....especially when it comes to rev hang. If you're not familiar with that term, just do a bit of research and you'll see how most people really hate it. Lucky for you, the Audi 2.0T doesn't have any rev hang whatsoever. From what I've heard/read, the VW 2.0T does have some rev hang issues.
Yes, Drive-By-Wire is brand new to me. And I'm very glad that there is no rev-hang (I did some perusing of this forum for a while... so I'm a bit educated on it). I'm lucky---I would never have known to be on the lookout for it.
theholycow wrote:
The fuel economy in engine braking... is called Deceleration Fuel Cut Off (DFCO). DFCO isn't as cut-and-dry as it ought to be. My VW had funny rules about when it would and wouldn't (I connected a meter to my fuel injectors to see).
I have learned a bit about DFCO just perusing the forums the past couple of days. I think I might know when it is occurring in my A4 and when it isn't, but perhaps the Shadow can confirm this:
I'm using the Driver's Information Screen (between the tach and speedo) with some of the digital readouts. As Shadow has already mentioned, there's a shift-recommendation portion (and I've considered obeying it from time to time) but there's also an instantaneous fuel economy read-out.
I'm guessing when that reads "----- mpg" that it's telling me that it can't divide by zero. So that must be DFCO mode. Otherwise, when I'm coasting, it seems to max out at 200 mpg. And from coasting at 26.5 MPH and having the readout tell me that I'm at 100 mpg, I gather that idle sucks about 1L/hr of gasoline.
theholycow wrote:
The one-in-a-million accelerator-needed crash avoidance requires you to be driving an automatic, or driving around in a very low gear in your manual. In a moderate cruising gear you're not going to get the kind of acceleration you need. No need to worry about it.
See... this whole safety issue about not coasting just wasn't doing it for me, regardless of the UK laws (even VA has the law stating one cannot coast down a hill in neutral). But DFCO is persuasive.
Although, to be honest, I don't know that it's saving me *that* much over coasting to a stop from 55 MPH to the red light about 1/4 mile down the road in light traffic.
theholycow wrote:Do drive the way that makes you comfortable and satisfied.
Part of that comfort comes from knowing that I'm doing the right things with the car. This is the nicest car I've ever owned and I want to play with it, but I want to be kind to it, too.
ClutchDisc wrote:Welcome to the forum! Glad you're back to having three pedals!
Thank you, Clutchdisc. I'm very happy to have my third pedal back. Now let's see if I can lighten up on all the head-bobbing.
