End of warranty update: Yep, it's over. Hit the 72k and 6 years almost simultaneously, as intended. So now I'm on my own.
- No warranty claims in the first 72k/6years
- The only thing that is somewhat broken is the USB port in the center console, which periodically loses connectivity for my bluetooth dongle. I can get a new USB port off the internet for like 30 bucks, so it wasn't worth my time to deal with going to a dealer, frankly. It's not really a big issue.
- The other thing I've found I really dislike about this car is rear tire wear. Specifically the right rear, for some reason, even though the car has been aligned multiple times and has never been out of spec. Both rear tires wear the inside predominently and also cause feathering after about 10k miles, which then causes a crapload of road noise. This was happening to my first set of tires (BFG Comp 2 A/S) fairly early, and now my Conti Extreme Contact DWS the same thing after less than 10k miles. I suppose I could have a bad wheel bearing, but there's not noticeable play in the hub, and it would seem early for a wheel bearing (or both) in the rear to go bad when the car still had like 20k on it. Honestly, I would expect some inside camber wear, but the feathering causing noise really annoys me, especially when I rotate them to the front and you can hear the noise more until they wear down. guess I'll hit the alignment rack again.
- Also, starting to wear a hole in the driver's seat bolster. I seem to do this on other cars in the same place as well, not sure why but I guess it's just me lol. But the other cars took much longer to do it (and the WRX never did it, even at 180k).
- Shocks seem fine. This is around the time I usually change out OEM shocks for somethign better, but this being my commuter car primarily, and still riding/handling fine, I'm not going to do that until i need to.
- Otherwise, pretty much same thoughts as always. Car still drives fine, handles great, brakes great, etc. It's still kinda boring, but a good boring I suppose. Regular maintenance only, and still gets well over 30mpg in mixed driving with a heavy foot, usually running regular gas.
- Oh, just did a brake job at 75k. The OEM front pads still had about 20% on them, but man those things do eat up rotors, they had a nice lip on them. Pads were wearing evenly, so no caliper issues, etc. I did only the fronts at the moment, because apparently I need a shorty triple-square/torx in order to get to the rear caliper bracket mounting bolts (and of course I have a million torx/TS sockets but they're all too long/too short. So that's fairly annoying as well, but the rears were still at 30%+ on the pads and rotors not nearly as worn, so I'll deal with it this winter.
- I still despise the germans for using wheel bolts instead of studs. Make tire on/off such a comparitive hassle (plsu the plastic caps on the GTI bolts that have to come off first).