Passt W8 wagon why is this a bad car

Tell me why this car isn't awesome. W8, Wagon, AWD and manual. youtube straight pipes on the thing and it sounds amazing. It gets around 18-24 not to bad. I am leaning towards this because next car can not be a coupe and who doesn't love a wagon.

Because it is a maintenance nightmare, especially the W8 engine.

Run away.

I just tried to convince a young single girl from buying a vw. She told me all about how my opinion is wrong. I asked her to put the dealerships service number in her cell phone.

Wait, these exisit?

What could go wrong?

VW can't get their bread and butter diesel 4 cyl right without dpf's failing, intercoolers freezing with sludge from the EGR, fuel pumps exploding and sending shards of metal throughout the fuel system, and cheating on emissions software.

I had VW get lemon lawed 2 years ago and could not even imagine having a "exotic" VW as stated before. RUN. Looks good on paper but that about it.

But they did so well in thr phae...oh wait.

In reply to Gearheadotaku:

Yea right I just found this out tonight

and yea that is what everyone of my friends told me but I just couldn't get pass the idea of how awesome it sounded on paper. I will most likely end up in a Subaru wagon or a bmw. But damn this is sooo cool.

http://www.cars.com/vehicledetail/detail/654765946/overview/?aff=aol

I'm a VW enthusiast so I'm much more tolerant then the flood of VW bashers that this thread will attract but even I wouldn't do it.

Call up the nearest VW dealer and ask them what replacing the timing chains and guides would cost you. I'm willing to bet it's almost as much as the purchase price of the car.

This one looks clean, but at 112,000 miles that's getting close to the mileage range that the chains could fail. On 12v VR6s which definitely had issues with guides and chains it was around 100k when you had to start thinking about replacement based on whether or not you heard any noise from them.

I would only think about one of these if it was well maintained up to that point and so cheap that I considered it "disposable" should the chains go.

I know a stick was available, but aren't they incredibly rare? This one is an automatic.

Also ask how much to replace the front suspension will cost?

Once you hear one clunk coming from the front end, the rest of them are about to go too.

woah, steering rack up at the upper firewall? wait, also where you would need to access for the timing chain(s)?

bwahahahahaha!

They are glorious cars. I know of one that's had a couple of owners locally and as far as I know has had the usual reliability of most late model VAG's I am personally acquainted with. i.e. on par with gravity and sun rise.

This one has had a free flowing exhaust fabbed for it and it sounds like the Valkyrie are coming forth to carry thee home when you step on it.

P.S. while every VAG I know if has been reliable it's hard to argue with the snow tipped mountain of evidence to the contrary so I think I'd stay clear if it were my $$"s on the line

With the newer VAG products I've been around, it seems like they don't break all that often if they're cared for, but nothing for them is cheap, especially when they do break.

rslifkin wrote: With the newer VAG products I've been around, it seems like they don't break all that often if they're cared for, but nothing for them is cheap, especially when they do break.

I think you've hit the nail on the head. All the ones I've been near (cousin, best friend from HS, college roommate) required regular maintenance. The maintenance was more often and more expensive even than the BMW's I was playing with at the time. And when something did break? Bring the checkbook.

Of course, no one there was really DIYing anything.

I'm going to recuse myself from this thread.

I still want one, BTW.

There are NO bottom end parts available for the w8. see herehttp://forums.vwvortex.com/showthread.php?6953491-Doing-the-impossible-Rebuilding-a-Passat-W8-engine he had to make new bearings by shortening vr6 bearings with a hacksaw.

VW only sells the short block for a budget $15k

I'm generally supportive of stupid German superwagons. But there are several significant upgrades in the B6 platform over the B5 platform. The biggest being the W8 engine, it's overcomplicated and undersupported.

RossD wrote: Also ask how much to replace the front suspension will cost? Once you hear one clunk coming from the front end, the rest of them are about to go too.

surprisingly not that much for this kit:

my audi A4 had the same suspension set up and it wasnt to bad, only had one of the 8 front balljoints start thunking and it was easy to pin point it to the bad joint. the hard part is ordering the right one, since the one i needed was the front lower rear control arm...

RossD wrote: Once you hear one clunk coming from the front end, the rest of them are about to go too.

In my experience, having owned a B5 and a B6 (both Audis), you'll get about 70K miles out of the original parts. It's usually the uppers and the sway bar end links that go, the lowers are less of an issue. You can get a full set of parts here for $400, it's totally DIYable although you'll need an alignment afterwards.

parts

For a bit more you can upgrade to adjustable length upper arms and get the ability to adjust camber. (The 034 ones don't allow you to add camber at stock ride height, but there are others on the market that do).

[edit] Didn't see the even cheaper parts kit -- good to know.

Gearheadotaku wrote: Wait, these exisit?

I am with you. What a surprise..........I never knew!

MrChaos wrote: There are NO bottom end parts available for the w8. see herehttp://forums.vwvortex.com/showthread.php?6953491-Doing-the-impossible-Rebuilding-a-Passat-W8-engine he had to make new bearings by shortening vr6 bearings with a hacksaw. VW only sells the short block for a budget $15k

Yeah I think most of the W8 parts went NLA awhile ago. It tells you something when VW won't even offer parts for it anymore!

In reply to Contradiction:

vw never offered bottom end parts, only the short block so there was nothing to nla.

Mostly becasue it's a German car built after the early 90s.