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VW 12-15 TDI Jetta

4K views 6 replies 4 participants last post by  mystycal 
#1 ·
Anyone know much about them? VW 12-15 TDI Jetta? Ive been eyeing one for my wife to drive and promised her a real nice newer car next year, cause my toy in the garage so gotta be fair. I was looking into one of the 2.0L TDI and figured those should be pretty sound, anybody have any experience with them?
 
#2 ·
I'll shoot... 2011, jsw. It is a 2.0 cr, though:
My wife has put about 100k miles on a 2011 jetta sportswagon 6 speed manual tdi in about 2.5 years. It now has about 130k and is in the shop getting a full dpf and egr delete with tune ($1,800). It was throwing a code that goes with some electronic flap in the intake ($500). I took that as a sign that I needed to jump ship on all the emissions crap. Except for some valve that failed on the ac compressor ($300), this is the first mechanical thing that has gone wrong on it yet. Timing belt at 120k is the only maintenance other than oil changes, tires, etc. I have heard some bad things about the dsg trannys, but the 6 speed has been great. Oh yeah, there are a small percentage of the high pressure fuel pumps that self-destruct and make a mess of the whole fuel system. A guy named 2micron on tdiclub has just figured out how to retrofit a mini cp3 pump which is more robust ($1,000). I will be doing this soon. Also, I like the wagons better than the sedans as they have a little nicer interior and independent rear supspension.

Overall, I think as far as a small family car goes, it is pretty close to ideal for us. It has probably averaged well over 40 mpg while we have had it. Pretty much the only thing I would wish for is for it to have awd like vw offers everywhere else in the world.
 
#3 · (Edited)
Ash pretty much hit the highlights. In order of importance/cost/concern, I'd rank the VW 2.0tdi as;
1) High Pressure Fuel Pump failures. VW is still covering them on a one by one case. The CP3 pump (insert Cummins reference :)) shows great promise toward making this engine bullet proof.
2) DPF failures. Cracks appear, throwing codes. Replacements costs are high and only prolong repeating the same performance on an otherwise healthy engine capable of 100's of 1000's of miles.
3) DSG valve body failures. 40,000 mile service intervals or else. Dual wet clutch design, no converter. Great design, but Id plumb a filter as a measure of safety. Appears to be caused by sporadic quality control, rather than heat.
4) DMF (dual mass flywheel) failures. Effects both manual and automatic trans. DMF = smooth operation (springs inside the flywheel help absorb 4 cyl firing impulses), but can disintegrate, sometimes gloriously.

Other than that, they're great engines/cars.
 
#6 ·
Sounds pretty much like a roll of the dice just the same to every single other car on the planet! Well the dsg problem has me worried cause I know she would kill a manual a lot.
I wouldn't let that discourage you. The nice thing is the MK6 (2010-14) CR2.0 TDI platform is now 5 years old and most of the potential issues and shortcomings have revealed themselves by now so you can address them if needed. The support community on these cars is also very strong for the do-it-yourselfer. Performance tweaks can add up quickly and get expensive for the German marques if that becomes your goal, but the oem architecture and design is quite robust once the 3 or 4 potential issues are attended to, even if its just precautionary. This is true of every car make/model and their sub-generations. Id still consider the DSG for her, its really a very nice design and is truly an automatically (solenoids) shifted manual transmission - one wet clutch plate handles gears 1,3,5 and the other handles gears 2,4,6.
 
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