Volkswagen Golf 2009 Problems

This engine was a great thing to drive with superb fuel economy and plenty of performance. Unfortunately, it was also overly complex and prone to failures like the one yours has experienced. Because the car is so far out of warranty, you can probably forget about Volkswagen helping with the cost of repairs. But I’d still give its customer service department a call and state my case on the basis that 136,000km is hardly the expectation for a modern engine in terms of longevity, along with the fact that this engine has a rich history of failures exactly like yours.

If you can organise to have part of the cost taken car of by VW, then maybe it would be worth repairing the car. Beyond that, however, you’d be spending almost $6500 on a car that, even in working order, is worth something like $8000 or $9000. It doesn’t realty add up at that point, does it? Even then, you might find that other parts of the engine (like the turbocharger or supercharger or the complex system of intake plumbing that allows it all to work) might be next to go bang.

Your car is now nine years old, which makes it difficult to claim on VW, but it has only done 70,000 km, so that’s in your favour. If a VW dealer had been servicing it I would attempt to convince VW to cover at least part of the cost of the replacement. Otherwise I think you will find it hard to get VW to cough up.

Your best option would be the 1.4-litre turbo manual in the Mk 6. It’s more fuel-efficient than the base 1.6-litre engine in the Mark 5, and being the newer model there are less likely to be any issues with getting spares for it.

Yes. It is a well-documented problem with the 1.4-litre dual-charge engine; one that VW was fixing when it first cropped up a year or two ago. Your car is out of warranty so they might be reluctant to help you, but it's worth a try.

Have your dealer contact VW first and have them register a request for a goodwill claim to cover the repairs to the engine. It's a common problem with the 1.4-litre twin-charge engine and the company should at least cover part of the repair costs. If your claim is rejected, then go directly to VW to pursue it further. You will have a battle to get any compensation, so be prepared for rejection.

You have a reasonable claim against VW to have the gearbox replaced free of charge. The DSG gearbox is known to be troublesome and yours has a history of malfunctioning. Because the car is seven years old and VW isn’t very forthcoming on customer issues you will have to suit up and take them on, but the DSG transmission is a dud and the company knows it, and they should come clean and fix cars like yours that are having problems. If you can’t get anywhere with VW and give up, try an independent VW specialist mechanic.

The problems with the DSG gearbox, which VW claimed only affected the 7-speed unit, badly damaged the company’s reputation. But worse damage was done when it refused to accept there was a problem and stonewalled owners until it was faced with mounting public pressure to act. Then they only recalled cars with the 7-speed gearbox, not the six-speed that was fitted to your car.