I used to think that buying a slightly used luxury car was better than buying a small new car. You could get a more solid and smoother riding vehicle for about the same price, and you wouldn't have to deal with depreciation. If you could fix a few things yourself, it would be a steal. After owning a nice all-wheel-drive VW Passat with a torquey V6 for the past two and a half years, I was proved wrong.
In just the last year, my 2002 Passat has cost me over $2500 in repairs. Fixing stupid things like a broken seat belt socket tend to take a lot of effort when you have to life a heavy power seat out of the car. There were also things like the flaky automatic climate control unit and misbehaving LCD in the dashboard to worry about. There is nothing worse than getting only cold air in the winter.
The most recent set of repairs have been the Secondary Air Injection (SAI) pump and Anti-lock Braking System (ABS) modulator. The SAI pump is part of the emissions control system that sits on the passenger-side of the car, just behind the front bumper.
According to Wikipedia, the SAI system operates by pumping Oxygen into the exhaust to burn off any excess fuel that may be present. The pump also warms up the Catalytic Converter faster. In the Passat, the pump runs for about 90 seconds when the engine is cold. There is also a solenoid and a couple of check valves that are supposed to ensure exhaust doesn't get back into the pump. Those valves can stick, leading to rusting of the pump from the water vapors in the exhaust fumes.
The SAI system was put on cars in the 60's and 70's before there were O2 sensors and other sophisticated means of regulating emissions. Last time I checked, my car had a whole gang of emissions controls besides the SAI pump. I hope none of the other ones fail. Dealing with this SAI problem has been expensive enough already.
The SAI pump costs $575+ from Volkswagen. All that for a part that has negligible impact on noxious emissions. I sure how it's not because this is considered a luxury car that I have to pay that much. Why we are still saddled with these things? Carrying around a heavy pump with all the associated plumbing just doesn't make any sense. In my opinion, the impact on emissions is offset by the extra weight I have to drive around with.
As I was busy fixing the SAI to get rid of the check engine light, my ABS and brake lights started flashing. A few annoying beeps when the the car is first started also accompanied those lights. Thinking that the SAI issue would definitely make it impossible to pass emissions, I focused only on that. Boy, was I wrong.
After watching the check engine light go out by itself and taking the car to the emissions testing place, I still got a failing grade.
Turns out, whenever the ABS modulator circuit board goes out in these cars, the engine management computer will refuse to talk to any OBD-II scanners. That means no emissions testing location can talk to my car! If they can't talk to my car, I will fail. Someone please tell me what does ABS have to do with emissions? I would prefer an engineer from Volkswagen explain it to me.
Even with all the time spent in the shop, I still like driving the car. It's just that I don't like entertaining the idea that I might have to drive it while living in it. The problems with the emissions accounts for just under 1500 of the $6000 total that I have spent maintaining this car. I know I could spend less, but after you have been stranded on the highway due to a broken serpentine belt tensioner that separated into pieces, some of which took out a fan blade, you learn to get proper heavy duty parts from VW.
This is a car that was built in 2002. It doesn't have iDrive, massaging seats, automatic air pressure tester, voice commands or any of the fancy things the newer cars have. I shudder to think what it'll be like for someone trying to fix anything on those machines 6 years down the line. It's just not worth it, especially when the whole point of having a car is to drive it.
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