Advice needed on low cost (mostly) motorway driving

shiphen

rodenal wrote: »

If you are willing to sell your 150bhp tdi mk4 golf with 140k miles and a new turbo for £1500 then I suggest that:

a) you're mad

b) you let me know where in the country you live and a bit more info on the car because I'll have it.

Maybe I was being a bit hasty on that depreciation price I havent really looked into it properly (particularly the new turbo aspect) - what would you say the thing is worth? 2, 3 grand... more?

shiphen

grizzly1911 wrote: »

What is more important is in gear pickup and low down torque, (especially with long gears at motorway speeds) if you don't want to be shufflingthe box.

Absolutely!
A friend got his TDI Golf 'chipped' and it now has VERY much better torque - particularly at higher revs. In theory it went from 130BHP up to 170!
This made it feel much more like a petrol engine over taking VERY much safer and easier. I had a go in it and it really is SO much faster than mine. Interestingly if you drive them half sensibly, MPG remains similar - or so he says.
I dont know how this 'chipping' would affect the theoretical price however as I guess it would wear the car out faster and buyers might not like this. On the down-side, you would obviously need to tell your insurance company... Also clearly it would trash any warrany from VW plus I dont know if it is entirely legal!

rodenal

Assuming its maybe a late 2002 or a 2003 likely close to 3k for your car

shiphen

rodenal wrote: »

Assuming its maybe a late 2002 or a 2003 likely close to 3k for your car

Update:
At the cost of £60 I have now had the suspension fully cornering tested by my local dealer (Spirit in Leamington Spa, UK). Apparently there is "absolutely nothing wrong" with my car's suspension and cornering... i.e. apparently the cornering is ALWAYS that bad!

I took a friends car for a spin and although I never got to try the car on the motorway (it might be that the suspension is a bit too firm and perhaps too noisy for comfortable motorway driving??) and it was certainly very VERY much better at cornering than my car.

But according to the dealer, the strong suspicion is that my friend's car had a "Handling Pack" installed from new. Rather than buy another car, I am now slightly tempted to do something about the suspension on my existing car - I might even get some a third party/after-sales suspension kit installed.

Although my car has now done 140,000 miles, it is only 8 years old and I understand that Golf TDIs often run for over 200,000 miles...

Also, regarding noise levels, I was thinking of installing DynMatt sound proofing into the doors/floors/bonnet etc - which I am told works surprisingly well, and is much used by people installing better quality audio equipment.

Any thoughts?

jase1

shiphen wrote: »

Although my car has now done 140,000 miles, it is only 8 years old and I understand that Golf TDIs often run for over 200,000 miles...

A Proton would "run for over 200,000 miles" if it was still worth £3000 at 8 years old

200k is routine. 140k if looked after is nothing on any modern car, petrol of diesel.

Kilty_2

Sell the Golf to a VAG idiot and buy something else.