From TSI to GTI, Holy ****

[wrecksigge]

So yesterday i went from this:



To this:









Been driving all day today and I didn't stop smiling once! What a car, what an experience, what a difference! Its hard to believe that this is in fact a VW Polo... The main reason i did the swap was because this car appeared at a dealer nearby. It's very well equipped and only 3200km on the meter. Before the TSI i had a Golf with the DSG7 gearbox and i've been missing it since i sold it. And the TSI has always felt a little too basic for me. Couldn't be happier with this car! It's suprisingly quick and the sound from the 1.4l turbo engine is way better than i could ever ask for! Also the difference in insurance costs is almost zero. Another thing that was a pleasent suprise!

But you know what they say, much wants more! Of all the cars i've owned through the years i have never been tuning any of them. But now i feel like i'ts gonna be worth it! But that means i have no experience in dooing so. What is the most common tuning mods for the GTI? Im gonna start with a Stage 1 tuning chip ofc, but thats a software upgrade. How about the hardware? Whats worth spendning money on?
Any input is appriciated!

Cheers!

[RUM4MO]

Oh! If I was you, I'd make sure that I bought a very good engine at least warranty as these 1.4 twincharger engines do sometime cause a lot of trouble - which is probably why VW "dumped" these engines quickly and started to use a 1.8T engine instead. It is probably not a CAVE model type, but still the same, tread carefully!

[wrecksigge]

Oh! If I was you, I'd make sure that I bought a very good engine at least warranty as these 1.4 twincharger engines do sometime cause a lot of trouble - which is probably why VW "dumped" these engines quickly and started to use a 1.8T engine instead. It is probably not a CAVE model type, but still the same, tread carefully!

Aweee, dont be that guy! So i should start worrying now ? How do i know if i have a "good" engine? All the services are made as they should so far. And what do you mean by CAVE?

[RUM4MO]

CAVE was the early 1.4 Twincharger engine model type, if your car was built as a later 6R it should be the next, slightly improved version. The engine type will be on the "build sheet" which is in the front of the service book and either on the floor of the boot or in the spare wheel storage well.

These Twincharger engines, while winning many awards internationally, were full of design flaws that left owners with huge repair bills to pay - and if they did not fight it out with VW, SEAT or Skoda, these loyal owners were left to pay a lot of money to either get new engines (still with some of these problems in them waiting to appear again) or pay to get their engines "improved"!

I would always hope that anyone buying one of these cars, which quite often got repaired and sent into car auctions so that VW/SEAT/Skoda dealers never needed to sell them on, always knows what they are buying and protects themselves with a good power train warranty.

Don't get me wrong, all this has been gathered from being a user of VW/SEAT/Skoda small cars forums, ie Fabia, Polo and Ibiza - and not from any real experience of owning one of these cars! They do seem to be very desirable to own - but also very very flawed and prone to destroying their owner's wallet.

http://www.seatcupra.net/forums/showthread.php?t=407682

Maybe have a read of all of that thread and I'd expect that the later 1.4 Twincharger engine version code will be mentioned in it somewhere.

Good Luck!!

[wrecksigge]

Well i appriciate you input man. Thanks for the wright up! Ive had many issues with my previous cars in life, so lets hope it ends here and that i have actually got my hands on a car that will serve me well! There is still a chance that it will !

I do have the best waranty you can get by my insurancecompany and my dad works at the local VW/Skoda dealer and so far they have been very generous to customers when this kind of problems appear. Most of the time they claim "good will" and atleast gives you a huge discount in the repair bill. But since my car only have 3200km on the meter i guess it is a little to early to tell if i should expect any problems.

[wrecksigge]

Okey, just checked the enginetype. It's a CAVE366399. But you know what. I'm not gonna worry about this. I'm gonna enyoj my new car, ride it and have fun with it. I mean, if you look at the whole picture, how many 1,4l TSI engines is out there? I guess ALOT. And yeah it might be true that VW did a misstake developing this engine, but how many of the total amount manufactured is experiencing problems? 5% ? 10% ? I'ts still alot I know, but at the same time thats the group you see out there on the internet complaining about it. The other 90% goes unnoticed. So there is a big chance for me that i wont be having any truoble. And it certainly doesent help me to walk around and worry about it. If something happens, I will deal with it when that time comes. YOLO

Back to my original question. Whats the most common hardware tuning upgrades for this car? What's worth spending money on?

[RUM4MO]

I think that the percentage of CAVE engines that had trouble is more like 80%, I'm afraid! Does that thread I pointed out to you not go into detail about upgrades, I thought that was where it started, but ended up pointing out what then went wrong, why it was due to VAG stupid design and how to work round it and sort it out a bit enough to upgrade with reliability?

http://www.briskoda.net/forums/topic/35 ... on-issues/

http://www.briskoda.net/forums/topic/29 ... ark-plugs/

Maybe read up these two threads on that forum as well, so that you are prepared and do as much as possible to protect that engine.

What I find weird about your car is, why, if it has a CAVE engine, has it such low mileage - and when was it built and first reg'd?

If you read up all these threads, you will be in a good position to find out from your dealer how much of the repair work has been done to that engine already, which might explain why the mileage is so low, ie it has been off the road waiting to get the approval for repair by VW.

Maybe also become a member on these two forums as in general, the SEAT and Skoda owners do seem to either do more work on their cars than the VW owners - and they ask a lot more questions of the manufacturer and so get problems solved! These 1.4 Twincharger problems are almost unheard off or not getting reported on certainly the VW Polo forums, which is weird as quite a few Polos were sold with that engine in them.

[wrecksigge]

80% ? wow..... The reason the mileage is so low on my car is that is has been a demo car at different VAG dealerships. So it has 10 owners already, but only 2 of them are private owners, the rest of them is dealerships wich had it for display. Hopefully that means it has been taken well care of. It was buil in late 2011 and counts as a 2012 modell. First time registred in traffic is 2012-09-03

Im gonna be honest, havent read any of the threads you linked me, but i am defenetly gonna do so now. So i can get as prepared as i can like you said. Again, thanks for your time!

EDIT: I have read them now. Some really good stuff in there. Now i know what to look for when i suspect something fishy with the engine, and i will defenetly notice when something is about to happen. Alot of good info of how to prevent certain things aswell! Cheers mate! ( I will probably not getting any sleep tonight tho )