:confused: After having just reached 1000 miles, i noticed yesterday morning that the engine warmed up quicker whilst on my way to work. Also, leaving work the temp gauge needle reached normal quite a bit sooner than it has done. I checked the water, and it is near the max mark???

Is this normal, it hasn't been particularly warmer outside, or is it because the engine has sorted itself out after having hit 1000 miles????

Mine seems fairly random. Sometimes its only fully warmed up by the time I get to the work car park :( other times it seems to be fully warmed up after just a couple of miles, and there doesnt seem to be any big pattern to it.

Cool, that'll do me. I only ask because my previous petrol Golf used to reach normal temp at the same time, every time.

I'd actually expect the opposite behaviour from a fully run-in engine.

If you think about it for a moment , the engine develops slightly less power when new as the moving surfaces of the components have not yet had time to bed in properly so there is more friction to overcome , and more friction means more heat.

Once the engine has a few thousand miles there is less friction so the energy from combustion of the fuel should go more into mechanical power (hence the better performance) and less into waste heat. As a result , a slightly older car should take a bit longer for the heater to warm up fully.

As for differences from day to day in how long it takes to warm up , that will be affected by the speeds that you are doing.

When you are crawling along in traffic the heater will warm faster than if you are on free flowing roads

I understand that it depends on traffic flow etc, BUT on both trips yesterday I hardly sat in any traffic at all, and the point in the journey that the engine is fully warmed up came a lot sooner that it has previously???

Its probably nothing i know, just found it strange.

Tend to find car will take ages to heat up if in slow moving traffic. Previous journey to work in slow moving traffic took 20 mins and car only just fully warmed up on arrival at work.

Heats up much more quickly if you go straight into a good run. Since moving + job change which means faster A roads and dual carriage ways with no crawling it takes 20 mins to get into work and car is nicely warmed up well before arriving.

Also once noticed that tying to let the car warm up on a freezing morning/ quite thick snow while not moving - temp needle just hadnt budged after 30mins.

Damn thermally efficient VAG TDIs!

That explains it, the trips yesterday were unusually clear.......mmmmm interesting