help me spend some money ;-)

[jammyb2009]

Hi Guys, just had my cambelt changed on my oct vrs, had a full service day before i got it so all is running good at the mo ;-)

I have about £300 left of my budget for the car to spend on her and cant decide what to spend it on ;-)

Just after a few opinions to help me decide ;-):

1 - get small dent and tiny paintwork chip sorted on bottom of door

2 - get all the wheels refurbed to look like new ( good anyway but couple of curb marks)

3 - pay out for a 3rd party warranty, never had one on a car before and this is the newest car I have ever owned

4 - save a few more £'s and go for a remap

5 - pay a detailer to go over the car and do all paint correction to take out any swirl and cobwebs in clear coat from car wash's ( some will think pointless but im a bit ocd when it comes to cleaning, polishing and reflections ;-) )

6 - put it away in case anything goes wrong in near future

7 - invest in a load of sound deadening material to make her nice a quiet road noise wise

hehe decisions decisions - wonder what the most popular reply would be ?

cheers ;-)

[Raglits]

My "sensible head" says number 6

My heart says number 4

[Nick P]

Has to be either 4 or 5.

[KenONeill]

(1) or (4). £300 to 350 should be enough for a generic remap.

[Dan Almond]

Pm, with reference (5)

[jammyb2009]

;-) yer my heart says number 4 as well, although i guess it would be a bit silly do 5 without first doing 1 ;-)

Was also thinking regarding warranty my money my be better spent on vag-com or similar so if something did go wrong i dont have to pay loads of labour for diagnosing faults and could then just by which ever sensor fail's and possibly replace myself

both my previous tdi cars had been treated to a remap and they did give the biggest smile for the money... although the clutch started to slip on the tdi passat remap a few months later - that was a 2003 car with 120,000 miles on though ;-)

[cheezemonkhai]

4 would increase the insurance though, so I'd do 6 until the next MOT.

If it passes the MOT without needing all of the money in 6, you could have a go with 4 or 5 or buy yourself a beer.

[jammyb2009]

4 would increase the insurance though, so I'd do 6 until the next MOT.

If it passes the MOT without needing all of the money in 6, you could have a go with 4 or 5 or buy yourself a beer.

Yer that true, not checked how much insurance would increase yet... cars just had a new mot though so shes good for a year ;-)

[slider955i]

remap , did not increase my insurance with chris knott

[Mute]

Do 1 & 2 yourself -- it's cheap (£7 soft edged trim removal tool, £11 paint, £4 filler, £6 scotch pad, £4 various grades wet & dry, £12 paint prep cleaner... etc), it's surprisingly easy. Keep the saved dosh to the side for a professional to be able to come in and clean up after you -- not because you'll make a mess, it really is easier to get an extremely good finish than a lot of folks make out (free instructions on youtube and the web) -- but because knowing that you can pay someone to come in and sort it if you give in, will give you the balls to go ahead and start sanding on your pride and joy. For easiest results (takes most balls initially though!) you'll be doing the whole panel / door the damage is on.

Once you've done 1 & 2 -- the satisfaction's amazing btw! -- I'd put the safety money towards a remap. It's a reward exclusively for you that you're after!

[Cauliflower]

What about option 8?

Invest your £300 in an NSI 3 year RPI index-linked certificate, then in 3 years time play the table with that and whatever else hasn't gone into the Stella Artois expenditure column and place it in the hand of a reputable dealer selling a 12 month old 'next generation' Octavia VRS (timescales to be confirmed). The pics of the bog standard version Octavias so far are encouraging.

Edited 6 May, 2010 by Cauliflower

[lol-lol]

Hi Guys, just had my cambelt changed on my oct vrs, had a full service day before i got it so all is running good at the mo ;-)

I have about £300 left of my budget for the car to spend on her and cant decide what to spend it on ;-)

Just after a few opinions to help me decide ;-):

1 - get small dent and tiny paintwork chip sorted on bottom of door

2 - get all the wheels refurbed to look like new ( good anyway but couple of curb marks)

3 - pay out for a 3rd party warranty, never had one on a car before and this is the newest car I have ever owned

4 - save a few more £'s and go for a remap

5 - pay a detailer to go over the car and do all paint correction to take out any swirl and cobwebs in clear coat from car wash's ( some will think pointless but im a bit ocd when it comes to cleaning, polishing and reflections ;-) )

6 - put it away in case anything goes wrong in near future

7 - invest in a load of sound deadening material to make her nice a quiet road noise wise

hehe decisions decisions - wonder what the most popular reply would be ?

cheers ;-)

Save it to pay for fuel when Excise and VAT goes up in the next few months as all the above are nice to haves but you need fuel to enjoy an use the car, See my posts on fuel saving. What MPG do you get from your VRS, we get a few mpg more out of the 2 litre than we did the 1.8T which is good news.

[vRS Dovit]

How about giving me a sub lol

i'd go for the remap option, i got mine done recently, best money i've spent lol

[lol-lol]

How about giving me a sub lol

i'd go for the remap option, i got mine done recently, best money i've spent lol

Does not a remap on a diesel make it even peaker and it seem like the gear changing even more intrusive. Some engines you should not remap as the gearbox is only suppose to take 250 Nm of torque. My minority belief is you should not mess with what thousands of qualified engineers design but then as a graduate engineer myself I suppose I could be accused of being establishment. I reckon one should not mess with cylinder pressures, rev limits etc if you want your car/investment to last, I certainly would not buy a chipped car and it would seriously reduce the prive/value if I thought a car was chipped with.

Edited 6 May, 2010 by lol

[vRS Dovit]

Right..............

For starters the car has been mapped within the limitations of the components. I have had 4 different cars remapped from the same company, NO issues at all. It also depends on how hard etc you drive the car. I'm 32 with a wife and 7month old, i dont hammer cars and i service and maintain mine regularly (i was a mechanic)

No it does not make the gear changes more intrusive. The car feels smoother due to it running different boost and fuel pressures, timing etc.

This is why ALOT of people on here when going for more performance, upgrade all the parts that MAY fail due to the increases.

A REMAP not a CHIP can be removed at any time. The map is designed to run the car "safely" although performance etc has been increased. Not all maps are power orientated, economy or a combination of both is also an option.

A CHIP/TUNING BOX only alters fuel pressures and can cause more damage then they do good.

Edited 6 May, 2010 by vRS Dovit

[m0bov]

1 and 2. Then just get a DA and some Menz polish and do the detailing yourself!

[Octavia1Z]

Number 4 is the only thing I would definitely not spend any money on....remapping in my view can only cause problems in the long run.

As for the rest, difficult to decide. I'd choose the thing hat has the most visuable effect on the car....favourably 2 or 5. Or, if you want to rest more assured, get the warranty extension....

[Cauliflower]

Right..............

For starters the car has been mapped within the limitations of the components. I have had 4 different cars remapped from the same company, NO issues at all. It also depends on how hard etc you drive the car. I'm 32 with a wife and 7month old, i dont hammer cars and i service and maintain mine regularly (i was a mechanic)

No it does not make the gear changes more intrusive. The car feels smoother due to it running different boost and fuel pressures, timing etc.

This is why ALOT of people on here when going for more performance, upgrade all the parts that MAY fail due to the increases.

A REMAP not a CHIP can be removed at any time. The map is designed to run the car "safely" although performance etc has been increased. Not all maps are power orientated, economy or a combination of both is also an option.

A CHIP/TUNING BOX only alters fuel pressures and can cause more damage then they do good.

Can I ask what might be a REALLY stupid question (and no, there is no agenda, I really want to know) ?

If car manufacturers, with their engineering design experience and expertise, spend such extraordinary amounts of time and exhorbitant amounts of money on developing a vehicle (as they do), why do they not incorporate what can be achieved by a relatively cheap remap into the vehicle range? Were they thick?

[Mute]

Were they thick?

Of course not, they were just constrained.

[Cauliflower]

Of course not, they were just constrained.

Like politicians?

Oh, I geddit.

[Mute]

Oh, I geddit.

If you were producing an engine for global sale, would you populate the ECU with maps to run it like stink for only the following conditions:

98 ron+ fuel

Altitude up to 1,000ft above sea level

Intake temperature up to 65 degrees C

Bearing in mind that outside these conditions the engine may run poorly, may not run at all or may be destroyed. Or would you trade off some of the "goes like stink" for enhanced adaptability:

Able to use 91 ron or better fuel

Altitude up to 5,000 ft

Intake temperature up to 85 degrees C

It's a no brainer, the second option every time for Global sales. Although this means there's still some power to extract in various conditions, it means the engine will run fairly well in all conditions.

If however you lived in the UK, you can source 98 ron fuel so you may choose to adjust the maps to assume 98 ron. You're unlikely to go much above sea level so you may remap to assume lower altitudes / more fuelling etc.

lol made some points about the need to regulate emissions. We have MOT tests for this, well for petrol engines anyway, and that's a requirement to be able to legally drive your car on the road. A bad map that chucks out "pollution" could just as easily be a faulty coil / spark plug etc. there are other ways emissions can go wrong and they are much more common than bad remaps. I think it's foolish to focus on a problem we dont have at the expense of an issue we do have.

The more dangerous point was the banning remaps idea, when the only analysis or expertise sought for the decision was a black box analysis (more commonly known as no analysis performed). Here's lol's statement reworded for clarity:

"we don't understand remapping completely but VAG group does and they chose not to do a remap from the factory. We've not asked them why they didn't do it but we assume there's a very good reason. Therefore we conclude remapping should be unilaterally banned".

Dangerous precedent.

The pollution argument's also severely flawed however i'd say this is in need of much more attention than remaps.

Take diesels for example. They are smoke tested at MOT time, effectively a visible smoke test (although done with a machine i think these days). They score favourably for CO2 emissions compared to petrol and so attract lower taxes.

Diesel soot is known to antagonise, and is linked with the onset of Asthma. It's also linked with everything from artery blockages to heart disease. However we enforce MOT tests so that bit's relatively ok -- it's in hand.

The bit that's not ok is the bit that goes by unchecked: butadiene; benzine; formaldehyde; acetaldehyde and so on. These kill people, not just pollute the atmosphere. Who knows about this bit? It's not in the public eye, noone knows about it, so they don't care about it. That's wrong because it means people formulate opinions about what's important to tackle next with incomplete information.

EDIT: Whoops i mixed up my threads, lol was talking on this one: http://briskoda.net/forums/topic/160932-vrs-owners/

Edited 7 May, 2010 by Mute

[vRS Dovit]

Like what he said lol

Its basically to keep the car "super safe" lol and emmissions etc..............