Bill's 1999 New Beetle - history

My car's history:

• 3/30/99 AM: take test drive of new beetle, decide it's pretty cool.
• 3/30/99 PM: go to dealer and buy new beetle for $200 under MSRP. Not too bad considering another dealer in the area doesn't flinch about asking $2995 over MSRP.
• 3/31/99: went to lunch with the gang and showed off my new car. Leo noticed a stripe of wax which could have been caught in a scratch. I was able to rub it out so it may have just been leftover wax.
• 3/31/99: bought CD changer from dealer and installed it with Paul.
• 4/3/99: installed floor mats.
• 4/3/99: drove to the Pinnacles for a hike; the car's first long trip and was very pleasant with 4 people in it. Lorenzo and Peggy were both snoring in the back seat on the way back, so it must have been at least a little bit comfortable. I varied my speed on the highway and didn't use the cruise control since it's still in the break in period. I did notice a scratch in the windshield, which appeared to be inside the safety glass sandwich.
• 4/4/99: drove to Santa Cruz. Went 55-65 on Hwy 17; handled well with noticeable but dealable body roll. Merging onto 1 south into the left lane is so much nicer with a car that has some pick up! Noticed that the dealer left the optional brake-light flasher (blinks the center brake light 4 times when the brakes are pressed) installed, even though I asked for it to be removed. They didn't charge me for it, but I still don't really like it and might dig in to remove it myself.
• 4/5/99: dealer is replacing windshield. Forgot to ask them to look at the place where the wax was.
• 4/6/99: picked up the car with the new windshield. (They wanted it to sit overnight to make sure that the windshield sealed well, since it was raining yesterday). They washed it, one bonus point. But they didn't do anything extraordinary to make me feel better for the fact that I was given a flawed new vehicle.
• 4/10/99: Noticed that the driver's seat is already pretty dirty. My last car had a black interior so I never had this problem. Guess I gotta look in the manual and see how VW suggests cleaning the leatherette...
• 4/14/99: My Saratoga DashStash arrived today; I'll install it tomorrow!
• 4/14/99: Hit 1000 miles! Break-in period over!
• 4/15/99: Installed DashStash - installation was easy, except that I accidentally peeled back a little of the double-sided tape and now I'm not positive that it's sticking right (one corner is kind of sticking out). I forgot to bring the camera, so no pictures of the installation process. My cell phone fits nicely into one pocket, and I can definitely use the pen and change holders - the question is, do I have other stuff that goes well in the other pockets? (A tin of Altoids! Yeah!)
• 4/15/99: Decided to put the dealer/sunroof issue behind me - sure, the salesman misinformed me, but I had other sources of information available to me (like the web, or calling VW myself). I am yet another first time new car buyer getting burned by a sleazy car salesman. If you visit Sunnyvale Volkswagen (or any car dealer, for that matter), don't believe what the salesman tells you. Some salesmen will tell you anything in order to sell you a car off the lot. Do your research on the web, call other dealers, call the manufacturer, ask on the mailing list, etc.
• 4/15/99: TVA order arrived - dash cover, mud flaps, valve stem caps, CD changer cover. Installed valve stem caps and CD changer cover.
• 4/17/99: Installed mud flaps. Installation was fairly straightforward; I made sure to wash the area beforehand so that there wouldn't be dirt that I could never get out underneath the mud flaps. Noticed a big scrape in the plastic protective coating behind the right front wheel well; looks like someone bottomed out coming off the truck or during the 47 miles worth of test drives. Gotta have a nice chat with the dealer about fixing this...
• 4/24/99: Installed "meep meep" horn and window remote control system. I used the bracket from the old horns, since my vintage horn came with a bracket with a nut already on it.
• 4/26/99: Removed RedAlert® brake light flasher; I had asked the dealer to remove it before giving me the car but they didn't bother. This device is a way to sell rear-ending insurance; with it installed you can buy insurance that will pay you $5k if you get rear-ended. However, it's apparently cheap enough to give away to people who don't want it.
• 4/27/99: Dealer refused to fix plastic that I assert was scraped during test drive - he said it was probably a rock thrown up by the wheel (seems very unlikely to me given the shape and depth of the damage). The service manager said it was just cosmetic, since the area is plastic and so there's no problem with rust. I'm not particularly happy with that answer, but I'm tired of fighting with the dealer. Also got my passenger-side door lock/unlock rocker switch replaced (you had to press it REALLY hard to get it to do anything). Went to Ben & Jerry's in Santa Clara afterwards and got free icecream to make me feel better. =)
• 4/30/99-5/2/99: Road trip to LA. Good trip; never had a full tank of highway gas so didn't get a chance to figure out mileage. Tried to get StonGuards from ND before leaving but they had sold their last one just after I called. D'oh! Definitely noticed the limitations of the cupholders.
• 5/15/99: Haven't done much in a while, just driving and enjoying the car =) Went to car wash, then applied the cool newbug.org list sticker. Installed one of the old horns in my wife's Jeep, whose horn has been dead for months.
• 6/2/99: Drove to Santa Cruz again on Highway 17. The body roll is definitely bothersome on this road; if we end up moving over there like we're planning to I'm going to need to get a sport suspension.
• 6/3/99: Met Mitch Perry and his daughter Katie driving their bug on a cross country road trip. Mitch gave me a Herbie, which is proudly hanging out in my back window.
• 6/30-7/2/99: Road trip to Lake Tahoe. The thermometer hit 99 through Sacramento -- I really wanted to see 100 but no such luck. Boy, was I glad to have A/C -- this trip would have been much harder to handle in the Karmann Ghia!
• 7/8/99: Had 5k service (at 5304 miles). Also had them look at:
  • Remote which was eating batteries.
    • Had to come back since they needed both remotes.
  • Trim around passenger door sagging.
    • Had to order a part.
  • Heat sometimes comes out warm even when it's turned all the way to cold.
    • No problems found at this time. Determined to be normal op
      • I guess this is just a design flaw with the air intake exposed to too much engine heat?
  • Left headlight is pointed higher than right
    • No problems found at this time. Determined to be normal op
      • You can see that the left headlight is pointed higher by just pointing at a wall. I guess they used some other method to determine that this is "normal op"!...
  • Idle is sometimes a little rough.
    • Ran diagnostics; No problem found.
  • Melted plastic attached to muffler (from driving over a plastic bag, boy is that smelly)
    • Removed
  I think I'm going to start hating the phrase "No problem found".
• 7/9-8/1/99: Business & personal trip -- longest vacation from my NB ever. After driving a Chevy Blazer, Honda CRV and Ford Taurus, BOY was I glad to get back to my NB!!
• 8/4/99: Turn signals started not blinking, just staying on. I would turn the signal on and it would go click, blink, blink, blink, stay-on. Turning it off and back on again would sometimes make it blink another couple of times before staying on. This was a pain because I was picking Peggy up in San Francisco and I was kind of double-parked and wanted to use my hazards, but they weren't blinking. I whacked the underside of the dash by the hazards switch (where the blinker is) and everything got better.
• 8/6-12/99: Road trip to LA. Some advice: if you suddenly realize that you're on I-5 but want to go through Ventura, pick a different crossover than SR-41. It's an awesome drive in a peppy little New Beetle, but after an hour of twisty turny intense roller-coaster like road (especially in the dark -- it's like Space Mountain!) you end up being 40 miles farther away from your destination... but it was worth it for the curves. We also got as close as legal to the Hollywood sign -- I kept having visions of police helicopters zooming in and snatching us up, but Peggy wanted to go hiking up anyway =)
• 8/13/99: Turn signals stopped working. Left, right, and hazards: turning any of them on, you hear a click and the dash indicator flashes infinitesimally but no blinking.
• 8/16/99: After all weekend of no turn signals, bring the car into the dealer to look at the turn signals. Even though the signals did not work turning into the dealer's lot, they said "no problem found" and indeed, the signals worked when I got the car back. Maybe it just needed to talk to its relatives and remember how it's supposed to work? I just wish they had called me instead of assuming I was the kind of moron who brings his car to the dealer and says random things don't work for no apparent reason.
  Service stuff:
  • Remote going through batteries
    • One bad remote - replaced remote and reprogrammed locking system
  • Install replacement trim piece
    • Remove and install trim panel, replace inner door plastic seal
  • Turn signals inoperative
    • No problems found at this time. Determined to be normal op
  I also talked to a tech about the occasional rough idle; he said there were no engine check codes stored so there wasn't any problem they could do anything about. He ran a diagnostic and gave me the printout, saying that I have software version VO5 (the latest? very recent?) and the idle was running exactly at 800. He also suggested that the fact that the idle was as low as 800 in the Beetle caused some people to think that it was rough; I don't think this is necessarily the case for me since I used to set the idle on my Karmann Ghia to 750...
• 8/22/99: Road trip to Monterey. Saw the thermometer over 99 for the first time (it hit 110) -- so the 3rd digit works =) It was an odd trip, the temp ranged from 110 to 60. Someone in a pickup "merged" into our lane on 101 while we were still using it -- luckily the shoulder wasn't too messed up and I was able to zip around him instead of getting squooshed...
• 8/23/99: Measured the headlights this evening. Looks like the right headlight has about 1.4° declination and the left headlight has about 0.4° inclination from straight! Yes, that's right, the left headlight is pointing up. This is what the dealer calls

  No problems found at this time. Determined to be normal op

  and says is a non-warranty item anyway! Time to call the service manager and have a chat...
• 10/19/99: 10K maintenance and a chat with the service manager. I feel much better about things now; the real problems were communication problems through a service advisor who no longer works for the dealership. The service manager went over the records with me and it turns out that with the turn signal thing (8/16/99) that really pissed me off was a miscommunication - the tech had applied electrical grease to the connections as part of the diagnostics, and I'm perfectly willing to believe that it was a loose connector causing the problem. The service advisor had told me that the tech hadn't done anything since he wasn't able to replicate the problem, which is a lot different.
• 4/10/2005: Obviously my "car-blog" fell victim to the common web page syndrome, never quite having the motivation to update it. The Beetle has about 85,000 miles on it and is still going great; just about to get new Yokohama Avids on it.