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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.
- 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)
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.
Bill Fenner
fenner@electricrain.com