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Mk V R32 - First impressions


ZoltanPepper
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Well, I picked up my car from Portsmouth last Thursday and have driven 800 miles in it since. Here's a list of my observations so far:

1) The sunroof doesn't open as far as I expected - a couple of inches of glass remains visible when fully opened. Is this normal?

2) The Recaro seats appear to be identical regardless of how many doors the car has. Mine is a 5-door but the recaros still have the option to flip forward - strange!

3) The miles-left-in-the-tank thingy can be pretty inaccurate. Mine reported 45 miles left with 26 miles to the next services but 23 miles later it was at 0! That was a close shave, would have been rather embarassing! I was cruising at just above 80 at the time so I guess it's calibrated to 55 or something...

4) Automatic Headlights + Automatic Wipers + Cruise Control + Auto-Dimming rear-view mirror = lots of time to think of niggles when on a 500 mile journey home wink.gif

5) Remotely locking the car doesn't close the windows or roof - you have to keep the button pressed down till they're all closed. Is there any way of changing this so that it shuts them immediately? My old car did this and I've already walked away from it twice with a window left open!

6) Remotely unlocking the car turns the headlights on if they're in auto-mode and it's sort of slightly dark-ish. Any way of stopping this without taking it out of auto-mode?

7) The speedo and the rev counter have swapped places! Talk about annoying smile.gif Almost used to it now tho...

8) When I open the driver's door there's a strange but brief whirring noise from somewhere underneath - what's that all about?

9) Roughly every third visit to a petrol station a complete stranger will feel compelled to remind you that you own a nice car. Handy!

10) Spending 28k on a new motor doesn't entitle you to expect a full tank of petrol...

11) The stock exhaust can sound quite rattly - not sure if this is normal but I don't mind it too much.

12) When changing gear at low speed and with the window open I can sometimes hear a clunk as I engage the clutch and apply the power. It's hard to work out where it's coming from but it doesn't sound too bad, probably just something I have to get used to.

There were loads more things I thought of on the way up but I've forgotten the rest!

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Actually yes, I do sound like a grumpy old man! I seem to have remembered all the slightly bad points and not mentioned any of the many many wonderfully superb bits at all! Mind you, we all know how super the R32 is so there's no point in re-stating the obvious smile.gif

Rest assured, I'm over the moon with my new toy and I'm not at all grumpy, honest!

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[ QUOTE ]

12) When changing gear at low speed and with the window open I can sometimes hear a clunk as I engage the clutch and apply the power. It's hard to work out where it's coming from but it doesn't sound too bad, probably just something I have to get used to.

[/ QUOTE ]

Isn't this normal on performance cars, have it on mine (MK IV) and my mate has it on his Civic Type R (that being a performance car is dodgy I know).

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[ QUOTE ]

Yeah I suspect it is normal, I get the impression it's coming from behind me so maybe it's the Haldex engaging or something? I guess what I need is another MkV to comapre it to smile.gif

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I get the same too. I'm with you thinking that it's something to do with Haldex or a diff thing (i'm not the most technical) 169144-ok.gif

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Hi Zoltan,

Hope your still enjoying it....

re your questions

#3 I think it's something like that, I've had my R for very nearly 1 year, and it always drops quickly for 60 to 30 to 10 to 0 eek frown.gif

#6 If you've got the highline computer then go into setup (when stopped) and you can configure comfort settings for lights 'coming home'

#11 I think its probably the norm, I did get a new manifold fitted to mine after owning it for about a month due to a rattle from the exhaust.... Steal said it was cracked...

HTH,

Enjoy, the positives do outweigh the negatives 169144-ok.gif (Just don't do the math on the amount of money your spending on fuel)

Lee

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1) The sunroof doesn't open as far as I expected - a couple of inches of glass remains visible when fully opened. Is this normal? <font color="blue"> yes it's normal, hold the sunroof control fully to the left to make it open all the way </font>

3) The miles-left-in-the-tank thingy can be pretty inaccurate. Mine reported 45 miles left with 26 miles to the next services but 23 miles later it was at 0! That was a close shave, would have been rather embarassing! I was cruising at just above 80 at the time so I guess it's calibrated to 55 or something... <font color="blue"> mine is disturblingly accurate, not had a problem in 15k+ miles </font>

5) Remotely locking the car doesn't close the windows or roof - you have to keep the button pressed down till they're all closed. Is there any way of changing this so that it shuts them immediately? <font color="blue"> no - live with it ! </font>

6) Remotely unlocking the car turns the headlights on if they're in auto-mode and it's sort of slightly dark-ish. Any way of stopping this without taking it out of auto-mode? <font color="blue"> yes - it's the leaving/coming home function and can be set by the computer if you have highline - otherwise a dealer VAGCOM jobby. </font>

8) When I open the driver's door there's a strange but brief whirring noise from somewhere underneath - what's that all about? <font color="blue"> completely normal - fuel pump priming </font>

11) The stock exhaust can sound quite rattly - not sure if this is normal but I don't mind it too much. <font color="blue"> If by "rattly" you mean a rasping sound then this is normal - and it's amplified by a Milltek cat-back smile.gif </font>

12) When changing gear at low speed and with the window open I can sometimes hear a clunk as I engage the clutch and apply the power. It's hard to work out where it's coming from but it doesn't sound too bad, probably just something I have to get used to. <font color="blue"> all normal - it's drivetrain "shunt" and is caused (at least in part) by the dual-mass flywheel - very common to lots of VAG cars apparently </font>

169144-ok.gif

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Re the miles left ..... it is constantly recalculating and bases what's left on what you have just used.

So say you have just been on a spirited drive and you re fill up it might say you can go 230 - 240 miles on the full tank .... if you drive sedately from the garage you will see the mile4s left in the tank INCREASE as you drive

Conversly it goes the otherway when you open the taps smile.gif

Light throttle can be as much as low 30's .... a few laps of a track will goive you about 6 ! ..... choose your throttle setting and take your pick smile.gif169144-ok.gif

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Cheers for the feedback so far, people - just been out again for a quick blast. I initially just went down to check out the sunroof thing (thanks for the info btw!) but couldn't resist a quick scoot about town smile.gif I'm discovering new things all the time, on that trip I noticed it bings at you when it gets to lower than 4 degrees outside, presumably to warn about the risk of ice. I love touches like that! Oh another thing I noticed, the window switches have gone all modern on me - now you have to pull them up to put the windows down, that's another thing I keep on getting wrong! Did I mention the gear changes seem a bit notchy? I'm putting that down to it being so new (only 2000 miles on the clock) coupled with me being used to the wooly nature of the cable shifter on the Corrado. Finally, I noticed that even without the ESP on it's amazingly grippy, I turned it off and did as violent a standing start as I dared to (not very violent, to be honest) and while it was a little more scrabbly it wasn't much slower at all - this car is simply astounding!

Thanks again for the info, hopefully one day I'll be able to help you guys out too!

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well, not exactly, I live in Stirling! There's a story around why I picked it up in Portsmouth... I called VW one day and got a list of all the stealers in the country that had a 5-door manual MkV R32 demo on the books - there were 38. I then spent a weekend calling round to see if I could find one that fitted my spec list (leather, sunroof, 5 door, manual, DBP) and the 38th one was Portsmouth. The director's personal car fitted the bill so I bought it there and then smile.gif Sod the 6 month waiting list!

I have friends in Cornwall anyway so I took the train down and made a mini holiday of it during half term. Sorted!

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On a side note, I've been to the stealer in Haywards Heath twice this week, they've got three mk5 R's available, #1 new 5dr DBP, #2 new 5dr black, and #3 demo 5dr shadow blue...

Didn't get to speak to my normal sales guy, but does this mean the availability improving ?

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Congrates on the purchace ZoltanPepper. I collected mine at the weekend and am well impressed by the car. I too find a bit of shunt when changing gear although you can drive round it with a bit of finese. Looking forward to being able to use full revs as I'm trying to limit myself to 4k for a while, though that's difficult.

I'm so impressed by the low down torque of the engine, it pulls so cleanly from low revs. The noise is excellent too, very impressive for a standard exhaust. I can only guess what the milltek sounds like. I have Milltek on my other two 1.8T cars and the standard R32 sounds better by far!!

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The full Milltek system, Manifolds +CAT +CAT Back, sound awesome. Changes the response and pick up of the engine completely... And tunnels... oh my god...

The 'Boom' from the CAT back only set up goes with the rest fitted, noticeably different at the 3000 rpm point which is roughly about 80-85mph. Sounds much more like a race car when you open the taps tho... cool.gif

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