Vento AT acceleration problem Posting this on behalf of a non-member friend who is facing a problem with his Vento AT Highline late-2010 model.
The car was purchased in Feb this year. There were no obvious problems in the first 4 months: it went effortlessly to speeds of up to 140-150 or so without any issues.
Then one day the car had to be braked, HARD, from a speed of about 120 kmph. ABS kicked in, the car slowed to an almost-crawl, but there was no impact.
After this close shave the car has not been what it was earlier. It refused to exceed speeds of 100-110 kmph or so even after providing full throttle input. My friend promptly took it into VW Downtown and they accepted that there was a problem, most probably with the ECU.
They tinkered with it, got some codes from the company according to my friend, declared it fixed and gave the car back to him. I don't have details on what exactly was worked on- apparently they didn't give him a job card copy.
Now the car behaves in a rather strange manner- with a soft foot on the accelerator, the car in D mode goes steadily up to around 80-90 kmph with no problem. It has issues going beyond 100 kmph. My friend says that if the car is going on 80-90 kmph and he wants to increase the speed of the car, he has to push down much harder on the accelerator for it to go to 100 and beyond, often using kick down or tiptronic downshifts to 5 or even 4 to get the speed he wants (up to 140 kmph).
If he drives in manual (tiptronic) mode, car behaves fine till 5th gear but once 6th is engaged, the speed doesn’t increase as expected despite pushing the accelerator hard. He has to necessarily downshift to 5th to gather the required pickup.
The FE also has suffered as a result of this behavior of the AT.
Couple of additional factors:
- My friend is not a petrol head but has driven ATs before and says that this is not normal kick down behavior.
- Downtown VW service engineer/technician has tested the car twice and accepted that there is an issue…saying this is not normal.
- I myself have exactly this exact same spec car and have driven mine for 6 months/8000 km now and have never observed any such behavior- even with a light foot, on a clear stretch of road you can easily go up to 140 or so without having to downshift repeatedly.
- My friend swears the problem didn't exist before his sudden stop and visit to the shop.
- The car is a regular 6-speed Torque convertor-type AT and *not* a DSG.
- Downtown VW claim they have never seen this problem before in this car and say they have written to the company for a solution.
- Since the car is in Bangalore, I have not driven it myself.
I have asked my friend to get a second opinion at Bangalore Motors, since evilshantanu's experience suggests they are better at their job than Downtown. But have asked him to wait till I start this thread and get some expert opinions flowing in.
Any ideas what could have happened? And what's the solution?
Last edited by noopster : 12th August 2011 at 07:43.
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