2 problems with my VW Virtus I noticed on a road trip to Himachal

I took my car to the service centre after returning from the trip to get the issues resolved.

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Just finished a round-trip to Himachal and noticed the following on the way back:

1. The otherwise excellent brakes have taken on a late bite and resulted in very jerky retardation. Feathering the pedal to cause a gentle slowdown from speed, is drastically disabled. This resulted in a very jerky highway drive whenever traffic turned up ahead.
2. With an outside temp of 27°C on average, running the AC at 22° Auto, didn’t have the desired cooling inside and whichever window the sun came in through, made the occupant hot till the AC was turned down to Lo. This has previously not been the case and on an earlier trip in Rajasthan, AC at 23° Auto with 35° outside, everything was pleasant inside.

I took the car to VW Noida yesterday with the following results:

Hooked up to their AC gas recirculation machine, and it turned out that I was down on a significant amount of gas that the machine put back in. A brief drive afterwards made me feel only marginal improvement in cooling. I made the technician take multiple ‘vent readings’ and something curious happened.

In the earlier part of the day, with the workshop temps being lower, the grill temp stubbornly stuck to 8.7° and above. Did the same again after the gas refill (8.9° in fact). I know the German cars can’t match the Japanese or Koreans or even Indians for cooling where some are reported to reach 4.5° at the grill, but this was making me sweat prematurely.

Just as the day wore into midday, the tech suddenly yelled out to me - “Sir! Dekhiye!” The grill temp was dropping fast and it had already gone below 7°! He pulled an explanation out of his hat that I had long suspected - the sensor does react to hotter ambient temps and the hotter it gets outside, the better the cooling inside. It’s the way home ACs work too. Or maybe it is the way our bodies perceive the difference. One down, one to go.

Hooked up to the OBD, the tech showed me there were zero faults in the brake area - esp the brake pressure etc. He said he could get the discs cleaned but I was in a hurry to get back and also couldn’t fathom how cleaning a disc would result in better brake pedal modulation. Surprisingly, on the return through normal urban traffic, the brakes didn’t feel as grabby and seemed to be as familiar as before. I was wearing my usual driving sandals instead of the sports shoes I used on the highway. Could that have been a factor? Maybe.

VW Noida didn’t charge me a penny for the entire day’s work and I got back a car that was washed and shone from the rain-mucked state I turned it in. I can’t fault them on customer satisfaction at all so far.

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