Excellent VW service assistance after my Vento breaks down on highway

The car was immediately taken to work, serviced and handed back to us within an hour's time.

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8.5 years and 85K km with our Vento

Appreciation post for Ramani Volkswagen, Hosur.

We decided to retain our Vento for a couple of more years and hence in the general annual service, got the clutch replaced at German Tech, Chennai. There was no problem with the clutch per se but, it was getting hard to drive it in heavy traffic. Clutch parts plus labour cost us Rs. 16,000 and general service was another 12,000.

All set and the car was good to go for another year. Earlier we used to get the car serviced at a 15,000 km service interval but now, the running has reduced considerably and the service intervals are changed to one year once.

During the August 15th long weekend, we had some personal work in Bangalore and My dad and I decided to travel in our Vento to enjoy the new clutch. 130 km from home, we stopped for breakfast at Alankar, Ratnagiri. So far, uneventful journey. Once we started after breakfast, the car started to limp and refused to go beyond 2K rpm. Immediately, I brought the car to a halt and tried the good old Indian Jugaad, Switch it off for a while and switch it on. The coil symbol and CEL were still blinking and the car continued to limp. I then stopped the car and called our magic mechanic, Jai Prakash for advice. He said there were two possibilities, either a rat bite to some wire or a possible injector failure. He asked us to drive the car to the point where there are no judders felt to avoid other impacts like engine bed damage etc. and reach the nearest VW service centre for help.

Called VW Vellore, the nearest on Google Maps. No response but still drove down to the location indicated on the map. Classic google map fiasco and the map lead us to the middle of nowhere. Frustrated, I then called Aswin (ICD customs) a friend of mine for help. He asked me to drive down to VW Hosur and shared the contact of Mr Parthiban.

The first ray of hope. Mr Parthiban spoke to us in a very reassuring tone and promised to get our issue fixed as soon as possible. He also said that he will ensure part availability of the injector if it was needed. He asked us to drive down to Hosur and advised us to maintain speeds until which the car is running smoothly. With all the confidence that we got from Jai Prakash, Aswin and Parthiban, we drove down to VW Hosur. Mr Srinivasan called us en route. He is a senior service advisor at VW Hosur and he was already aware of the problem. He too advised us to drive slowly and reach the service centre. Mr Parthiban had already briefed him as Parthiban was not available in Hosur. He was at a meeting in Salem.

We reached the service centre 170 km away in the next 3 hours at around 2 PM. Our car was immediately taken to work, an issue was identified as injector failure, the part was replaced and we were out of the service centre in the next hour.

Few pictures from the service centre.

With the new Virtus

Such a great overall experience it was with Ramani Volkswagen, Hosur. Wish we had a service centre like this in Chennai. Abra was almost similar with experience but they shut shops and forced us to go towards the FNG route for the service needs of our Vento. No regrets but, such an ASS experience would've made the brand VW even bigger in India.

All that said, we see significant fuel efficiency gains with the new clutch and injector and Vento still remains to be the most fuel-efficient car in our house. The car feels brand new even after 8 years, with no rattles, and no extra sound whatsoever.

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