Volkswagen Vento TSI: Upgrades at 50,000 kms

I’ve observed that both ride and handling have improved with these alloys, I was surprised to see a better absorbing ride as I was of the opinion that wider tyres mean a compromise in comfort. The negatives of wider contact area are obvious, higher rolling resistance = slower acceleration and higher road noise.

BHPian sarfraz1997 recently shared this with other enthusiasts.

Having a VW / Skoda / Audi car = endless options and possibilities for retrofits and upgrades.

Auto Detection with 8K OPS:

My friend and fellow BHPpian fluidicjoy and I had been contemplating on doing this for a while now.

As the name suggests, this retrofit enables auto-detection of objects or vehicles when the car is moving under 15kmph. It might be annoying to some, but the good news is that it can be disabled anytime from the Maxidot cluster. To do this, I had to replace the OPS module along with the wiring harness to connect the older connectors into this relatively newer module.

It was a fairly simple and straightforward DIY for replacing the module, however, as an obligatory event, most often things don’t go as smooth as one expects while doing a retrofit or a DIY. I was all excited, fired up the engine, pressed on the PDC switch only to see that there is some issue. I quickly connected the VCDS and took a scan to see multiple errors and also to find out that the module is not coded. I was then trying out multiple codings with the help of coding helper from VCDS, but the module was not accepting and kept throwing an error saying “Coding rejected, Request of range”. I was finally able to get it to work with some help from Google and my friends.

This is how the screen looks like when it is auto-triggered:

I haven’t used this extensively yet. There are certain parameters based on which it decides whether or not to turn on and whether or not to start making the sound. I believe this is to avoid annoyance to the driver and passengers. But it has overall been accurate so far, worked whenever I expected it to and ‘sort’ of needed the assistance. The car also shows a static path, to indicate if the car is moving forwards or backwards on the OPS screen.

“Salvador” alloy wheels from the Polo GTI:

I was drooling over these alloys for a long time. VW was quoting exorbitant prices and there were no decent condition wheels at a fair price in the market. I started contacting owners who were selling their Polo GTI. It was then that I came across one such set in Hyderabad itself which was listed on Team BHP. I was quick to go, check them out and pick them up as I didn’t want to miss them.

The 16” Portago’s from VW are 6.5J while these are 7J, meaning the tyres had to have been a minimum of 195mm section width, and the recommended section width is 205mm or 215mm. I didn’t want to get another set of tyres because nobody would pay fair value for used tyres depending on their life and age. Hence, I put my previous Continental UC6 195/55 R16 tyres on them.

I’ve observed that both ride and handling have improved with these alloys, I was surprised to see a better absorbing ride as I was of the opinion that wider tyres mean a compromise in comfort. The negatives of wider contact area are obvious, higher rolling resistance = slower acceleration and higher road noise. My next set of tyres would be 205/50 or 215/50 from Michelin. If anyone is thinking between Michelin or Continental, I would suggest Michelin any day.

General updates:

I hit the 50,000 kms mark earlier last week. Working on retrofits on this car had accidentally scratched the instrument cluster. The plastic is also very sensitive and gets easily scratched while cleaning the dust. Taking inspiration from Gannu, I ordered Displex from US. I tried the product on my stock cluster first to get an idea about the effectiveness. After seeing very good results, I went to Autopia, a detailing store recently opened by a Bhpian in Hyderabad. I got the Maxidot cluster polished with their tiniest machine. Since my OCD would clean the cluster very frequently, I got STEK ppf done for the cluster to avoid the hassle in the future. Autopia’s team has been very accommodating and supportive on doing this job. I earlier got Llumar Platinum PPF done on my headlights from them as well along with a wash + wax with Collinite 845. Everyone is very skilled at what they do, and they’re very professional on how they go about their jobs and they pay a lot of attention to detail. I would definitely recommend everyone in and around Hyderabad to try them out.

My brakes were making noise right from the first free inspection when I bought the car. VW always kept shrugging it off blaming the brake dust and kept saying they’re still a long way from giving up and just kept cleaning the brakes. The noise is very irritating after the brakes get hot, specially on the highways. After multiple ‘cleaning’ jobs, I finally decided to spend some time to check the drums personally and scheduled a visit to VW last Sunday. To no surprise, the left drum was pretty uneven and had lines. I decided to get both drums and shoes replaced. Total damage to the pocket : 9859₹. It took about 2 hours for the job.

Each drum (6RU 609 617 A) costed 2,880₹ and the brake shoes set (6RU 698 525 A) costed 1,874₹. I was charged a labour of 2,225₹

Here is a parting shot for this post:

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