Hi
New here. Pic of car on new members section.
I've just had a nightmare taking my car to the garage. Wondering if I need to take it to a tuner. Erm, this might turn out to be a long read but thought better put up the full story.
For tl;dr see summary at the bottomIt's an 05 plate DSG GTI which had 110000ish on the clock which I bought privately for £5600 at the end of June. I thought that was pretty good, especially since I bought it in Scotland where prices seem to be higher. It had an amber warning light on the dash for engine/exhaust and the previous owner said it was a cheap fix exhaust valve. Seemed to be running fine. Pretty clean and standard.
Noticed on longer runs it could hang on to the gear a bit to long and power could seem pretty dead. Spoke to a guy who seemed to know about these things in a dealer down South (I'm in Aberdeen) and said it sounded like needed a DSG oil change.
Anyway, MOT was due at the end of August so decided to get it in. I didn't necessarily want to go to a main dealer but couldn't find anywhere else recommended so went to John Clark Specialist Cars. By then I knew it needed MOT, service, timing belt, water pump, DSG oil change probably new front pads so was expecting a big bill. It passed MOT fine and the did the other stuff but on diagnostics they found a fuel pump problem caused by a worn camshaft....lots of money. They fixed that within a couple of days but I soon heard back from them that they needed to go back into the engine. They'd mucked up installing the new camshaft, buggered the timing and caused a fair bit of damage which of course they would repair without extra charge. By the time they'd sorted this (or so they tell me) the car had been in the garage for 19 days! On the last day they told me it was running fine but there was an error coming up with the fuel injection. They said it would normally be fixed by re-doing the ECU software but didn't want to risk it because the car was modified....this was a shock to me! I'm taking this as a bonus though. Apparently got K04 turbo, bigger intercooler (they think from an S3 but they couldn't tell me the part number), bigger fuel injectors and stainless steel exhaust.
So I went and picked it up after paying my massive bill. Drove about half a mile, there was a pop and a whoosh and I took it straight back. They hadn't clipped a turbo hose back on properly! They fixed it, I drove home (noticed they'd got the tyre pressures all wrong) but it was idling badly and hadn't been doing that pre-garage. Sometimes alternating fairly quickly between about 750- 1300 rpm, sometimes staying around 750 or less and feeling almost like a stall, sometimes sticking up at 1300ish and sounds like it's way too high. I took it back next day and they checked it but said fuel injection problem in ECU so not really their thing. I took the car back home and next morning it stalled twice when I started it but after that drove OK but same idling thing mostly in park and neutral. Occasionally still very flat on power but maybe better than before.
So summary is: not happy with garage mucking about and keeping it so long and them ballsing things up when I took it back, car idling crap (wasn't before garaged) and sometimes bugger all power. Do I need a re-map (or just map if the previous owner didn't bother)?
I typed a lot. I'm sorry.
Advice appreciated.
Mike