[T3] On the Road Again!

[Keith Park]

Sorry to hear about all your woe's, but it is the risk of driving the modern cars, if anything goes wrong you might as well just walk, there Is little
To nothing you can do to get yourself going again.

I do feel good about heading off to the long invasions in the Squareback with a bunch of spare parts knowing that yea, just about anything that
Goes wrong I can deal with, or WE can deal with...  under a tree in the parking lot of a retirement home  😊


Keith


Topnotch Restorations
topnotch at nycap.rr.com
http://www.topnotchresto.com
71 Squareback  “Hothe”
65 Notchback  “El Baja Rojo”
93 RX7  “Redstur”
13 Subaru Outback "Blendin"

-----Original Message-----
From: type3-vwtype3.org <type3-vwtype3.org-bounces at lists.vwtype3.org> On Behalf Of jadney at vwtype3.org
Sent: Wednesday, October 11, 2023 11:19 PM
To: type3 at vwtype3.org
Subject: Re: [T3] On the Road Again!

Okay, we are back on the road again, but this time without our Diesel Golf. While the Amarillo VW dealer folks were absolutely polite and helpful in every other way, they were playing very coy about getting our car fixed. In spite of the fact that I called ahead and TOLD them that my radiator was broken, they only checked out availability and didn't bother to order one until later the next day, when someone there had time to take a look at it themselves. At that point, a radiator was 2 days out and it was so late that they couldn't promise to be finished by the end of the week.

My requests for a loaner car for local use, just so we wouldn't be stuck in our motel room, were turned down, very politely, with various stories of how few (numbers varied) they had and how many people were requesting them. Nevertheless, they were always able to respond to our requests for a shuttle trip promptly, which we appreciated.  

So, after considering our options, I started calling auto rental places, and got one at Budget. 
With the help of the dealership shuttle, we offloaded all our stuff from our disabled Golf and drove it to Budget. We now have a Honda Pilot, a truly unremarkable vehicle that seems fine in many respects, other than being much bigger than any rational person would choose to drive, but also continues to disappoint in many small, and unexpected, ways.

The cruise control seems to be poorly programmed; it is clunky and slow to respond. The owners manual is not as helpful as it should be. It has a beautiful, color center console display, but that display is angled to face someone who happens to be ~6' 5" tall, which seems especially odd coming from the Japanese. I've been trying to educate myself on some of this car's advanced driver assist features, but so far my impression is that VERY, few 
people will ever bother to figure out how to enable and safely use most of them.    

I'm afraid to keep track of gas mileage. It's got to be so poor, especially compared to our Diesel, that I may be better off staying ignorant.

So far, I'm really missing our complex, but well thought out, Golf Sportwagon, and this is only my first short day of driving the Pilot. But at least we are back on our way, and will plan to return to Amarillo in about 12 days to pick up our repaired Golf TDI (Diesel.) None of this would have happened if we had been driving one of my Type 3s.

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Jim Adney, jadney at vwtype3.org
Madison, Wisconsin, USA
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