So tell me, was $250 a good investment, even if I never used it for anything else?īesides, I could pretty much sell it at any time for at least 75% of what I've got into it. Replacement cost for that alone was $1,000 add in the labor costs, never mind airfare and so on for those factory techs. Took it to the dealer complete with the error printout and a week and a half later, after techs were flown in from Germany and jumper wires had been run all around the car ($$$ in labor) the fault was finally identified as the radio head unit.

This with the car at 32K and warranty set to expire in about 4 weeks at the rate I was running up mileage. The data link was working in single wire mode, IOW, it had already lost it's redundancy. Which according to the mileage was present when the car went in for it's 30K service and apparently the dealer either didn't check it or couldn't find it.

When I got the cable I scanned the car, and found a serious (class 2) fault. I will simply note that I tend to do a lot of my own maintenance, so with that in mind I bought a VAG cable several months after I got my car.