Hi Everyone,
What does the car, an 03 Passat, V6 engine, 5spm, forget if you take out the battery?
I usually do not drive the car during the winter, and would like to take out the battery next year. I understand that the following need to be reprogrammed:
- the radio, I understand it picks up the code from the cluster computer a short period after reconnecting the battery, but I also have the code
- power window express up/down features, but the manual does say how to reprogram that
- I have no sunroof
- I have no automatic transmission
- what about theft protection features, will the car forget any of those settings?
- what about the engine control, specifically the throttle pedal adaptation, will the car forget that?
- any other thing?
When I asked the service manager about this when I picked up the car (new), he mentioned that all sort of things need to be reprogrammed by them in case I do that. I think that service manager is less than capable and/or honest. I am looking into getting the VAG-COM.
Now the ranting!
The electronic throttle control is horrible! The throttle sensitivity keeps changing, it is really hard to drive the car smoothly. Sometimes the car just does not respond to throttle input, when you are caught in the wrong gear. I read an SAE paper from Bosch, late '90s, on electronic throttle control algorithms, my guess is that is in the Motronic 7.1 that we have on the car. In summary, the algorithm is optimized for minimizing emission and for smooth automatic gearbox shifting. In a sense they consider the input from the driver as disturbance, and they try to minimize its effect on the system ;-) I certainly think they did not adequately test it for the manual transmission version. They managed to engineer out the fun from driving!
Thanks for listening, Peter