mahalo

I did the ceramic coating using Kamikaze Miyabi coating. It is a well regarded ceramic coating and I followed all the correct steps in preparation and application. I don't think a professional would have done a better job but that is just my opinion. I would agree that 14 weeks is a long time to leave a car without washing and is leaving the car paintwork susceptible to what occurred. I have ceramic coated two cars before - my previous Mk 8 Golf R using AutoFinesse ceramic coating and a Mini previously with Gtechniq Crystal and Evo. The issue with all ceramic coatings is that ultimately they will fail/wear off and in my experience to date this failure and the way it happens causes more problems than the comparable wearing out of waxes or sealants. With a wax/sealant in essence it just washes away leaving the car paintwork. Areas that still have wax/sealant on them can easily be de-waxed without a DA and removing clear coat. With ceramic the coating has chemically bonded to the car which is what gives it the longevity but the bonding means that as if fails you end up with areas still with ceramic on it and areas where the ceramic has degraded or gone. You cannot reapply ceramic over this and need to remove all the old ceramic coating in order to re-apply a new one.Removing ceramic coating is not easy and the only way to do it is to polish it off using a DA and light compound which inevitably removes ceramic coating and clearcoat.

Detailed the Golf and BMW over the long weekend and today. The BMW was ceramic coated and the Golf was detailed with Angelwax Ceramic wax. Both cars had been left outside for 14 weeks and not washed. Both cars paintwork had been affected by pollen, tree sap, the odd bird bomb and general fallout. Interestingly, the BMW was the worst affected and I don't think I will be ceramic coating it again. What seemed to happen was that the ceramic coat was damaged by the fallout and you could see lots of spots etc which no matter what I did - did not come out. I finally had to use Kamikaze microfine ceramic remover on the whole car with a DA which eventually got rid of the marks. I have now used Angelwax ceramic wax on the BMW. The Golf had some pollen and tree sap damage but did not have the overall spots etc that the BMW did. There was some tree sap etches on the roof and bonnet which came out easily with the DA and SchollConcepts 40. I have recoated the Golf with Anglewax Ceramic wax.

Washed both the Golf R and the BMW which had not been washed for 14 weeks as I was away firstly for 6/12 weeks followed by another trip of 71/2 weeks. Despite both cars being protected with ceramic coating in the case of the BMW and Angelwax ceramic wax in the case of the Golf R, both have suffered with the dropout from tree sap, pollen, dust etc. In essence, I can see on both cars where the clear coat has been etched by tree sap, pollen etc. I have tried various things to remove and one thing which did seem to help was washing the cars with Fairy washing up liquid as it is very effective. Ultimately though, the only way to get rids of the remaining etch marks is to polish which explains my purchase of the paint depth gauge. Modern clear coats are so much more susceptible to this sort of damage.

Bought one of these to check paint thickness https://nexdiag.com/products/nexptg-professional/ Paint thickness seems to be fairly uniforrm on the Golf at 120-130mu it did reveal that the paint depth on the BMW roof is only 76mu which was a surprise. Also bought some Carpro IronX with Limsecale remover as hard water is a real pain. DIY detail Tree sap remover = excellent. and Koch Chemice Adhesive and Glue remover (again for tree sap)

Sounds identical to mine - dealer only had the car for a day. Changed buttons did some sort of software update and my software version is 2632. No issues to report since then.

Yep - i have had the check front and right indicators repaters once and checked them and there was nothing wrong. The error went away after the car had been truned off and restarted. I have changed my mirror repeaters to the VW OEM black tinted sweeping LEDs and I seem to recall that burble has chenged his to the sweeping indicators so I wonder if itis related to this?

Without going back into the dealers, the only information I have is that which the service advisor gave me when I asked what they had done when I picked up the car. This was that they had fitted the replacement steering wheel buttons and updated the software. My car was only in the workshop for an hour or so - they could not possibly have done a base software update in this time so I wonder if they just recalibrated the software and the service advisor took this to mean an update to the software. I guess the only way to know would be to go back in and ask to speak to the master technician.

It would be interesting to know why my replacement buttons were installed and everything works fine - I have Performance Pack and have all my driving modes, the heating steering wheel and all other buttons work fine. What is different about my car or what my dealer did that avoided the issues others are having?

I am with Rebecca on this - there is no way in which she should have to pay for the software to be updated on the off-chance that it might fix the heated steering wheel button issue. The way VW have handled this paddle issue has been very underhand and cynical. Am I the only one who has had the steering wheel buttons changed and everything is working fine?

I would be surprised if mine had the baseline software update done as it was only in the workshop for at most a couple of hours. I have not experienced the bong fest or the total distance error.

When I picked it up the service advisor said they had replaced the steering wheel buttons and updated the software. Here is what my system information screen shows. I'm not sure whether this screen would show updates for the steering wheel buttons though. If you click the show all updates tab then it does not display anything which is as per usual.

Just checked mine as I had not thought to check that all the buttons worked. Relieved to report that the heated steering wheel button works perfectly, cycled through all the levels and it works as it should. The fact that two of you seem to have the same issue is a bit concerning - part number of the buttons fitted to mine is V1EA 959 442MkVQ. I think the Q stands for version number as there seems to be previous versions if you do a search on this part number.

Oops - my post was not meant to tell you the pros and cons of various protections. Apologies if it seemed that way. I was more musing to myself as I weigh up whether the additional effort to go full ceramic on the Golf R is worth it. My previous Mk8 R was full ceramic coated (Auto Finesse) and it lasted much longer than the Angelwax Ceramic Wax - still being evident when I sold the car at 3 years 9 months old. Preference wise - I think I will invest the time to go full ceramic as the finish from something like Kamaikaze Miyabi is excellent, the car is much easier to clean and dry which saves time on every wash/detail cycle so i guess you more than recoup the time invested up front over the long term.

All coatings be they wax, hybrids or ceramics have their pros and cons. Ceramic definitely lasts longer but does wear away and does it unevenly so you can see where it has worn away. It is then a bigger job to re-detail the car and re-apply. I am busy/travelling now until at least mid May so it will have to wait.

Cleaned the wheels today as I did not get time to do this when I did the Golf R over the weekend. For those of you with Black Warmenaus, these are what the Warmenau wheels actually look like😜. They came up really well and the Gyeon Rim ceramic coating is still very evident which made them easy to clean. I used Bilt Hamber Automac to avoid the rusty disc look. On the main car bodywork, the Angelwax Ceramic wax has definitely degraded so I guess I will need to redo this at some stage. It lasted quite well certainly much better than a carnauba based wax but not as long lasting as a pure ceramic coating.

I posted earlier guessing that the cost to VW to fix this fault was probably around 300Euro - I have the copy invoice addressed to VW warranty and the cost is 283 Euros so I was not too far out. VW know which Golf R's are affected by this. How do they know this - well when I booked my car in for service I made no mention of the issue and the booking agent said she had checked the car against their dealer system and no recalls or product improvements were showing. When I took the car in to the dealership, I specifically mentioned the problem to the service advisor saying I thought this was a known issue and there should be a TPI for it. Again I got blank expression and the service advisor said they did not see anything outstanding. When I was phoned later in the day saying the car was ready to pickup, the service advisor said that they had attached my car to the VW diagnostic system in Germany and as a direct result of that my car was confirmed to be affected and they had been instructed to order the replacement parts and update the software. Given that we know there are no faults logged by this issue how does the VW diagnostic system know that my car is affected? I would suggest that logic dictates that when the car was attached to the VW diagnostic system in Germany, it interrogated the control units/and or production date/chassis number etc and as a direct result of this information then knew that my car was affected. Logic would then also suggest that all VW Golf 8.5R's produced from start of production to when they started fitting revised parts/updated software are affacted which again leads back to my supposition that VW want to keep this quiet as fixing every VW Golf 8.5R from start of production through to when they started fitting revised parts might run into many thousands of cars.

Car went into dealer today and the whole multi function button set for the steering wheel has been replaced and the software updated. Don't have a TPI number as the service adviser did not seem to know one. As I said in my previous post VW clearly know which Mk 8.5R Golfs have this problem and it would appear that it is all Golf Mk8.5 R's from start of production until the time when they started fitting revised parts and updated software. Interesting piece of information is that the customer price for doing this work outside warranty is nearly £500

My strong suspicion is that VW know which cars have the issue. I say this because when booking the car in for service I mentioned the problem to the telephone booking agent who said she had run a check on the car and there were no recalls or product /software updates. When arriving at the dealership I mentioned the issue with the paddles and said I thought there was a TPI for it. Again they did not seem to know anything but I persisted and asked them to check. I received a phone call later in the afternoon indicating that the car was ready to pickup, during that call they said they had attached the car to the VW mothership and it had confirmed that my car was one of the cars affected and the parts would be ordered. Given that they don't seem to be able to reproduce the fault and also that there are no faults logged by this issue, the logical explanation is that when attached to the mothership, the suspect modules version numbers are checked and hence they know whether the car is affected.

Car now booked in for 15th Jan to have the replacement modules fitted and presumably software updated. We will see what happens. I will try to find out more details when I pick the car up on the 15th.

Snap - had text message from dealership saying parts have arrived.. Not bad considering the parts were ordered when the car was in for service last Friday.

I don’t think any of the OEM tyres for the Golf R are directional. Jus checked and none of the OEM 19" tyres fitted by VW at the factory are directional. All are asymmetric which seems to be favoured these days over directional. There are not many directional tyres for performance cars - the only ones I could find for the Golf R 19" size were cross climates.

Let's just look at the facts here 1. VAG know there is a problem with Mk 8.5 Golf R's produced from start of production through to a known time when they switched to the revised buttons/updated software. 2. There is a TPI for these cars (which presumably runs into quite large numbers) which details updating the software and replacing steering wheel buttons with the revised ones. 3. The Golf R is sold as a Motorsport/Racing type of product and as such the ability to control the DSG gearbox manually and not have it upshift etc is I would argue a key aspect of the Golf R driving experience. 4. Given these three facts then VAG could have issued a standing instruction to all dealers that Golf R's produced between chassis number x and chassis number Y should be retrofitted with the revised buttons and updated software on their first service or earlier if the customer complains about the issue. 5. What they are doing is deliberately not publishing the problem or acknowledging the problem exists unless the customer persists, they are not retrofitting revised buttons and updated software unless the customer complains. They seem to be trying to hiding the existence of the TPI. It is a very underhand way of doing business and treating your customers. Undoubtedly, they are doing this to save costs, if it costs say 300 Euros to fix the problem per car and there are say 10,000 Golf R's affected then that is a total cost of 3M Euros. VAG are calculating and facilitating that very few customers will complain and persist within the warranty period after which they will say the customers must pay.

It does appear that VAG are doing their usual on this and trying to avoid fixing cars with this issue. It would appear that they know this affects all Golf R's produced from a certain time with the defective parts but they don't actually tell you about this unless you specifically mention it. I was initially told there was no outstanding recalls or TPIs on my car but then when I pressed them and mentioned the issue they found the TPI and surprise surprise the revised parts are on back order from Germany so it could be a couple of weeks before I have to take the car in again. It is a very underhand way of dealing with what is a known issue as they have a TPI for it and no I don't have the TPI number as they do not appear to want to make it public knowledge presumably to reduce warranty costs. Very shabby behaviour.

Has anyone found out what the TPI number is for this - my car goes in for 1st service shortly and according to VW there are no TPis listed against my vehicle which I found surprising as I expected this to be there.

Yes VW is not great when it comes to customisation - they used to be better and you used to be able to order some limited customisation from the factory. I managed it a couple of times in the distant past but nowadays nope. They are missing a trick here as one of the ways to compete in the new automotive world is to offer more customisation.