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Mid-life overhaul for my VW Vento TSI DSG: Remap, HU upgrade & more

22nd August 2022, 08:03 by Ananth Iyer

Thinking practically, there was no real reason to upgrade. The car was running well and looked and felt as it did on day 1 of the purchase.

BHPian Rajeevraj recently shared this with other enthusiasts.

It has been almost 9 years since the Vento TSI DSG came home. The Odo stands at a fairly modest 71,000km. The journey with the car has already been documented in detail in this Ownership thread.

This was among the first batches of Vento TSI's delivered and buying a car with a DQ200 DSG was definitely considered a major risk at that time. Unfortunately I guess even today it is a risk and is called out all the time when there is a discussion around purchasing one of the cars with the DQ200. Fortunately so far, it has been a trouble free experience and I have got to fully enjoy the TSI DSG combo over the last 9 years.

As it is natural, as the car exhausted its warranty, then the extended warranty and then the add on warranty, the thoughts of upgrading kept popping up. Never really translated into any real action as the prices kept going up and even the same segment (ok yes, with a few additional bells and whistles) now costs almost double of what I got the Vento for. The next segment is now well north of 30Lakhs and an upgrade did not realistically seem possible immediately.

Thinking practically, there was no real reason to upgrade to. The car was running well and thanks to VW's build and quality (which again is now questionable with the new platform and cars), the car looked and felt as it did on day 1 of purchase.

Having said that, over the last few months, I was not getting that great feel from the car. There was no obvious issue, it was running great- but there seemed to be a lot of smaller issues contributing towards my discomfort.

So decided that it needed to be looked at by an expert and did not want to send it to VW Service or any general multi brand center. In addition, wanted to start doing some stuff to refresh the car which I knew would satiate the upgrade itch for the near future. I also did not want to go to 3-4 different places to get different things done.

Made a list of things that I wanted to do. It was a mix of functional enhancements and then some good to have enhancements. Of course, all of these have been done by fellow Polo/Vento Owners many times over-So there may not be anything very new here, but there is always an excitement when finally doing it for ourselves

Proper service and inspection to eliminate the minor niggles

Headlamp and Foglamp Upgrades
Suspension Overhaul
New Tires
New Mats
Upgrade to a Android HU
A full detailing session
(last but not the least) A Stage 1 Remap

Detailing was planned to be done after everything else and since I knew the right places for that, kept it as lower priority. For the rest of the items, wanted to do it in one place.

After some research on the right place to do this, based on references in this forum and good reviews on the web- decided to approach Engineering Exponents-Whitefield(Location) with this list of stuff. Engineering Exponents are the authorized partners for WolfMoto in Bangalore and had read about a lot of cars running the Wolfmoto remaps here in the forum and also outside.

Reached out to Engineering Exponents through Instagram and the response was prompt. Had a discussion with the owner-Jayant who confirmed that all my requirements can be taken care off. Went down to the workshop and met his team and I felt the car would be in the right hands. Finalized the appointment and dropped the car off on the appointed date.

The final list of things that were done listed below. Sharing the link to the individual posts for easy and quick reference

A few words about Engineering Exponents. Run by Jayant who has a past history with motorsport racing, EE was initially started with focus on motorsport builds and performance upgrades and are the official partner for Wolf Moto in Bangalore. Seeing the gap in the market for reliable, high quality servicing with personalized attention and high quality parts, they now provide complete end to end services starting from regular servicing, audio jobs, painting work and of course the remaps and custom builds which continues to be a core focus. I personally have tried different service options over the last several years with mixed results. With EE I was happy that it was a one stop shop and I could closely interact with the people actually working on my car and who clearly had the expertise needed to work on these cars. I expect to be going to Engineering Exponents for all the work on my car going forward. On the down side, it is not a very large set up (although in the process of expanding and adding more capacity) and so be prepared to wait for an appointment and give enough time for the team to work on the car.

The Service Update

The first focus was on the regular service. As I had mentioned, although the car was running fine, a lot of the things did not feel right. There seemed to be something off with the suspension, the gearbox seemed more lethargic than normal in D, occasional shuddering were some of the common issues. Prajwal from the Engineering Exponents team did a detailed test drive and post the inspection the following items were listed to be done

Engine Oil: Meguin 0w40 5000
Brake skimming
Brake pads
Fuel filter
Air filter
Cabin filter
Oil filter
DSG fluid change and adaptation*
Mechatronics fluid*
Wiper blades
New Tires

During the course of the service, couple of items related to the suspension were identified and replaced

Top mount with bearing
Link rods

*Okay, I guess the first question that comes up is: 'It is a DQ200 Dry Clutch Gear Box and is sealed for life'- What Oil change? This was exactly my reaction also. Turns out that the DQ200 does have both the gearbox oil as well as mechatronics oil. This is also detailed in this DSG Demystified post (DSG, demystified! All you need to know about VW's Direct-Shift Gearbox). It is also 'sealed for life', but it can be changed and when EE recommended to change it, I also decided to go ahead with it. It is not an easy thing to do and definitely requires good expertise and knowledge.

There is the process of DSG Adaptation that is done(again something I did not know) typically for new or replaced gear boxes. When the DSG Oil is replaced, this process is carried out. In simple terms, this is the process of running through pre-programmed steps and values for various parameters to match the gearbox to the real world conditions. There was an issue faced here where the gearbox was jerking in manual mode. This was finally traced to a code that was getting reset to a default value every time the tool was connected and had to be manually updated. (Full marks here to EE for not only keeping me updated about this issue and also explaining in fair detail what caused it and how they resolved it)

The rest of the service for the regular maintenance activities was also completed and the catch on the top mounts and link rods along with the new tires helped fix the suspension related discomfort I was facing.

The Basic Upgrades

The Tire Upgrade

Have been running Michelin tires for the last 4+ years now. Last changed around the 35000km mark. Although the distance wise it was not much, the tires had become hard as confirmed during the inspection, and I decided to change it.

The recommended option was Continental UC6-same size and profile as the Michelin(15,195,60). Saw a lot of Polo/Vento owners opting for it and seemed well suited to my kind of driving.

Couple of pictures with the new tires.

New Mats

Although I have been thinking about upgrading the mats for a long time, never found something that I liked and I kept continuing with the OEM mats. It was by chance that I saw these mats below at EE and at first sight itself loved it and immediately got it. Had Velcro fasteners also on it.