0 to 60 in 3-5 minutes
My Jetta TDI (Turbocharged Direct Injection) is having issues, in that the turbo, created by a turbocharger (pictured at right), is no longer working. The turbocharger takes compressed air and a lot of gas and, like the name says, injects a turbo boost into the engine, giving my TDI a nice little boost from about 2,500 RPM to 4,000. However, without this nice little boost, while I can still drive fast, I cannot accelerate much at all. It literally takes up to 5 minutes, depending on the slope of the road, to get to 60 MPH.
This may sound all bad, but it’s not. I’ve been getting awesome gas mileage, about 45 MPG, which is much higher than the typical 35-40 MPG. Also, as someone who usually drives pretty fast, I’ve learned a lot about humility and patience.
However, this past week I put on about 1,000 miles between a trip to Chicago and 3 days in Indy. If you were one of those people who was extremely annoyed by the slowly accelerating white Jetta on the highways between Chicago, Indy and Goshen, I apologize, especially to the trucker who flipped me off and tried to run me off the road. I really was accelerating as fast as I could and was not trying to ruin your day.
My mechanic, Eckhert, a somewhat crusty old German man, will be tending to the TDI this week. If my working theory that it’s just a cracked air tube is correct, it’ll just be a $25 or so fix.
