Hello
I'm new to this site, but not to New Beetles. We bought our first one in spring 1999 when we were living in Switzerland. It was shiny and red and was destroyed by a Skoda whose driver was asleep. The Beetle protected us and we walked away with one small bruise each.
We replaced our red Beetle with a blue one (1999 2L petrol), which has been with us ever since. It has a roof rack, and is scarred outwardly by life on the French roads, and inwardly by time and children.
It is of an age, now, where problems keep cropping up. In the last four weeks I have been rescued four times and have had to replace the battery, then the alternator, and most recently what I believe is the ignition coil ("capteur") - we're English people in France: I bring home the garage's explanations and then we hunt through the Haynes manual to find out what it's really called. Sometimes I take the manual to the garage and get them to point at the right picture. LOL. Over the years, we've replaced the lambda probe, an electronic thingy that regulates the air mixture (yes, this really is the level of my technical understanding), the timing belt (?), and so it goes on. Oh, the battery exploded, once. That was exciting.
And yet we love it - it's fun to drive.
What brings me to this forum is the fact that at ten years and 107,000 km, the car really does seem to be losing its reliability, and given that I have young children in tow, this makes me uneasy. I don't particularly want to change the car, but I'm wondering how much longer I can continue to drive it with any peace of mind.
And it's no use asking my husband - he's a technical genius, but only when it comes to building microchips.
I'm new to this site, but not to New Beetles. We bought our first one in spring 1999 when we were living in Switzerland. It was shiny and red and was destroyed by a Skoda whose driver was asleep. The Beetle protected us and we walked away with one small bruise each.
We replaced our red Beetle with a blue one (1999 2L petrol), which has been with us ever since. It has a roof rack, and is scarred outwardly by life on the French roads, and inwardly by time and children.
It is of an age, now, where problems keep cropping up. In the last four weeks I have been rescued four times and have had to replace the battery, then the alternator, and most recently what I believe is the ignition coil ("capteur") - we're English people in France: I bring home the garage's explanations and then we hunt through the Haynes manual to find out what it's really called. Sometimes I take the manual to the garage and get them to point at the right picture. LOL. Over the years, we've replaced the lambda probe, an electronic thingy that regulates the air mixture (yes, this really is the level of my technical understanding), the timing belt (?), and so it goes on. Oh, the battery exploded, once. That was exciting.
And yet we love it - it's fun to drive.
What brings me to this forum is the fact that at ten years and 107,000 km, the car really does seem to be losing its reliability, and given that I have young children in tow, this makes me uneasy. I don't particularly want to change the car, but I'm wondering how much longer I can continue to drive it with any peace of mind.
And it's no use asking my husband - he's a technical genius, but only when it comes to building microchips.
