240sx or vw gti
240sx or vw gti
whats up guys, i currently own a 89 240sx se, any way i was wondering i have the opertunity to maybe get a vw gti at a good price and i was wondering your guys's take on the gti, i just wana know if they are good cars and what peopel think of them. the problen im facing is i might have to sell my 240 to get this car, now dont get me wrong i live my car to death, its my baby, but ive always wanted a gti, i just love em for some reson, o and i was plaing on get the 1.8 turbo instead of the v6, anyway any info and feed back would be great, plz no one get pissed at me for maybe having to sell my 240. take it easy all.~Jon
o ya sry bout that the year im looking at is a 2002, its silver with the optional 17's and all leather and sunroof its a really clean car i drove it and it seemed a littel quicker then my 240 but then agian its turbo'd, any way thanks for the info, just wondering y you not like vw's, im traning to get my ase certification and ive worked on some of them and i love em, i also work on some nissans, the best of both worlds in my eyes 
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whiterps13
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MikeMurphy
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Well...the GTI is a helluva car for the money. I used to have a '96 240...had her for 5 years. Definitely a fun car to drive, but now she's gone and I'm in an '03 GTI 1.8T, and I definitely can't complain. The 1.8T is an awesome motor, and with just a few mods here and there is pretty quick. As far as the R32 is concerned, simply put, it's overpriced. For 2k more you can have an STi. And a slightly modded 1.8T launched well will take an R32. Although they definitely have the handling advantage. But then again...toss in a set of H&R coilovers and you've got that whipped. :pface
Anyways...it all depends on what you want, and what you want to do with the car...Mine's my daily and my toy, and it hasn't let me down in either department...
vvv See vvv
Anyways...it all depends on what you want, and what you want to do with the car...Mine's my daily and my toy, and it hasn't let me down in either department...
vvv See vvv
i whole-heartedly admit I've never driven one, but the mechanic I go to on occasion hates them. some kid had his in for shocks/springs/brake upgrade and the mechanic told me the same kid floated a few valves a month or two back and had another one in the shop that day for the same thing - even showed me the valves and they were fugged. he says it's real common. anyone else ever heard of this?
I've never heard of anyone floating valves throughout all the posts and over 100k users on VWVortex. Maybe he's talking about the older VWs... 
Syntax360 wrote:i whole-heartedly admit I've never driven one, but the mechanic I go to on occasion hates them. some kid had his in for shocks/springs/brake upgrade and the mechanic told me the same kid floated a few valves a month or two back and had another one in the shop that day for the same thing - even showed me the valves and they were fugged. he says it's real common. anyone else ever heard of this?
That is unless you pick up a s/c kit or HPH's twin turbo kit for the R32...WOO WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!! I think the s/c kit i saw was only pushing 5psi and he was at around 300hp. 
trojanjg wrote:yeah you should get the r32 awdits good and deffinetly get the 1.8 turboo. becasue u can up grade more on the turbo than the vr6
thanks for you info guys, the reson i dont just turbo my 240 is cause i cant make payments on a engian and installment where as i can afford car payments not just a large lump of money as i woulnd need to turbo my car, and my car is getting to exspenciver for me to maintain. anyway thanks agian for the info, keep it coming its nice to hear wjhat peopel think.
I will just tell you my experiance with my former 2001 GTI. It was a 1.8 Turbo. I always wanted one and when VW showed a 1.8T in a GTI, I sold my Nissan Frontier and got my GTI. It was brand new, and had all the bells and whistles short of leather. About a year into owning it, I got a GIAC chip for it and the thing screamed. 200hp, and 240 ft-lbs of torque. Very fun. Drove it this way for about a year and had fun. Nice car and chicks dig it, but it was not all fun and games.
From the get go, my transmission would not want to shift into 1st sometimes. You would have to roll the car in second, but no big deal, the car has a lot of torque. Took it to the dealer, and of course they could not duplicate the problem. After that my injectors started leaking, and I had that replaced by the dealership. They started leaking again after my warranty ran out, so I had to do it myself. Typical car stuff, no big deal.After this my engine started misfiring at high boost. Some fouled plugs were the culprint so no big deal. After this my rear brakes wore themselves down to nothing, due to VW putting on softer rear pads to correct their engineering mistake, of rear brake bias. The parts ran me $150.00 for stock crap. This started pissing me off. A few weeks later at about 50,000 miles I was changing my oil and noticed that oil was leaking from the head. Very nice. At the same time my front hubs started going bad. This is when I traded in my GTI for a '96 240sx.
I have done my homework on that car so let me give you a few pointers on what you should watch out for:
Coils - Very expensive, and there was a recall. In 2001 they were made by Hitachi, in 2002 they were switche over to another manufacturer and they started failing left and right. Huge recal was ordered and the coil manufacturer was backed up for 6+ months. Hitachis bolted to the valve cover where the other ones did not. I was lucky and had Hitachis.
MAF - Tend to be very problematic. Tend to fail with cold air intakes, or just on regular basis. No recall. Expensive. Germans being engineering maniacs also installed a version of a MAP sensor, so that you can run without the MAF for a little while without huge diverse effects.
Turbo - If you decide to go with 2001 GTI they have K03's. Small and 70's technology, but cheap. It runs out of steam at 5500. Red line is at 6500. 2002 and up came with K03 Sport. Slightly better. Tend to fail due to them being over stressed with tuner chips.
Window regulators - There were recalls, due to windows falling into doors. Pain in the *** in the rainy NW.
#3 cylinder tends to be the one that will blow out, I mean blow a hole in the block, but this is rare due to the 1.8T being a very stout engine.
Transmissions - Weak, and tend to break.
Clutch - Weak and tends to go out fast, even under stock power.
Boost - You have to get chips because the car has a electronic throttle, and no boost controler will work correctly with the Bosch computer. Hard to fool the ECU period, unless you have a custom burned chip.
What I am trying to say with all this is that my experiance with my GTI was very fun till it started to break down. Very expensive, and harder to find parts. I did all of my own work on it, and let me tell you that bastard is very complicated to work on. I did not drive my car hard, at all, but I did drive it a lot. My GTI's failures were the same as most others, but I had less of them. Check out VWvortex.com. They have all the info that you will neeed. Some people are asses, and do not know jack, but there are a few that really know their stuff. Just remember, 1.8T engine is going away in the new GTI to be replace by a 2.0L turbo. Good luck.
From the get go, my transmission would not want to shift into 1st sometimes. You would have to roll the car in second, but no big deal, the car has a lot of torque. Took it to the dealer, and of course they could not duplicate the problem. After that my injectors started leaking, and I had that replaced by the dealership. They started leaking again after my warranty ran out, so I had to do it myself. Typical car stuff, no big deal.After this my engine started misfiring at high boost. Some fouled plugs were the culprint so no big deal. After this my rear brakes wore themselves down to nothing, due to VW putting on softer rear pads to correct their engineering mistake, of rear brake bias. The parts ran me $150.00 for stock crap. This started pissing me off. A few weeks later at about 50,000 miles I was changing my oil and noticed that oil was leaking from the head. Very nice. At the same time my front hubs started going bad. This is when I traded in my GTI for a '96 240sx.
I have done my homework on that car so let me give you a few pointers on what you should watch out for:
Coils - Very expensive, and there was a recall. In 2001 they were made by Hitachi, in 2002 they were switche over to another manufacturer and they started failing left and right. Huge recal was ordered and the coil manufacturer was backed up for 6+ months. Hitachis bolted to the valve cover where the other ones did not. I was lucky and had Hitachis.
MAF - Tend to be very problematic. Tend to fail with cold air intakes, or just on regular basis. No recall. Expensive. Germans being engineering maniacs also installed a version of a MAP sensor, so that you can run without the MAF for a little while without huge diverse effects.
Turbo - If you decide to go with 2001 GTI they have K03's. Small and 70's technology, but cheap. It runs out of steam at 5500. Red line is at 6500. 2002 and up came with K03 Sport. Slightly better. Tend to fail due to them being over stressed with tuner chips.
Window regulators - There were recalls, due to windows falling into doors. Pain in the *** in the rainy NW.
#3 cylinder tends to be the one that will blow out, I mean blow a hole in the block, but this is rare due to the 1.8T being a very stout engine.
Transmissions - Weak, and tend to break.
Clutch - Weak and tends to go out fast, even under stock power.
Boost - You have to get chips because the car has a electronic throttle, and no boost controler will work correctly with the Bosch computer. Hard to fool the ECU period, unless you have a custom burned chip.
What I am trying to say with all this is that my experiance with my GTI was very fun till it started to break down. Very expensive, and harder to find parts. I did all of my own work on it, and let me tell you that bastard is very complicated to work on. I did not drive my car hard, at all, but I did drive it a lot. My GTI's failures were the same as most others, but I had less of them. Check out VWvortex.com. They have all the info that you will neeed. Some people are asses, and do not know jack, but there are a few that really know their stuff. Just remember, 1.8T engine is going away in the new GTI to be replace by a 2.0L turbo. Good luck.
yea, i forgot to add, they have terrible transmissions. one of the vw, technitions told me all kinds of **** that goes wrong w/ them. it seems there are a lot of modded vw's at the shop all the time. this kid bought a 1.8t jetta last yr and has some minor bolt ons. i dont know what he does w/ it but its allready had had a new transmission put in, and that thing seems like its in the shop every week. i drove it and it ran like crap.
didnt read through all the posts...the 1.8t is definitly faster than a 240, my friend has one and we race every once in while for fun. i wouldnt say its faster all the way through the power band, but in the high end, where the 240 lacks, you get smoked by the 1.8t.
i cant say i trust vw's reliability, my friend had to get cam shafts replaced before 40K, and the power windows, hehe, ever see a vw with tape on the side windows? yeah. and my friends interior is falling apart. just my opinion tho, they are nice looking especially with all the goodies they tag on. my friends has the side door bumper strip taken off when he got a new paint job, looks nice. i keep telling him to lower it.
and then there is the whole fwd vs rwd. i think the 240 is slightly lighter than a gti. i know the auto is around 2900-3000. the 240 handles its power better imo, more fun to drive.
i cant say i trust vw's reliability, my friend had to get cam shafts replaced before 40K, and the power windows, hehe, ever see a vw with tape on the side windows? yeah. and my friends interior is falling apart. just my opinion tho, they are nice looking especially with all the goodies they tag on. my friends has the side door bumper strip taken off when he got a new paint job, looks nice. i keep telling him to lower it.
and then there is the whole fwd vs rwd. i think the 240 is slightly lighter than a gti. i know the auto is around 2900-3000. the 240 handles its power better imo, more fun to drive.
This girl who I was kicking it with for a while had a GTI with the 1.8T. With just some basic bolt-on mods and a chip, it was making close to ~230hp. With an improved fuel system and a larger turbo, I'm sure you could get 260+ out of it.
The thing is, you're stuck with a FWD car. Personally, I'm a FWD hater and would never own one. That's just my personal preference. As far as FWD cars go, the GTi is fairly nice.
But if you're going to go FWD and turbo, you really should get an SRT-4. :ylsuper
The thing is, you're stuck with a FWD car. Personally, I'm a FWD hater and would never own one. That's just my personal preference. As far as FWD cars go, the GTi is fairly nice.
But if you're going to go FWD and turbo, you really should get an SRT-4. :ylsuper
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sleepy_nokkie
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If I were you I'll get the GTI .. that's 13 years newer car than you're driving .. I had a A4 (B5) awhile back with 1.8T same engine as the GTI .. I chipped it .. it was fun, lots of power to go around. The only complain I have about GTI is it's a FWD car, other than that I love it ..
R32 = $30,000 .. for that much money I'll get something else .. but that just me..
R32 = $30,000 .. for that much money I'll get something else .. but that just me..