Hello! New owner

[wbbigdave]

Hello everyone! I am a new mk5 owner, I have a bunch of questions that I am sure the smarter people of the forum would be able to help me with, but for now I am going to be searching others topics to see if I can find some answers first. I do have a couple of quick questions I don't think will fit into other peoples already asked but here goes.

Currently the central locking switch inside is really squishy and doesn't work very well, but will a replacement switch help fix this? Anyone have any tips for refreshing the inside of the car, a lot of the rubberised areas are returning to oil and are getting sticky, specifically around the DSG shifter.

How long does it take to get used to driving the DSG? I had a 4AT Impreza before this, and I found crawling in traffic much easier, but the golf feels more lumpy. I have seen tips on treating it more like a regular clutched gearbox, and that has helped, but occasionally I get really lumpy move offs. Idle is fine, haven't got VCDS to look into things more closely, but would appreciate any input here.

As I don't have access to VCDS, I ran an ODB2 scan on codes to see why I had a "light" warning on the dash, but all it returned was a bunch of bus communication problems. Is this likely that there is an issue in one place which is causing a cascading failure, or is my whole system shot, or is ODB2 not able to actually read this accurately?

Anyways, hello all, glad to be here. Hope I can become a helpful and good member of this community.

[ZoliWorks]

Heyo, welcome to the Mk5 club!

By central locking do you mean the buttons on the door panel, or the locking mechanism itself in the doors? The door locks are driven by an electric motor and these fail overtime due to water/dust. Your best bet is to get some brand new locking mechanisms and replace your old ones. When i replaced mine I bought Febi brand locks for about 40 euros each. The outer door panel comes right off on these cars so it's very easy to do.

Next up, check the wiring between the door and the body since that's also a very common failpoint on these cars. You can find wiring harnesses on ebay/aliexpress, pre pinned with 20cm of wire. you just have to solder them on

Now for the plastic trims and door handles, yeah, they do that with age. If a deep cleaning doesnt fix it, your best bet is to get some non-rubber finished trims or dissolve the rubber from your trims. I've swapped out my rubberized trims with gloss finish plastic trims from a scrapyard.

Now for the DSG: these are very delicate gearboxes. They will stop working properly if even the smallest thing is wrong with them. They are quite sensitive to what kinds of clutches you put in them when changing those or the type of oil you use. Do a proper oil change, get it cleaned nicely and see if the response time changes. I've only driven 2 dsg cars and I dont think they were slow to react or anything. You can also remap your clutch to make it behave differently, switch gears at different conditions, be more sharp etc.

VCDS is your best tool for these cars tbh. If you're going to be working on your car a lot, you can buy an official VCDS for yourself for $150 or 200, I forgot how much exactly