general problems of the 2013 Volkswagen Touareg

The weld broke at the rear pre cat connection.

So there’s a campaign to add a bracket to one of the catalytic converters. That’s great except I never knew about it and the thing they added the bracket to prevent happened to me. The exhaust pipe from the catalytic separated from the flange connecting to the manifold. It’s a 2000 dollar part from the dealer. Luckily I found a mechanic who is welding the flange and fixing what I got. Just another example of a car company knowing there’s an issue but not really attempting to fix it, only in a policy no one reads.

While traveling at night on a 4 lane highway at 70 mph in heavy traffic the vehicle went into limp mode without warning or any symptoms of a power problem. We had to move across four lanes of car and truck traffic while rapidly decelerating. Luck and skill prevailed to avoid a serious and potentially fatal accident. No warning indicators were displayed. Safely in the breakdown lane the vehicle continued an approximately 1300 rpm idle and would move at about 15- 20mph. I stopped the vehicle and the acclerator pedal continued to be unresponsive. I placed the vehicle in neutral with no change in the ability to increase rpm with the accelerator. I shifted back to drive and normal acceleration function returned. We drove another 35-40 minutes without further problems. The next morning the vehicle drove normally and I took it to the vw dealer. Their diagnostic review showed no issues and no malfunctions were detected.