Soooo, I'm clearly a girl who doesn't know much about cars but what I do know is that my dealership has jipped me countless times so I just want to know what's wrong with my car before I send it back for them to do another half *** fix.

So basically my check engine light came on about a week ago. I continued to drive because I didn't see a change in performance considering the car has been running rough since the day I bought it. Shakes when idle. Also I was on the freeway yesterday and upon acceleration the car started to stutter like I had no gas I got the code read and it was p2181 something about a system cooling error idk. Anyways the cars still driveable if I keep it under 50 mph and I don't accelerate too fast. Can someone tell me if I'm risking more damage driving it and what I need to fix and what it's going to cost me!?

 

Two possibilities: Coolant Temp Sensor (which is the cheaper attempt to fix) or the thermostat (more likely). I replaced the sensor first, but it didn't solve the problem ultimately. I had a German specialist independent shop do the t-stat because the dealership wanted (I think it was) around $700+. I got out for around $400 at the place I took it to.

Shouldn't cause stuttering, though. About the only thing I had a problem with was that the temp would never come up to the middle of the gauge. That sounds like something else unrelated that should be checked.

All these cars run a little rough at idle--it's the TFSI system. But, they also had problems with ignition coils a while back, so if that "customer service action" was never performed, you should have that done--it's free if your car qualifies. Unless it's something I know ahead of time they'll replace for free, I don't ever take my car to the dealership anymore. I'm done with their ridiculously overpriced service.