New to the Golf

[Fooseball]

Hi There,

I recently purchased myself a MKV Golf TDI.

Loving it so far but I have noticed a couple of things and was wondering if you guys could help me out/and or point me in the right direction. I'm also looking for a good mechanic in the SE suburbs of Melbourne to send my car to.

Issues:

1. Rough idle:
The car idles rough, sometimes its worse than others, today the dash display started dimming. Wondering what some common things to check would be?
2. Smoke under load:
The car has a Diesel Power chip in in (old one connected by a parallel or serial connection) I chased down the Australian distributor of it and he explained how to adjust the settings and what it should be set to. It was set a bit high, so I turned it down. I was hoping this would stop or reduce the amount of black smoke out the back of the car under load, but I'm not convinced it has done that. Are there any other things I can check?
3. Dash display
The display on the dash (odometer etc) started fading the other day until it was unreadable. When I next got into the car it was fine... I've noticed that it seems to happen on warmer or sunny days, could this be related to the auto lights feature?
4. Current Sat Nav/Radio Combo.
The car has an MFD2 radio installed in it without the CD stacker which makes it a bit of a pain to operate. I was wanting to hear about peoples experiences regarding upgrades?

Thanks in advance!

[poyta]

First of all you should probably be posting this in the diesel section. If you haven't checked it out yet I recommend you go there - there's a lot of information there more specific to your model.
The Rough idle could be normal but hard to judge - best to get a qualified mechanic to check it out as there are a lot of potential causes to this. If you haven't cleaned out your EGR valve yet I would recommend you do it - the build up of sludge in the inlet system and in particular the EGR could be the cause and its something you should do regularly anyway.
The smoke is normal in your car - all diesels apart from those equipped with a DPF filter blow black smoke under load. Even more if its chipped.
Dash fade could be a sign of a battery needing replacing? Nothing to do with the auto lights feature.
A good upgrade for your golf in terms of Audio is the for a top of the line RNS510 unit but there are lot of better units out of the higher range MkV's that would fit too and they can come with inbuild CD stackers, keep an eye out on the parts for sale section or on ebay. You can always buy a DoubleDIN face plate for the dash and then you can buy just about any aftermarket double DIN unit out there.
Hope it helps - enjoy your Golf.

[Fooseball]

Thanks for your reply. very helpful! I think I have found a good VW mechanic in the area, I'll be booking it in for a service within the next 1000kms!

Sorry about the wrong section.