Antifreeze OEM Volkswagen or OEM Honda

Not that low because I topped it off before it got to that point but yeah it’s normal for our cars. It should only be the initial settling though, top it off engine cold with vw g12 evo 50/50 or distilled water and keep an eye on it. It shouldn’t drop any more once topped off for a while anyway.

I only use honda coolant. My 2003 crv has almost 300k on the original water pump.

These tsi motors tend to run hotter then standard engines. I would top off the car (once cooled typically around a hour) open it up and take it to the line above minimum, that\u2019ll be your maximum. Watch it over the next few weeks. If it goes below minimum again, you have some sort of leak.

Maybe I'm wrong, here, but that looks like rust to me.

Did the mech use green coolant, and not the factory VW red/pink/purple stuff? That would cause the cast iron short block to rust out in short order.

Use the OEM honda stuff. It's really nice.

I'm running Honda type 2 coolant in my 94 sonoma. Flushing helped but it seems getting a good P-HOAT coolant stopped or at least paused the rusting while offering better protection.

VW coolant doesn\u2019t play nice and will chemically react with parts store general coolant.

My 2029 Alltrack has developed the same problem at 50K miles. Drops about 1” for every two hours driven. You can see and smell the antifreeze.

I see your reservoir says G13 mit Silikat. Would recommend getting rid of G13 and removing the bag. G13 causes corrosion (resulting in a leak at the shaft of the water pump), leaves deposits (clogging the heater core and resulting in engine overheating), etc. Flush the system a couple times with distilled water and then fill up with G12evo coolant which doesn\u2019t have these issues.

Yes, the documents say they are compatible - at the cost of losing some corrosion protection. Don\u2019t use G13 if you have a choice. G13 becomes acidic and causes leaks, and leaves deposits in the system which cause clogging. VW switched to G12evo for a reason.