lynnredbug
New member
- Joined
- Jun 1, 2002
- Location
- Houston
Just wondering if anybody has had this happen. The second dealer I towed the car to has seen it and was able to identify what happened.
In early April I drove my TDI Beetle from Houston to New Orleans. On the way back in the dark I struck a tire fragment on the driver's side. I immediately pulled off, saw just a little rubber on the bumper and no other apparent damage. When I returned home, I used a cleaner to get off the rubber.
I drove the car around Houston for another week and then headed off to Bangkok Thailand for an extended business trip. While I was there, my brother sold his old car and drove my Beetle while he looked for a new one. One day he drove it for 50 highway miles on a wet, rainy day. As he exited the highway, the car died belching black smoke. He called roadside assistance and they towed him to the closest dealer, which happened to be Archer in Houston. They got the car on a Thursday. They said they would look at it on Friday. This slipped into Monday afternoon. On Tuesday they called and asked if the car has been in a flood as the water filter was literally full of water and it was apparent that at the very least the Turbo has suffered severe water damage. They ran him around for a couple of days asking, for example, for up front payment to tear down and diagnose the problem. As a result, he had it towed to a different dealer, Momentum, in downtown Houston.
Our experience there was better. The moment the car arrived it went up on the lift. The mechanic quickly identified the problem. A small shield at the bottom of the car had broken (apparently the tire did some damage after all). The air intake is just above that panel and with the negative pressure from the Turbo the car would literaly vacum water from the highway into the engine. It just so happened that the car had not been driven in the rain. According to Momentum, they have seen "several" cars like ours because it appears that this particular piece of plastic or whatever is very easy to break -- sometimes all it takes is scrapping the bottom on a speed bump. Anyway, it killed my Turbo and various other bits of the engine to the tune of $2800. VW will not cover anything having to do with the problem. According to Momentuim, several customers have tried to slug it out claiming it is a design flaw but no luck. I ended up reporting it to my insurance which paid the entire cost less my deductible.
I hope to accomplish to two things here:
1) Warn others that if you run over anything on the driver's side you had better check the underside front to make sure nothing is damaged.
2) Find out if there are others here who have experienced this problem.
In early April I drove my TDI Beetle from Houston to New Orleans. On the way back in the dark I struck a tire fragment on the driver's side. I immediately pulled off, saw just a little rubber on the bumper and no other apparent damage. When I returned home, I used a cleaner to get off the rubber.
I drove the car around Houston for another week and then headed off to Bangkok Thailand for an extended business trip. While I was there, my brother sold his old car and drove my Beetle while he looked for a new one. One day he drove it for 50 highway miles on a wet, rainy day. As he exited the highway, the car died belching black smoke. He called roadside assistance and they towed him to the closest dealer, which happened to be Archer in Houston. They got the car on a Thursday. They said they would look at it on Friday. This slipped into Monday afternoon. On Tuesday they called and asked if the car has been in a flood as the water filter was literally full of water and it was apparent that at the very least the Turbo has suffered severe water damage. They ran him around for a couple of days asking, for example, for up front payment to tear down and diagnose the problem. As a result, he had it towed to a different dealer, Momentum, in downtown Houston.
Our experience there was better. The moment the car arrived it went up on the lift. The mechanic quickly identified the problem. A small shield at the bottom of the car had broken (apparently the tire did some damage after all). The air intake is just above that panel and with the negative pressure from the Turbo the car would literaly vacum water from the highway into the engine. It just so happened that the car had not been driven in the rain. According to Momentum, they have seen "several" cars like ours because it appears that this particular piece of plastic or whatever is very easy to break -- sometimes all it takes is scrapping the bottom on a speed bump. Anyway, it killed my Turbo and various other bits of the engine to the tune of $2800. VW will not cover anything having to do with the problem. According to Momentuim, several customers have tried to slug it out claiming it is a design flaw but no luck. I ended up reporting it to my insurance which paid the entire cost less my deductible.
I hope to accomplish to two things here:
1) Warn others that if you run over anything on the driver's side you had better check the underside front to make sure nothing is damaged.
2) Find out if there are others here who have experienced this problem.