Captain Morgan
Veteran Member
I've read a bunch of runaway threads on here already, but I wanted to give the complete background of the vehicle I'm working on to get some 2nd or 3rd opinions of what I should do.
If you dont want to read my novel, skip down to the bold paragraph below
I picked up a 2002 TDI 5-Speed in August. The car came with full service records, timing belt, coolant temp sensor and a bunch of other stuff was done less than 10 months earlier and the car had been sitting for most of that time from what I gathered.
I purchased the car knowing it needed a radiator, battery and it had an exhaust leak. I didnt even drive it until I got it to work, rolled it off the trailer and dropped in the old battery from my 00 TDI. On my initial test drive, the car had absolutely NO power what so ever. It had torque, but it took forever even just to reach 25 mph, so the first thing I did was run a complete scan with VAGCOM but that turned up nothing. The only codes were in the airbag system for low voltage, probably due to the bad battery that was previously in the vehicle. No dash lights (other than low coolant), started fine, sounded good, but now power.
Before replacing the radiator, I did a little snooping around the EGR and Intake and found signs of a both of them being clogged. After pulling the EGR off, this is what I found....
The EGR and Intake were both about 70% clogged. I cleaned the EGR first, then worked on the intake, letting it sit overnight in a solvent bath. I also cleaned the EGR cooler and put everything back together with new gaskets and seals.
Next I pulled the radiator and replaced that with one I had from the '01 TDI I chopped up last year. Once that was done, I completely redid the brakes front and rear, then went for another test drive. The car did feel a little more powerful, but clearly lacked power still.
After doing some more searching and reading on here, it seemed the next logical thing to check was the actuator for the turbo. Sure enough, I couldn't get it to budge, neither by had or vacuum pump. I have a complete spare engine sitting on a stand, so I stole the actuator off of that and replaced it today. I also replaced the radiator again with a new unit after discovering a small fracture on the end tank.
I started the car and give it a small rev, I could actually hear the turbo spool now, first time since I got the car. Test drive proved that the actuator was the problem, car felt good
I basically drove the car around the parking lot, winding 1st gear out a bit, never getting past 2nd gear. I drove down, drove back, turned around again to do another lap, was shifting out of 1st and the engine ran away from me. I'm not really sure how long, it seemed like forever, but I'd estimate 5-10 seconds, I know I didnt have enough time to get out of the car and pop the hood (wasnt sure if the ASV was going to function or not).
There was some smoke, grey in color, it dissipated quickly but was rather stinky. I did not attempt to restart the car as I did not want it to happen again, I figured Id try again tomorrow so I could be under the hood if it did try to run away again.
Now, I plan on doing a compression test as soon as I can get my hands on a tester. I'm leaning towards the turbo seals being bad as the cause for the runaway? I will look for oil in the intake system tomorrow as well, but it just seemed like too much of a coincidence that it ran away finally after getting the turbo to operate correctly.
Am I overlooking any other causes for the runaway? Should I have cleaned more than just the intake, EGR and cooler?
Does anyone think the EGR could be bad too after seeing how clogged the intake was? I believe I have read topics on here on how to test the EGR, I have another one I can swap on there, but I'd like to test that one as well.
Thanks in advance for any help, thoughts or input on my little dilemma.
If you dont want to read my novel, skip down to the bold paragraph below
I picked up a 2002 TDI 5-Speed in August. The car came with full service records, timing belt, coolant temp sensor and a bunch of other stuff was done less than 10 months earlier and the car had been sitting for most of that time from what I gathered.
I purchased the car knowing it needed a radiator, battery and it had an exhaust leak. I didnt even drive it until I got it to work, rolled it off the trailer and dropped in the old battery from my 00 TDI. On my initial test drive, the car had absolutely NO power what so ever. It had torque, but it took forever even just to reach 25 mph, so the first thing I did was run a complete scan with VAGCOM but that turned up nothing. The only codes were in the airbag system for low voltage, probably due to the bad battery that was previously in the vehicle. No dash lights (other than low coolant), started fine, sounded good, but now power.
Before replacing the radiator, I did a little snooping around the EGR and Intake and found signs of a both of them being clogged. After pulling the EGR off, this is what I found....
The EGR and Intake were both about 70% clogged. I cleaned the EGR first, then worked on the intake, letting it sit overnight in a solvent bath. I also cleaned the EGR cooler and put everything back together with new gaskets and seals.
Next I pulled the radiator and replaced that with one I had from the '01 TDI I chopped up last year. Once that was done, I completely redid the brakes front and rear, then went for another test drive. The car did feel a little more powerful, but clearly lacked power still.
After doing some more searching and reading on here, it seemed the next logical thing to check was the actuator for the turbo. Sure enough, I couldn't get it to budge, neither by had or vacuum pump. I have a complete spare engine sitting on a stand, so I stole the actuator off of that and replaced it today. I also replaced the radiator again with a new unit after discovering a small fracture on the end tank.
I started the car and give it a small rev, I could actually hear the turbo spool now, first time since I got the car. Test drive proved that the actuator was the problem, car felt good
I basically drove the car around the parking lot, winding 1st gear out a bit, never getting past 2nd gear. I drove down, drove back, turned around again to do another lap, was shifting out of 1st and the engine ran away from me. I'm not really sure how long, it seemed like forever, but I'd estimate 5-10 seconds, I know I didnt have enough time to get out of the car and pop the hood (wasnt sure if the ASV was going to function or not).
There was some smoke, grey in color, it dissipated quickly but was rather stinky. I did not attempt to restart the car as I did not want it to happen again, I figured Id try again tomorrow so I could be under the hood if it did try to run away again.
Now, I plan on doing a compression test as soon as I can get my hands on a tester. I'm leaning towards the turbo seals being bad as the cause for the runaway? I will look for oil in the intake system tomorrow as well, but it just seemed like too much of a coincidence that it ran away finally after getting the turbo to operate correctly.
Am I overlooking any other causes for the runaway? Should I have cleaned more than just the intake, EGR and cooler?
Does anyone think the EGR could be bad too after seeing how clogged the intake was? I believe I have read topics on here on how to test the EGR, I have another one I can swap on there, but I'd like to test that one as well.
Thanks in advance for any help, thoughts or input on my little dilemma.
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