As a schmuck who bought into the EA888 1.8t in the Alltrack, not because I thought it'd be cheaper to maintain, mind telling other things you've been seeing to pad your paycheck?
I've heard of intake clogging, but not a whole lot more than that.
Well the older versions of that engine family went through about five timing chain tensioners/guides before they finally found one that seems to hold up reasonably well.
The crankcase breather pressure regulator thing is a constant issue, and if you don't catch them right away they'll blow the rear main seal to pieces. And the rear main seal itself is about the cheesiest cheapest lame design I have ever seen. Just a piece of stamped steel with a little lip made on to it, and that lip comes off.
And if the rear main seal doesn't blow completely apart, the front seal may leak too. And those are almost impossible to replace without distorting the front cover, which is also a piece of stamped steel, so you usually end up having to replace the front cover. Which is tricky, because these engines employ the most asinine crank pulley design I have ever seen, with a bunch of ridges on the front of the crank sprocket that lock into the pulley... but when you take the pulley loose, the chain tensioner wants to cock the sprocket off to the side, which can cause it jump time, and then you get to tear the whole front of the engine apart.
The did at least change the breather regulator, but changed does not necessarily mean fixed.
Ignition coils of course, as usual. The newer design changed the coils finally, so instead of outright failing, they glue themselves to the engine and break upon removal. Oh, and they cost twice as much.
Then the chronic worn out sloppy wastegate linkage on the BW turbochargers causing low boost DTCs under high load demands, because the wastegate no longer is able to shut 100%.
Previous gen intakes were ALWAYS going bad. So much so, that they extended the warranty on them. Of course, they have to come off a lot either for the intake ports gunking up so bad the engine runs like crap OR to access the crappy water pump assembly that is buried underneath there that loves to spontaneously crack and start spewing coolant out the front of the engine.
The intakes have been changed, too, but again... improved? Who knows.
Then the newest ones they added a plastic oil pan. So if you thought the aluminum ones were fragile, LOL.... running over an empty cardboard box on the highway is enough to punch a hole in one. We've already seen several. And the cheesy little quarter twist plastic drain plug is a joke. Seriously, how long do they really expect those to last?
Pretty sad when you have 1/4 million mile 2.slo cars running around that have NEVER had ANYTHING done to the engine proper, just normal scheduled PM, and we are already having the newer engines that couldn't even make it to 100k without something major breaking. Getting tougher and tougher to be a Volkswagen fan.
