The Turtle
Veteran Member
- Joined
- Jul 24, 2006
- Location
- rural Maryland
- TDI
- 1996 B4 Passat wagon, SpeedTuning chip, 360,000+ miles, 1996 B4V, 306,000 miles on original engine
Thanks to a just-made-itself-apparent overheating issue, it's time to do the timing belt and water pump, apparently.
Quick thing about the overheating: Car has been fine for tens of thousands of miles, then the other day temperature starting spiking when on the highway. Fine at idle and in slow speed traffic. Coolant level fine.
Heater output (which was highly pleasant to test on a 96-degree day, I assure you) was strange. At first spike, I cranked the heater to max and tons of heat poured out at idle, however at speed, output dropped quite a lot.
Other pertinent fact: some previous owner appears to have replace the G12 with some kinda funny blue stuff, so I wasn't gonna just put more G12 in there. Only water, and heated before it went in.
Based on other threads here in the last couple of years, I'm suspicious of impeller failure. I do miss the old days of radiator caps, where you could actually SEE circulation.
Anyway, I also don't know how long the timing belt has been in there, so time to get it all done.
Normally, I'd take this to Mark1VWs up in Walkersville, Maryland, but lately I spend a lot of my time down in northern Virginia and Mark is now 50+ miles from me and I am unlikely to want to try to get the car there overheating.
Does someone know of a good nondealer VW service shop that knows TDIs in the northern Virginia DC suburbs? The car is in Falls Church right now, very very close to the Beltway and Route 50, so places in Fairfax, Falls Church, Merrifield, or up near Tyson's Corner would be preferable for logistics purposes.
Quick thing about the overheating: Car has been fine for tens of thousands of miles, then the other day temperature starting spiking when on the highway. Fine at idle and in slow speed traffic. Coolant level fine.
Heater output (which was highly pleasant to test on a 96-degree day, I assure you) was strange. At first spike, I cranked the heater to max and tons of heat poured out at idle, however at speed, output dropped quite a lot.
Other pertinent fact: some previous owner appears to have replace the G12 with some kinda funny blue stuff, so I wasn't gonna just put more G12 in there. Only water, and heated before it went in.
Based on other threads here in the last couple of years, I'm suspicious of impeller failure. I do miss the old days of radiator caps, where you could actually SEE circulation.
Anyway, I also don't know how long the timing belt has been in there, so time to get it all done.
Normally, I'd take this to Mark1VWs up in Walkersville, Maryland, but lately I spend a lot of my time down in northern Virginia and Mark is now 50+ miles from me and I am unlikely to want to try to get the car there overheating.
Does someone know of a good nondealer VW service shop that knows TDIs in the northern Virginia DC suburbs? The car is in Falls Church right now, very very close to the Beltway and Route 50, so places in Fairfax, Falls Church, Merrifield, or up near Tyson's Corner would be preferable for logistics purposes.